Microsoft has finally pushed out the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, as promised, from a Windows 8 event at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Spain.
Not only is this version improved from the Developer Preview, with 100 000 changes, but it also includes plenty of Metro applications not seen in the previous Preview, such as Mail, Music, Calendar, Messaging, Video and a Marketplace to get more apps.
And anyone can download it right now for free! You can get a 32-bit or 64-bit ISO file or download an update installer executable if you want to replace Windows 7 with the Consumer Preview. You can get the Consumer Preview in English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese and if your computer can run Windows 7, it’ll run Windows 8.
You can click right here to download the preview from Microsoft’s website in ISO, or just click here for the installer file. The download is a little slow, obviously because of the thousands of other people looking to get in on the action, so you might want to leave your computer on for a few hours. I’m only getting 294 kB/s on a connection which usually reaches 1000 kB/s on overseas downloads, so even faster connections will still get a slow download speed.
Good luck with the download and install, and you can check back here and let us know how it’s going whenever you want. And don’t forget to keep looking at techgeek.com.au for the latest Windows 8 news and also listen to TECHGEEK Weekly, our podcast, this Sunday to hear our opinions on the Consumer Preview.