The Windows 8 Release Preview, which was promised for June, has already hit the web—just a bit earlier than originally planned.
In late April, via a tweet from the Building Windows 8 Twitter feed, Microsoft announced that an updated Windows 8 Release Preview would be made available to the public. Well, Microsoft has kept its promise and made the download links available for the Windows 8 Release Preview, slightly ahead of schedule.
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A description from the landing page on Microsoft’s site says, “It’s Windows reimagined and reinvented from a solid core of Windows 7 speed and reliability. It’s an all-new touch interface. It’s a new Windows for new devices. And it’s easy to try now—whether you’re installing it for the first time, or moving from Windows 8 Consumer Preview.”
The Windows 8 Release Preview running on a tablet, notebook, and desktop system
There are no hoops to jump through should you want to grab the necessary files. Users looking to experiment with the Windows 8 Release Preview can grab the upgrade assistant executable from this page and x64 or x86 ISO files from here. The x64 ISO weighs in at 3.3GB and the x86 at 2.5GB, but at the moment (4:45PM EST) their servers are holding up very well and offering excellent download speeds (I just pulled down both ISOs in a few minutes at about 4.4MB/s).
Microsoft warns that if you decide to go back to your previous operating system after installing the Windows 8 Release Preview, you’ll need to reinstall it from the recovery discs or installation media that came with your PC. If you don’t have recovery media, you might be able to create it from a recovery partition on your PC using software provided by your PC manufacturer. After you install Windows 8, you won’t be able to use the recovery partition on your PC to go back to your previous version of Windows.
Although this release should be more polished than the Developer and Consumer Previews that came before it, take note that Microsoft is still tweaking the UI and the underlying framework. The new Metro-esque, sans-Aero look revealed last week is not yet present and may not be available until the RTM version, which should arrive in a few months.
