Windows 8 Dev Preview download tonight.....

[grunger106]

We don't have a section for Win8 yet so I though this was the best section...

From 8pm PDT tonight (which I think is around 3am GMT so I won't be getting it until tomorrow )

Head over to http://dev.windows.com

From the Build Keynote this looks really interesting....

Especially for the ThinkPad tablet owners amongst us, I'll be running this up on an X60T tomorrow, but those of you with nice capacitive X220T's....

[ausmike]

Thanks
Love to try it on my OLDER x220t...... cant promise to do that anytime soon , due to travel commitements ,,, wonder hows its going to do on the T Tablet/////?

Thanks again for the reminder
cheers

[pianowizard]

I am trying the 32-bit version now, on my Core i5 desktop. It feels about as snappy as Windows 7. This desktop has a very old ethernet card which I thought Windows 8 would be unable to find a driver for, but surprisingly it was installed automatically through Windows Update. The new UI, which is based on Windows Phone 7, will take a while to get used to it, but I can visualize myself liking it eventually. Because of the snappiness and the compatibility with very old hardware, I am optimistic that Win 8 would run reasonably well even on Pentium 4 and Pentium M machines. This means I can continue to buy and use 4:3 and 16:10 laptops for at least 10 more years!

So far there are two issues though. This computer has 6GB of RAM, and I expected a 32-bit OS to be able to use about 3GB of it. But Win 8 can "see" only 2GB. The other issue is, I tried to install Avast but it wouldn't. Has anyone managed to install other virus scanners?

UPDATE: I asked the same question on the Notebookreview.com forum and was just told that a virus scanner is built into the OS. Excellent!

[grunger106]

I think MSE and Win Def have been merged, I still installed MSE though...

Working nicely on my X60T with touch input

[automobus]

Will one of you please share the EULA? I do not want to download two gigs just to read a few k of text. You can use Pastebin or the like, or just PM me.

[Neil]

Thought I would try the 32-bit version on my X60 tonight, but it won't install. Very, very early in the hardware detection stage it stops with a "Load Driver" window that says: "A required CD/DVD drive device driver is missing". What? I was not aware that a CD/DVD drive need a driver. Anyway, it won't proceed without a driver, and I have no idea what it's looking for.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll try on a different machine...

Edit: Just couldn't wait, so tried on the R61. Same result, so it's not a faulty drive. Must be a bad download, or bad burn to DVD.

Edit #2: It was a bad download. Some files were missing the first time, but I've got it all now.

[topmahof]

I just put it on an x41 tablet

I actually get some transparencies with 8, none with 7. My windows 7 graphics driver that I had to force install with 7 won't intall with 8. So, for now I'm using the windows 8 stock graphics, which ain't too bad.

Tablet buttons work.

Hot keys don't.

The built-in virus scanner is windows defender. I used MSE and it works.

The WEI doesn't finish because of the graphics.

It looks like the Windows phone had a big influence on 8.

For a preview, it doesn't work too bad. I'm typing this on it now.

Edit: My WEI score went from a 1.0 with windows 7 to a 2.0 with windows 8 using the windows graphics driver.

Dave


Edit: The WEI finished with a 2.0. With 7 it was a 1.0.

Hot keys now work, started on their own.

[crashnburn]

Anyone enjoy running this on an X61 Tablet?

[Bánh mì]

I tried the 64bit version in Virtual Box with W764 has the host OS. Install went fine after some corrupted downloads. Suggest downloading when everyone else is not. Seems to make a difference. IMO, its too cutesy and sort of ugly. I could see how someone with a tablet would prefer the OS but on a regular PC or notebook I would hope one can revert to a a "classic" look.

Are you guys using a seperate firewall for it?

[barrywohl]

I've been running Windows Developer Preview for about a week on an X201t with 4 gb ram. I pulled the OEM hard drive and put in a 100 gb SATA drive I had lying around for the trial.

First time through I tried to install System Update and as much of ThinkVantage utilities as I could. System Update wouldn't function. Access Connections functioned fine, but seems unnecesssary. The Ultranav driver and manager installed okay but brought back a problem I had had back in May with Windows 7 of losing the mouse (not the pen) after flipping from landscape to portrait and then rebooting. The ThinkVantage power manager and power manager utility worked fine but don't seem to add anything over Windows 8 power management.

Some software I installed (ThinkVantage? Foxit? Kindle? Dropbox? Microsoft Security Essentials? Simple Tap 2.1?) seemed to have corrupted the shutdown process so I reinstalled the Windows Developer Preview and I'm being more cautious about software.

First impressions: The touch functions work much better than I had found under Windows 7, IE 9 or Simple Tap. The interface really works for finger touch. The input panel (part of the onscreen keyboard) is better at decoding my handwriting. The OS runs fine on the X201t.

I've had some problems. Like I said, the shutdown process got corrupted. Another time, the touch screen lost its function and restoring from a recent restore point fixed it. After all, it is pre-beta software and entitled to be buggy.

I like it. My home PC experience goes back to PC-DOS 1.00 (1982) and includes Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 2000 Pro, Windows XP Pro, Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows 7 Professional. As of now, I like it as much or better than Windows 7 Professional. I plan to buy it on a new ThinkPad when Ivy Bridge and Windows 8 RTM come out. Also, the OS prefers the 1366 x 768 screen of the X220 over the 1280 x 800 screen of the X201t, so I'm losing a little functionality on this test machine that deals with docking two applications on the screen side by side and I also lose some ease at editing and labeling the start screen.

I don't have on this X201t the fingerprint reader or the webcam or bluetooth, so I haven't tried those features.

I couldn't get Intervideo WinDVD to run so I used the free DVD player VLC from videolan.org and that worked fine.

I think the integration of the OS with MS Skydrive will really help me keep different pcs in sync. Flipping from the new Metro interface to the traditional Windows desktop is easy. I think I will eventually like the Internet Explorer 10 Metro view as much or better than the IE 10 traditional view.

I installed the 64 bit version. The free download expires in March, 2012, but the Windows 8 beta should be out in late February. I'm not doing anything mission critical on it. I still prefer MS Office 2010 Outlook as my mail client over Windows Mail, and I haven't put Office 2010 on this test bed yet.

Barry in Wyoming.