Sure, most of the fanfare about Windows 8 has centered on its use in tablets, but the operating system is also designed for laptops and desktops. If you have an old PC knocking around, why not give the latest from Microsoft a look. After all, it's free—for now. And Windows 8 can be installed only any PC capable of running Windows 7. That means any PC with at least a 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of hard disk space (2GB RAM and 20GB storage for the 64-bit version). You'll also need DirectX 9-capable graphics hardware.
There are two main ways to install Windows 8 on an existing machine: by using the upgrade installer directly on the test PC or by creating a disc or USB key with the OS installer ISO image. If you install it directly as an upgrade, you'll get the benefit of a system check to see if and how well your computer will be able to run the new operating system.
Remember, though, Windows 8 is still pre-release software, so we strongly advise you not to use it as your main or work computer's operating system. Such an early version brings the potential for crashes, especially when you consider the vast number of hardware combinations possible with a Windows PC.
A couple of options let you test the Windows 8 waters without losing the current OS on the test machine: You can either install it in a separate partition or in a virtual machine. The Windows 8 installer even includes multi-boot setup that will create a separate partition for you. This way, whenever you start up your machine, you can choose which OS version you want to run. For virtual machine installation, see How to run Windows 8 in VirtualBox.
In general, the installation process for Windows 8 is more streamlined and quicker than that for Windows 7, though it does share some common procedures. It took from 17 to 25 minutes to install on various PC hardware in my testing.
1. The first thing to do, after choosing your victim machine, is to head to preview.windows.com or tohttp://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso to get images you can burn to disc. If you're installing on a new partition or virtual drive, Microsoft recommends the first installer link rather than the ISO image for burning to disk or bootable USB. This is because the installer can burn the disc or create a bootable USB for you, and the downloader is faster (using compression) and more reliable. My contact for Microsoft explains it as follows:
"Microsoft actually invented a new compression algorithm optimized for Windows images which makes the transfer faster, plus unlike an .iso download, they are doing dynamic error correction in the download to deal with dropped packets or bit-flips. This means that at the end of the installer download you will always have a bit-perfect copy, whereas it's possible you may have to download an .iso more than once if you're unlucky."
The Setup is in general a more hand-held process, compared with burning an ISO image and installing with that.
Running the Upgrade Assistant
2. Before starting this process, make sure all your peripherals are connected and powered up so that Windows Setup can download the correct drivers for them.
2. Before starting this process, make sure all your peripherals are connected and powered up so that Windows Setup can download the correct drivers for them.
3. When you first click on the bright blue Download Windows 8 Release Preview button, you'll actually be downloading the Upgrade Assistant, which checks whether your hardware is compatible. You still have a choice between 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. At this point, I'm surprised the Microsoft hasn't fully moved to 64-bit, as Mac OS X has. Virtually all new machines are shipped with a 64-bit OS, and PC processors have nearly all been 64-bit-capable since AMD introduced x86-64 in 2003.
4. The Upgrade Assistant will run through its system checks, and then create a report of what hardware works and what doesn't. If you're installing on a touchscreen PC, you may see a warning stating that your touch screen is not "Designed for Windows 8" and indeed, not every touch gesture may work. But on our 2-year-old HP TouchSmart, even though we got this message, the Windows 8 gestures worked surprisingly well. One of my reports on another machine said that I'd need to install an app to play DVDs, and that my hardware wasn't compatible with the faster Secure Boot feature of Windows 8. I could live with those stipulations.
5. After this, the Upgrade Assistant shows the product key, which you'll need later. You can cut and paste this to an email for retrieval.
6. Then the assistant will download the actual Windows 8 installer that suits your machine.
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