Well, yes, Windows 8 Release Preview has been released. As Microsoft reimagines Windows, here is your chance to take it for a spin on a variety of form factors, including the new generation of touch devices. Let’s dive into the details, and get started.

Requirements

• Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster                 
• RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB  (64-bit)                
• Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)                
• Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver                

Of course, you will need a tablet or a monitor that supports multi-touch for the touch experience on Windows 8. The OS requires a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768 to access the Windows Store and at least 1366 x 768 to snap apps.

Availability

Windows 8 Release Preview is available in 14 languages – Arabic, English, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. The Windows 8 Release Preview Setup program will automatically detect your current language selection. If you don’t have one of these languages selected, you can choose the language you want to download.

Microsoft has surprisingly allowed for upgrades to Windows 8 Release Preview from all Windows versions going back to as far as Windows XP. If you are upgrading from an earlier preview version of Windows 8, while your files will be saved in a Windows.old folder, it would be otherwise a clean installation with nothing else preserved.  In the most seamless upgrade experience of all, while upgrading from Windows 7, all programs, Windows settings, and User accounts and files are retained. From Windows Vista, you lose the installed programs and from Windows XP, you lose everything except the User accounts and files.

Download

Before we go ahead, remember, after you install Windows 8, you won’t be able to use the recovery partition on your PC to go back to your previous version of Windows. Once you’ve decided to take the dive, download the Windows 8 Release Preview Setup from here.

The setup will check if your PC can run Windows 8 Release Preview and provide a compatibility report that you can save or print. Make sure your devices are connected to your PC and turned on before you run Setup.

The Setup program will automatically select the optimized version of the download according to the architecture of your PC (32-bit or 64-bit).

Installation

You can also download an ISO image and use it to create a bootable DVD or USB flash drive to install Windows 8 Release Preview. If you install via an installation media, you’ll need to enter this product key: TK8TP-9JN6P-7X7WW-RFFTV-B7QPF.

Once Windows 8 Release Preview is downloaded, you need to choose how and when to install it. You can install on the current drive or you can make an ISO or bootable flash drive for installing Windows 8 Release Preview on another partition,  virtual machine, or another PC.

Before the installation begins, the setup will inform you of the programs that would need to be attended to, post the presentation.