Now I had recently installed the Developer preview of Windows 8, that was recently made available to the public. Now in order to run the OS you will need a system that has at least a 1Ghz processor that is either 32 or 64 bit. At least 1 gb of ram for 32 bit and at least 2gb for the 64 bit version. You will need at least 16 to 20 GB of hard disk space depending on the edition you are installing.
Now it is not recomended to use this as your main operating system, so for safe measures, it is better to install this early version of Windows 8, in a virtual machine, or on a spare computer, or even have it as a dual boot beside your current operating system, whether this is Windows XP, Vista or 7.
Now I have been testing this Windows 8 build on a Asus N10J Netbook computer, that has 2 Gb of ram and a 1.6 Ghz processor. During my recent play around with the operating system, I have found that many of the preincluded applications do not run. I also have found that some of the applications that I do use on a regular basis such as Google Chrome and mIRC work perfectly fine in this early version. The start menu is not like the start menu that you would fined in Windows 7, as this Windows release is mostly designed for tablet computers, the start menu is like you would find in the Windows phone 7 operating system.
Many features I do like the the automatic aero colour, which changes depending on your desktop backgroud, which I think I quite useful. It does look to me that Microsoft have said goodbye, to the windows classic theme, so now you will only have the choice of the aero, basic and high contrast themes. Windows explorer has of course incorprated the ribbion layout from MS office and other Windows programs such as Wordpad in Windows 7. I do not mind the ribbion and it can be easily minimised anyway.
Another feature that I do like in this release is that you can now natively mount iso images without the need for 3rd party software. Which is a must need for people that deal with iso images alot. Those are just few of the features in Windows 8, I will be looking forward to testing later releases of the operating system, and I think Windows 8 will be a success.
