Microsoft today unveiled the “release preview”
version of Windows 8 which mostly indicates that the new Windows
operating system is feature-complete. Windows 8 Release Preview is
available as a free download and it is very likely that your existing
system specs are good enough to run Windows 8.
The System Requirements for Windows 8
According to this Windows 8 FAQ,
any machine equipped with 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB of hard disk space and 1
GHz processor should be able to handle Windows 8. The minimum RAM
requirements are 2 GB in case you would like to install the 64-bit
version of Windows 8.
Should you download Windows 8 Setup or the ISO Image?
As you may have noticed on the Windows 8 download page, the installation of Windows 8 can be done in two ways.
- You can either take the easiest route and download the Windows 8 Setup program – that’s also the default option.
- Alternatively, you can download ISO Images of Windows 8.
If you are planning to install Windows 8 on your existing computer,
either on a different partition (dual-boot) or just want to upgrade from
an older version of Windows to Windows 8, the default Setup program is a
good choice.
Please note that that your installed software programs will only be
preserved if you are upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8. If your
planning to install Windows 8 on top of Windows XP or Vista, only the
files will be preserved but not the various software programs that you
may have on the disk.
The Windows 8 ISO image may be more handy in other situations like:
- Your computer has an
x64 processor but is currently running the 32-bit version of Windows. If
you want to install the 64-bit version of Windows 8, download the
64-bit ISO. - You want to install Windows 8 on your Mac (iMac or Macbook) using Boot Camp software.
- You want to install Windows 8 on multiple computers. In that case, you can download the ISO once, create a bootable DVD and boot the other systems using this newly created Windows 8 disk.
- You plan to run Windows 8 as a Virtual Machine inside your existing copy of Windows.
- You are running Windows XP.
The universal product key for Windows 8 is TK8TP-9JN6P-7X7WW-RFFTV-B7QPF.
Will my software programs run inside Windows 8?
Before grabbing the ISO image of Windows 8, quickly run this setup utility and
it will show a list of all software programs and hardware drivers on
your system that are compatible with Windows 8. Alternatively, you can
visit this page to see a list of all known software and hardware devices that are found to be working with Windows 8.
How should I go about installing Windows 8?
You can have Windows 8 on your computer in three ways – you can install Windows 8 side-by-side (also
known as dual-boot), as a virtual machine (so that it runs inside your
existing Windows just like any other software) or you can have Windows 8
as your primary OS (there’s no going back from here).
If you just want to try out Windows 8 but without modifying any of your existing set-up, the safest bet is to use a Virtual Machine.
If you have a vacant disk partition or don’t mind creating one (it’s
easy), go for the dual-boot option. Else, if you have a spare computer,
you can consider upgrading to Windows 8 overwriting the previous installation of Windows.
Also note that if you are upgrading from Windows 8 Consumer Preview to
the new Windows 8 Release Preview, none of your installed programs,
files and account settings will be preserved though everything would be
moved to the windows.old folder.
No comments:
Post a Comment