Report: Public Windows 8 Beta Coming in February
Rumors point to a February release for Microsoft's public beta of Windows 8.
Microsoft may have released a developer preview of Windows 8 a few months back, but Redmond has still given little indication as to when the non-developing public will get a chance to play around with the next iteration of Windows. With 2011 drawing to a close, we'll soon enter Windows 8's launch year, and it appears the beginning of 2012 could shape up to be quite Windows 8-centric.
We've already heard the reports that say Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will talk a lot about Windows 8 during his CES keynote in January. However, the latest scuttlebutt says Microsoft will release the public Windows 8 beta will be released shortly after CES. Read Write Web cites sources close to Microsoft in reporting that the public beta will hit in late February of next year. The site's sources couldn't confirm the feature set, saying that this has yet to be nailed down and will be decided by the Windows 8 engineers based on which components are ready for public consumption.
Earlier this month we heard that the Windows 8 install process had been streamlined by Microsoft. The company said that users will be able to install Windows 8 in as few as 11 clicks, depending on their existing OS, migration choices, install method, and the number of blocking issues needed to be resolved before the PC is ready for installation.

I disagree. Ignoring the metor UI and assuming that at release it will be able to be completely disabled. Window 8 will be an improvement on 7. Its got a lot of new features and tweaks, like the file transfer manager and multi-core boot, that will make it better. I am looking forward to its release.
Vista wasn't nearly as bad as people made it seem. Initially it had very little support from the industry, Microsoft has learned the lesson to keep the industry close especially when you plan to do a radical overhaul. They're working very close with the right people both hardware and software based, to keep that from happening again.
As far as whatever problems are currently wrong with Windows 8, well that's what a Public Beta is for. To get as many willing participants to test out the software, use it in thousands of different ways and run into and report any problems, bugs, or issues they have. You can't knock Windows 8 before it's technically even in Beta.
I think Windows 8 may be even better there. For instance, you don't need GPU support for aero transparency now. I've got aero even though I'm running Windows 8 in virtualbox, and it won't accept vbox's windows 7 video driver (code 37).
anyway, win 8 looks quite lightweight but stronger than previous versions. i am skeptical about a few things:
how ms will juggle two versions (tablet and pc)
how important the metro ui would be. the start menu in win 8 didn't seem as effective as 7.
with ms trying to steer two very different os optimization-wise, arm and x86, (although they're the same outside) how much secure will they be. ms is notorious for os vulnurability.
will it let us play crysis?