With the popularity of the win8 dev preview [1/2 mill downloads during the night of its public release] I wanted to give it a look/see. I had hoped to have it installed normally by now rather than virtually, but the boot mgr/loader seems a bit flaky so I've got some stuff I want to try out 1st. If you want to give the win8 preview a try I suggest making sure you have good disk/partition backups ready, including of the boot portion of your system drive [in Paragon apps use the hard drive backup wizard], & if possible, wouldn't hurt to have a WinPE type disc/USB device with a copy of EasyBCD to maybe help get the boot mgr working. During setup I've had mixed results with win8 detecting/seeing additional drives/partitions, read that it won't see XP, & setup did not always proceed the same way every time I ran it, so probably set aside a good chunk of time in case you need it -- this is very much a pre-Beta, & the Microsoft MSDN thread on the preview is very active with problems & questions: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsdeveloperpreviewgeneral/threads . If you plan to try win8 dev preview in a VM [Virtual Machine], when I tried it with or in Windows' Virtual PC I got a message that the CPU was not fast enough. Using it in VirtualBox the Guest Additions will not work -- the main .sys file is incompatible -- & without those you have no easy way to get data/files in/out... I solved that & several other problems setting up a running win7 VM to dual boot into win8 as well. Get the preview ISOs here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516 .
Over simplified, add a cell phone shell on top of win7, & you've basically got the Windows 8 Dev Preview -- the interesting tech stuff isn't there yet, & this preview is more to build buzz & get people writing Metro apps [Metro is that cell phone like interface]. Most of the talk I've come across centers on that Metro GUI, which runs on top of the Windows you're already used to if you've been running win7, & frankly, what I've read seems a lot like many win7 vs. XP discussions, with loads of love/hate mixed with occasionally condescending attitudes. One registry value turns the Metro GUI on/off -- an easier switch is coming in later versions. For right now in 32 bit win8 I just created two .reg files to do the switch -- create a new text file, add the following, & save it as Metro_on.reg, then do it again only set the value to dword:00000000 & save it as Metro_off.reg.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"RPEnabled"=dword:00000001
You can make the change in Regedit manually of course, or you can just make those 2 .reg files, double clicking on one or the other to merge with Windows registry. Note that if you're in Metro & want to find something [like Regedit] just start typing.
Having Metro makes sense for Microsoft competing with iPads & Android tablets. You may like it or not, might use it for some things & not others & so on. Right now I suspect the greatest benefit on a desktop or regular laptop might be that it may run Windows 7 phone apps -- finger painting has been around for many millennia, one of the 1st advancements humans made was learning to use tools, & since then finger painting has been something we expected [sometimes dreaded] with young kids. It makes sense to use your fingers [touch, gestures etc.] on cell phones -- at my desk, with the monitor an arm's stretch away, not so much. That said I could easily see Metro showing up in the workplace... some tasks, like the self-serve lane at the supermarket checkout work well with a simpler, touch screen interface. You can write Metro apps using Java Script as well as things like the C++ in many (most?) apps we're used to, so there's value in maybe easier to develop biz apps that work the same on everything, including cell phones. OTOH in a nod to Steve Jobs, Internet Explorer in Metro won't do Flash, or any other plug-ins/add-ons -- you have to start ie10 from the traditional interface for that. The most asked question I've seen is how to turn off a Metro app -- Answer: You apparently don't... they just fade into the background, & when they fade enough as you start new apps, they more-or-less go away.
Beyond Metro, with the traditional interface you'll notice Microsoft's ribbon design GUI has come to Windows Explorer, but with all the tools you're used to in win7 & then some. There may be a new file system coming, or not. So far Microsoft does want to include much better support for running VMs, including several at once, & there is more integration with most things on-line, if you care to use it. Win8 is going to have improvements on System Restore, with features sounding like a blend of XP & win7 -- you can do a reset but preserve all your work. And with win8 there's supposed to be a version or setup where everything fits on a USB device, ala WinPE, useable on any machine capable of running win8, only this is not a bare Windows install, but everything you'd use. As with Vista & later win7, expect some features to appear, others to quietly disappear as win8 works its way to final release. Gartner predicted most biz will skip win8, so if Microsoft listened they may try to cram in enough new features, beyond Metro, to make it worthwhile.
