Windows 8 Consumer Preview release date

Posted Date: 10-Feb-2012	Category: Windows 8	Rating:
Author: Tony John	Member Level: Diamond	Points: 50

Are you eagerly waiting for the Windows 8 consumer preview release? Microsoft just announced the Windows 8 consumer preview release dates. If everything goes as planned, we should be able to download Windows 8 beta on 29 Feb 2012.

Microsoft announced the Windows 8 developer preview couple of months ago and several thousand people downloaded and installed it. I was one of those enthusiastic people waited the whole night to download and install Windows 8 on the same day Microsoft released it for the public.

It has been a long wait for the next release. The earlier release was a developer preview, meaning it was a version meant for the real techies. There were bugs, problems and various technical issues that normal end users may not be able to resolve. That is why Microsoft wanted to target only the developers.

Today Microsoft announced they are getting ready with the next release which is meant for the consumers and end users. The next release is called Windows 8 consumer preview. Note the term "Preview" in the name, which indicates this is just a beta version and is not meant for end users to run any serious applications.

The Windows 8 developer preview version itself was pretty stable and there were not too many problems. Consider this, we can expect that the Windows 8 consumer preview release will be a much more stable version. This is a public release and anyone could download and install it on their computer, of course at their own risk.

What is the difference between Windows 8 developer preview, consumer preview and Windows 8 beta?

The Windows 8 developer preview was the first release of Windows 8, which was a very early release of the Windows 8. This came with a lot of limitations like it cannot be used to upgrade from Windows 7, we cannot uninstall developer preview etc.

Windows 8 consumer preview is same as Windows 8 beta. Microsoft just call it with a fancy name called "consumer preview" to make it obvious that it is only a preview version and should not be used for production purposes.

Windows 8 consumer preview release date

As I mentioned earlier, the Microsoft Windows 8 consumer preview release date is 29 Feb 2012. If you are waiting to download the Windows 8 consumer preview, keep your computer ready. If you are planning to install on virtual machine, get a copy of Oracle VM VirtualBox or VMWare Workstation ready.

Where to download Windows 8 consumer preview?

As of now, there is no information available on where to find the Windows 8 consumer preview download. Stay tuned and keep an eye on this site. As soon as we find out where to get Windows 8 consumer preview .iso image or installer, we will share the information in this site.

Post Comment:

Notify me by email when others post comments to this article.

Do not include your name, "with regards" etc in the comment. Write detailed comment, relevant to the topic.

No HTML formatting and links to other web sites are allowed.

This is a strictly moderated site. Absolutely no spam allowed.

Name:	Sign In to fill automatically.
Email:	(Will not be published, but required to validate comment)
	Type the numbers and letters shown on the left.