Grab the Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Microsoft has made the Windows 8 Consumer Preview available for download.

Image credit: Microsoft

Note: For those of you out there who are curious about such things, this is build 8250.

Here's the link if you want to install Windows 8 Consumer Preview onto a live machine. If you run this on your system it will start the Windows 8 install process!

Here's the link if you want to download a specific .ISO file (32-bit or 64-bit, numerous languages to choose from - English, simplified Chinese, French, German and Japanese).

Here are direct links to the .ISO files:

• 64-bit (x64) Download (3.3 GB) Sha 1 hash — 1288519C5035BCAC83CBFA23A33038CCF5522749
• 32-bit (x86) Download (2.5 GB) Sha1 hash — E91ED665B01A46F4344C36D9D88C8BF78E9A1B39
• Also available is the Windows Server 8 beta - Download that from here.

A quick reminder of the 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 or higher
• To use touch, you need a tablet or monitor that supports multitouch
• To access 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

More details about the Windows 8 Consumer Preview here.