As expected, Microsoft has released the Windows 8 Preview edition  and is available for download. It is the second Windows 8 release after the initial Windows 8 Developer Preview edition in September last year and after that Windows 8 Consumer edition this February.

This new release comes in 14 languages and comes with Internet Explorer 10, new Windows 8 apps for Hotmail, SkyDrive, Messenger and much more new & updated apps in the Windows Store. This release is going to be the last pre-release of Windows 8 and the next release or milestone will be RTM only, Release to Manufacturing.

Few noticeable Improvements

  • Personalization options for the Start screen (including more colors!),
  • Improved multi-monitor support,
  • New Family Safety features
  • Improvements to the Mail, Photos, and People apps
  • Bing-powered Travel, News and Sports apps
  • Internet Explorer 10 also has new capabilities like “flip ahead”
  • Fully integrated secure and power-optimized Adobe Flash Player
  • IE10 now comes with Do Not Track “on” by default.

Download Windows 8 Release Preview

You can download Windows 8 Preview edition from Microsoft servers without any need to register there. Downloads are available in two formats i,e Web installer and ISO formats. I do prefer to download ISO files instead of web installers and recommend everyone else to do the same. Make sure to download using a good download manager which supports big files download and doesn’t corrupt large files download. Downloads are available here

Product Key

The links and Product Key for Windows 8 Preview above are only for English Language downloads. If you want to download in other supported languages, just proceed to here.

System Requirements

Thumb rule here is if you can run Windows 7 on your PC, then you can easily run Windows 8 Preview too on your system. Still, here are the minimum system 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

Additional requirements to use certain features:

  • To use touch, you need a tablet or a monitor that supports multitouch.
  • To access the Windows Store and to download and run apps, you need an active Internet connection and a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768.
  • To snap apps, you need a screen resolution of at least 1366 x 768.