Welcome to Windows 8-Consumer Preview

(From http://blogs.msdn.com/ B /b8_cn)

Today is a big day for the Windows team. Not long ago at the World Mobile Communication Conference in Barcelona, Spain, we made public Windows 8 Consumer Preview to our partners and the media. Based on extensive feedback,We have modified more than 0.1 million codesTo make Consumer Preview more refined, and it is now ready to be widely used by people who are willing to test the pre-release operating system. From now on, you canHttp://preview.windows.comUpperDownload Consumer Preview. If you have already tried the Windows 8 Developer Preview, you will be happy to see a wide range of product innovations and improvements based on feedback from many sources.

From chip set to user experience, Windows 8 is re-shaped. For the Developer Preview, we focus on displaying new APIs and magic new tools for developers. The Consumer Preview released today focuses on a wider audience and improvements to WinRT API implementation based on developers' feedback. We are launching a comprehensive user experience, Windows app store, and early previews of some first-and third-party applications.

There are many things to introduce in depth. Let's talk about the differences in Consumer Preview:

• Wide range of product innovations and improvements: Since the release of the Developer Preview version of the early adopters programming platform in March, Windows 8 has made great progress in various aspects. From touch, keyboard, and mouse user experience, to development platform improvement, to performance improvement across all subsystems, quality and reliability, and new features, consumer Preview shows the complete functions of Windows 8.
• Windows app store should be faster: Windows 8 Consumer Preview indicates that the Windows app store is open for testing. You will see new applications of various Metro styles from third-party developers and Microsoft. During the customer preview, users can enjoy these applications for free. Please note that these applications and pre-installed application sets are still in the early stages of development and will be updated and upgraded with the Windows application store as the preliminary edition application preview is available. In addition, the app store provides personalized recommendations. Windows 8 enables users to easily discover and try new apps with a variety of applications and settings across multiple computers, at the same time, it provides developers with the greatest opportunity to display on any platform.
• Connect to cloud from Windows PC and Windows Phone: You will experience seamless integration of content across various Web services. You can choose to access a series of functions by logging on to a Microsoft account, including roaming all settings, using cloud storage, communicating via email, calendar, and contact list, and the ability to connect to a wide range of services. Both your Windows PC and Windows Phone can be connected to the cloud. You can also get started with emails, calendars, contacts, message passing, photos, and SkyDrive Metro.
• Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 5: With IE10, we reshaped our browser to create a new experience specifically designed for Windows 8 devices. It provides an edge-to-edge user interface to achieve fewer browsers and more Web. Fast and smooth, IE improves Web performance through hardware acceleration. The same rendering engine and high-performance scripting engine can also be used on Windows desktops.

We have described many features of all subsystems of Windows 8 in this blog. From the kernel, network, file system, graphics, and user interfaces that span all these features. In this blog article, we have no simple way to list the depth and breadth of Windows 8. You 'd better try it yourself. We encourage everyone to look at the video and information on http://preview.windows.com. You can also download the Consumer Preview for x86/64 versions. For developers, the Visual Studio 11 trial version is available here.

We will release a quick overview of the system requirements for this version, but you may wish to take Windows 7 logo PC as a simple starting point because the system requirements have not changed. You can upgrade from the Developer Preview or Windows 7, or perform a new installation. (If you want to experience this version like most people, we strongly recommend that you install the hardware, instead of Virtual Machine installation, keep in mind that the minimum screen resolution is 1024x768 ). We will upgrade this version over the next few weeks/months with a variety of high-quality updates and drivers to implement our overall update and telemetry mechanisms. Keep in mind that this is a beta version of the product that is still under development.

We will also publish a large number of subsequent blog posts. Therefore, please stay tuned to the details of our changes and other features we have not yet discussed. This blog will continue to be an important part of the development process. Since we already have this shared experience, we are looking forward to the comments of bloggers running this Consumer Preview, so that everyone can feel it and be targeted. We know that there must be a lot of feedback on a reshaped product used by 1 billion people!

I wish you a pleasant download and test!

-- Steven represents the entire Windows 8 team