Microsoft Confirms Windows 8 Public Beta for February
The public beta of Windows 8 will launch in February, just one month behind the speculated January launch date.
During a San Francisco developers event held on Tuesday, Microsoft confirmed that it will release a public beta of Windows 8 in late February 2012 instead of the early January date indicated by a recently leaked roadmap. The news arrived as Antoine Leblond, vice president of Windows Web services, introduced the upcoming Windows Store to the press.
So far the new tablet-console-friendly OS seems to be on track for a full retail release in Fall 2012 based on the beta's February launch. Given that Microsoft released a public beta of Windows 7 back in January 2009, there was speculation that the Redmond company was sticking to the same schedule. Yet the Developer Preview launched a month earlier (on September 13) than Windows 7's October distribution. That said, comparing the two release schedules seems to be somewhat pointless.
According to Microsoft, more than 13 million copies of the Windows 8 Developer Preview had been downloaded since its release back in the fall. California-based Net Applications said that -- based on the Developer Preview downloads -- Windows 8 already accounts for three-hundredths of 1-percent of all PCs accessing the Internet. That's reportedly one-fourth the number of Windows 2000-powered PCs and half the number of Windows 98 PCs.
Despite the beta announcement, Tuesday's event was focused on Microsoft's app market simply called Windows Store. It will open its doors at the launch of the Windows 8 Public Beta and only offer free apps. Previous reports indicated that the storefront will only provide Metro-style applications, and that legacy applications for Windows 7 and later will only have a landing page that links back to the software publisher.
On Tuesday Microsoft also launched the Windows 8 First Apps Contest, challenging developers to create Metro-style apps that will be chosen as launch applications in Windows Store in February. Winning developers will not only get a front-row seat on opening day, but a Samsung Windows Developer Preview PC from the BUILD conference, a year of Windows Azure, and a two-year subscription to the Store. The deadline for submitting a Metro app to the contest is Jan. 8, 2012, so get busy.

You're forgetting the new features, including startup and shutdown enhancements, file transfer enhancements, UI and efficiency enhancements... the list goes on.
I for one am excited to drop Win8 onto my laptop since it's pretty bare anyways and won't have to transfer any files.
Just found out today that someone at work is giving me their asus convertable tablet/netbook thing. This will be perfect to really do win8 on! and I have loved it so far on my Acer netbook.
Win8 is not a fail. The desktop UI is great! The power user features are great! The new start menu/screen is OK, but as it is easily turned off it is no big deal
You're forgetting the new features, including startup and shutdown enhancements, file transfer enhancements, UI and efficiency enhancements... the list goes on.
I for one am excited to drop Win8 onto my laptop since it's pretty bare anyways and won't have to transfer any files.
The metro is ugly as hell, and not handy!
The desktop version is much preferred, since touch screens in desktops are at least 10 years away from now!
try it and time it, you will see the difference. and if your a gamer id rate it will have enough performance boost to justify an upgrade, but i havent played much games on it yet. and it aint 100% complete yet so who knows. but so far its very promising.
remember metro isnt forced, its just default. you can change it to normal in 2 minutes ^^
If i had to pick some things i wanted upgraded from 7 it would be
Better support for multithreading
More acceleration with the video card for a smoother experience
Use less Cpu cycles and less ram then 7
Start up Faster with the desktop on by default not metro, Shutdown faster, And most importantly less restarts due to updates!
Even though i find W7 very secure, Make 8 even better while not slowing down the system!
The smaller they make the Os the faster it will boot and load programs.
It's designed for tablets and touch screens. I would argue that it's not even very good for those. However, a keyboard and mouse are still superior input devices for productivity, and I'm certainly not going to hold my arms out all day poking at all 3 of my monitors at work. Tablets are a fad just like netbooks were, there's even some statistic that 75% of all iPads are just collecting dust because people figured out they were useless when you've got a laptop and a phone.
"YES!!!! YES!!!! The world is finally ours!!!!!!!!!!!" -Linux users and developers all over the world
Gnome 3 can be tweaked by editing css files to look wonderfully well.
Well Ubuntu rocks ......,
only if linux had better game support, it will be the ruler.
Yes it did?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj39HdtOB5U