Download Windows 8 Developer Preview

Microsoft has just announced the release the Windows 8 developer preview both in 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x86) with or without development tools. It’s not a beta release. This build is aimed at developers, so if you’re a developer you should check out what’s new. Microsoft has included some sample applications in these releases to help developers build metro style applications and said in the official blog post that the samples applications are included in this build only. You won’t find these applications in the stable version of Windows 8.

In these releases, developers will be able to code metro style applications in HTML, Javascript and C/C++ with the help of new developments tools. In the official post, they have made it clear that there are many more new features in Windows 8 that await to be discovered. Steven Sinofsky, the president of the Windows division at Microsoft, wants developers to download and start exploring new features as soon as the links are available to download.

Steven Sinofsky also said:

Upgrade from Windows 7 installation is not supported for pre-release code; only clean installs are supported. Reminder: this is a developer preview release and is not meant for production. It is not a beta release. We will be updating the release with various quality updates and drivers over the coming weeks/months just to exercise our overall update and telemetry mechanisms.

For those who have touch devices, let me remind you Windows 8 has the metro UI, no matter what type of PC you have and that’s why the core of the new UI is centered on a tile-based start screen. Microsoft hasn’t yet said anything about the price and when the stable version will be available to public. But according to the rumors around the Internet it should be shipped in fall 2012. And, here’s another good news for all the Windows lovers. The minimum system requirements to run Windows 8 might be slightly lower than Windows 7. An Atom processor with 1GB RAM might be enough to run Windows 8.

If you want to see Windows 8 developer screenshots, check this page out. All developers who are looking to start building applications for the customers of Windows 8 can head over to Windows Dev website. You’ll need to login with your Windows Live ID to download the Windows 8 developer preview. It’s not feature complete and I wouldn’t recommend normal users to download and install Windows 8 developer preview on their PCs. But if you’re keen to try it out and willing to test Windows 8 on your PC, I’d recommend you to run it on a separate partition.

Visit Windows Dev to download and try out the preview release.

Note: The download links will be available by 8 PM (Seattle time). For Indians, links should be available at around 8:30 AM (14th September).

Update:

The download links are available to everyone. As I said above, you need to log in to the website with your Windows Live ID. But, if you don’t have one, here are the direct download links.

Download Windows Developer Preview without Developer tools 64-bit (x64)

Download Windows Developer Preview with Developer tools 64-bit (x64)

Download Windows Developer Preview 32-bit (x86)