How are you going to run the Windows 8 Consumer Preview?

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

20 days from now the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is upon us. Most of us are going to run it. The question is: How are you going to run it? In a VM? Or are you hardcore enough to run it as primary OS? Vote away.

Personally I'm going to run Windows 8 Consumer Preview as secondary OS on my secondary machine - a 4-year-old ThinkPad T61.

[Shaun N.]

Been putting of a reinstall of Windows for a while now. I'll give this preview a go and if I don't like it re install windows 7

[MarkusDarkus]

I'll be running it in a VM on a separate monitor.

[Roger H. Veteran]

I'll be running it on my laptop in my sig (Thinkpad T410s) with SSD to see how it'll run when it finally comes out (yes i know it's still beta!) I always do full installs though.

I'll probably run it on a test/demo machine at work first though as that's where i'll be when it comes out anyways :D

[Dot Matrix]

I'll be running it as my primary OS on both my notebook computers. Still debating if I wanna go through the hassle of installing it to my main desktop, but I doubt I will.

[Co-ords]

NOT!

[Daedroth]

Virtual machine.

[KRazpopov]

I'm gonna take a spare 160GB hard drive I have lying around here and install it on that. If I like it, I'll wait till the RTM and istall it on my primary HD.

[Osiris]

Will give it an install on the trust Dell XT Tablet and see how all this Metro touch business really goes. Will likely give an install on desktop virtual machine. That will depend on impressions from the tablet though, might just wait till its out for a desktop install...not really seeing anything getting me excited atm, hopefully in 20 odd days though :)

Id say the real question is does anyone miss the old days where you use to have to try to get into the beta...or wait for the latest leak to hit the web etc..I guess it was a bit more limited back in the day when everyone didnt have highspeed net and now today MS just hands it out like candy :p memories

[marc2003]

i'm too apprehensive about metro to use it as my primary OS so i'm going for a dual boot.

[giantpotato]

Secondary OS on my secondary PC (Tablet PC). If it has most of the kinks worked out compared to the DP, I might switch it to the primary OS on that PC. In the DP my brightness controls, screen rotate button and fingerprint reader were not working. Also, Starcraft II was 'unplayable' because of the window-switch popup when the cursor is moved to the left of the screen. I hope they have an option to disable that for non-metro fullscreen apps.

[Vykranth]

I have just Triple-R'ed my workstation at work and I am happy with the configuration. I am going to be prudent and use a VM.

[winlonghorn]

20 days from now the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is upon us. Most of us are going to run it. The question is: How are you going to run it? In a VM? Or are you hardcore enough to run it as primary OS? Vote away.

Personally I'm going to run Windows 8 Consumer Preview as secondary OS on my secondary machine - a 4-year-old ThinkPad T61.

As a primary OS on my primary machine if it is as stable as Windows 7 was at this point in development.

[freak180]

I'm going to install in on top of the 3 windows 7 machines I have in my computer lab as well as install it as primary on my laptop.

[Haggis Veteran]

On VM running the developer preview right now, not sure what i think of it yet

[pack34]

I'm planning on using it as my primary OS on my tabletPC. Once I'm sure there aren't odd compatability issues with some programs I use for classes I'll load it on my desktop.

[Max Norris]

Got a tablet that I'll be using it on. Desktop wise, it'll be put on a spare machine. I've never put faith in any pre-prelease OS as a primary operating system. Fun to experiment with, but definitely not going to rely on it.

[efjay]

I bought an Acer W500 just for the beta 2 weeks ago. Its going on that and will be there till the final is released.

[Sadelwo]

Last month one of my hard drives on the main machine died so I installed the Developer Preview on a spare drive till the replacement arrived. I've grown accustomed to it and everything runs butter smooth (Mail, Steam & Origin games, skype) so I will run the Consumer Preview on it. It comes out the same day as Microsoft Flight so a good time to test how well they work together :D . (I did the same thing for Vista and FSX so why not.)

[pack34]

I bought an Acer W500 just for the beta 2 weeks ago. Its going on that and will be there till the final is released.

How is it? I was debating on picking one of these up for my wife for her classes. Does it support pen input?

[Stoffel]

I run the DP as my main OS and I'm pretty happy about it, hopefully the CP will fix most of the little quirks

[Hum]

I'm going to run away from it.

[ybrett23]

primary OS on one one my laptops

[spaceelf]

Secondary OS installed on my esata drive. Might transfer it to my main and only OS if I like it enough.

[efjay]

How is it? I was debating on picking one of these up for my wife for her classes. Does it support pen input?

I switched from a Fujitsu TH700 which had a Core i3 CPU, Intel graphics, 8GB's of RAM and while the Acer is slower I find it suits my needs very well. I am able to surf, do email, watch Netflix, Amazon Instant videos, stream from my home server all without any significant decrease in usability even with max CPU set at 30% to conserve battery. For a test I opened the backup for my old laptop on my home server over wifi and it worked fine. Only thing you will need to watch is the battery life, gets around 5 hours of constant use with tweaked power saving options.

I dont use a pen with it but it will support a capacitive stylus but has no digitizer so wont disable the touchscreen when using it. For casual use it will work well, I think. With Windows 8 I think it will be even better and numerous videos on youtube seem to confirm that.