Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Windows 8 reached an important milestone today with the release of the Consumer Preview along with the Visual Studio “11” Beta. Along with the Consumer Preview there is also the Windows Server “8” Beta (read the associated datasheet).

If you’d like to install the Consumer Preview from a USB thumb drive you’ll find the Windows Store USB/DVD Download Tool useful as it will create a bootable USB device based upon the Consumer Preview ISO image.

You’ll find an interesting blog post by Steven Sinofsky on the Building Windows 8 blog entitled Welcome to Windows 8 – The Consumer Preview where he discusses some of the many changes within the Consumer Preview compared to the Developer Preview we launched at our BUILD conference.

Along with the launch of the Consumer Preview you’ll also find that the Windows Store is now live!

Developers should also check out Jason Zander’s blog post entitled Welcome to the Beta of Visual Studio 11 and .NET Framework 4.5.