Windows 8 Consumer Preview

I downloaded both the 64-bit and 32-bit versions of the Consumer Preview from my Technet account.

By the way, if you have a serious IT addiction like I have, and need access to Microsoft Products, the Technet subscription is the way to go.

I decided to install the 64 bit version as a dual boot with Windows 7 on my main hobby system, and the 32 bit version on an Acer W500 Tablet PC.

So after downloading, I copied the 64 bit ISO to my USB flash drive, for a quick setup on the hobby machine. I used Microsoft's own tool for writing the USB stick.  You can find the tool at:
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool.
(It will also write a DVD, but so will Windows 7).

I didn't get immediate joy on the hobby system since for some reason, telling it to boot from the USB didn't work.  Instead, it saw the stick as another hard drive, and I had to reset it for that.

At first, for the Acer Tablet, I tried using the web based install routine, but after it finally downloaded Windows 8, it needed 16 GB of storage in order to work, and the 32 GB SSD on the Acer was too full for me to get that much room.  So I decided to do a clean install on the tablet since I didn't have much stuff there anyway.  So I wrote another USB stick with the 32 bit ISO and went to work.

I attached the keyboard base for the tablet, got into the BIOS and reset for the USB boot and away we went.  The install went quickly.  Oh, as a side note, if you have any extra memory cards in the tablet, like as SD card, remove it before trying to boot from the USB.  For some reason, you can't unless you remove the SD card.

After the install and several reboots, Windows 8 came right up.  Even in the install setup process, it was reading the screen touches, and I have to say Windows 8 seems to fly on this little machine.  It has a dual core 1GHz processor, and I haven't seen real slowdowns or stutters, except what I consider to be network congestion.

One of my major concerns was all the rumors around whether or not Media Center would survive into Windows 8.  Not many people seem to use it, but those of us who do, really like it.  My whole digital media life revolves around it, and is stored on my Windows Home Server.  I record some TV and definitely have a movie collection, and Media Center was my portal to that.  But I discovered something that gives me greater hope for the future.  The move to the live tile/Metro interface has tiles for Music, Videos and Photos.  When I had connected through Media Center (and therefore through Media Player) my libraries of data on the server, lo and behold, the data showed up through the tiles.  There was all my music.  I switched over to Photos, and there lived all my Photos.

So I went hunting for my movies, and some of them were in the Video tile.  Those movies which I had transcoded from DVD to another format, showed up under the Other part of the Video tile.  Now, it they could just add a DVD and Recorded TV part to the tile, I'd be all set and ready to go.  So I see a path for the Media Center components to migrate to the Tiles, and probably become more familiar to people since they will then see them on the main screen.  I can't tell you how many family members and friends only use what they find in an icon on the main screen.  Maybe if Microsoft had put it in separate pieces on the main screen all along, it would have garnered more users.

I finally got the dual boot working on my hobby system, and I'm learning the differences in the touch vs. mouse uses.  But Windows 8 has really impressed me, and I see a bright future ahead for tablets with Windows.