It seems a beta version is “Consumer Preview” these days, well that is just fine for me. I installed the new pre-release version of Windows 8 to an extra partition in my workstation last night, and a couple of notes:
- I ran into problem that appeared to be related to BIOS settings. The error code was “Windows cannot install required files. The file may be corrupt or missing. Make sure all required files for installation are available and restart the installation. Error code 0x80070570.” Actually, what you needed to do was downgrade the SATA settings in the BIOS from “AHCI” to “IDE” (may also appear as “ATA”) to get the installation running.
- Also, the new graphical boot loader of Windows 8 may not play nice with your graphics card. It took me some trial and error to find out that the bootloader insisted on giving the graphics output only through the DVI adapter of the motherboard, not from the graphics card. And, on the other hand, when the Windows 8 booted for the first time, the image could only be found through the HDMI connector in the graphics card, not from the motherboard DVI. Some tweaking may thus be in order.
The new OS itself looks promising — it makes good use of usability and user experience innovations that are coming from mobile devices and Metro UI of Windows Phone 7 OS. The downside of backwards compatibility is that since there are effectively two versions — touch oriented Metro, and traditional Desktop one — of most features and tools in the OS, things can get somewhat confusing. It will be interesting to see how things will look like in about a year, after some new, touch-enabled PC hardware have come out. There are nice videos, and the download area available at the Microsoft site here: http://windows.microsoft.com/fi-FI/windows-8/consumer-preview
frans goes blog 
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