Windows 8 Consumer Preview Available

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Posted on March 1, 2012 at 4:24 AM in News

If you don’t already know, Windows 8 Consumer Preview is currently available as a free download straight from Microsoft’s Website. There are two ways to get Windows 8 installed on your PC.

1. Downloading the .iso files for either x32 or x64 architecture. You just burn the iso on a DVD and boot that.

2. Using Microsoft’s Windows 8 Consumer Preview Setup, a small app that will check your computer’s hardware for incompatibilities. This little tool will tell you if any of your hardware parts will not work with Windows 8. Another cool thing about the app is that it downloads a ~25% smaller Windows 8 Consumer Preview iso file, based on the hardware compatibility report.

Note: If you are asked to enter a product key, use this one: NF32V-Q9P3W-7DR7Y-JGWRW-JFCK8 taken from (Microsoft’s Website.)

If your Internet Connection isn’t very fast you should use the second option, this way you can save downloading between 500 and 800 MB, depending on the architecture of your choice.

With either option you can upgrade your current Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8 ) installation to Windows 8 Consumer Preview. If you upgrade from Windows 7 all Windows Settings, Programs and User Accout related files and settings will remain intact.

Current operating system What you can keep
Windows Developer Preview
  • User accounts and files
Windows 7
  • Programs
  • Windows settings
  • User accounts and files
Windows Vista
  • Windows settings
  • User accounts and files
Windows XP
  • User accounts and files

Minimum Hardware Requirements

  • Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster
  • RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
  • Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
  • Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device or higher

Windows 8 needs the same amount of resources as Windows 7.

Additional requirements to use certain features:

  • To use touch, you need a tablet or a monitor that supports multitouch.
  • To access the Windows Store and to download and run apps, you need an active Internet connection and a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768.
  • To snap apps, you need a screen resolution of at least 1366 x 768.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview comes with Internet Explorer 10 Consumer Preview.