Windows 8 Consumer Preview with Download

Windows 8 Consumer Preview Setup will verify to see if your PC can run Windows 8 Consumer Preview and select the right download. Setup also features a compatibility details and upgrade support. Built-in tools for creating an ISO or bootable flash drive are offered for some previous versions of Windows (excluding Windows XP and earlier). You can find system requirements and extra information in the FAQ and in the links on this page.

A reimagined Windows

With Windows 8, the whole experience of Windows has been reimagined. It’s designed to work on a wide range of devices , from touch-enabled tablets, to laptops, to desktops and all-in-ones. We’ve designed Windows 8 to give you instant access to your apps, your files, and the information you care about most so you can spend less time navigating and more time doing what you actually want to do. You can move between Windows 8 PCs easily and access your files and settings from virtually anywhere. We’ve made touch a first-class experience and navigating with a mouse and keyboard fast and fluid. And just like Windows 7, reliability and security features are built in. It’s the best of Windows 7, made even better.

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is just that: a preview of what’s to come. It represents a work in progress, and some things will change before the final release. This means you’ll encounter some hiccups and bugs. One of the great things about widely releasing a preview like this is that it gives us a chance to get a lot of feedback through telemetry, forums, and blog posts on where we can smooth out some of the rough edges.

Note before you download: Windows 8 Consumer Preview is prerelease software that may be significantly modified before it’s commercially released. Microsoft makes no warranties, articulate or implied, with respect to the information provided here. Some product features and functionality may require extra hardware or software. If you decide to go back to your previous operating system, you'll need to reinstall it from the recovery or installation media that came with your PC.

And finally, you’ll need the right hardware

Windows 8 Consumer Preview should run on the same hardware that powers Windows 7 today. In general, you can expect Windows 8 Consumer Preview to run on a PC with the following:

• 1 GHz or faster processor
• 1 GB RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
• 1024 x 768 minimum screen resolution

Download Windows 8Consumer Preview

Article Was Originally Posted @ WindowsTeamBlog

Google Salutes Gioachino Rossini's birthday with leaping frogs

Google pulled an additional one out of their magic doodle bag, with this one having the added advantage of commemorating two events together. The leap year frogs (who have featured in doodles on two prior occasions) make a recurrence, and we see them perform to the “Barber of Seville” composed by Gioachino Rossini. Because, of course, it is also the 220th anniversary of Rossini’s birth.

While the leap years and leap days are usually linked with frogs, the leaping ambhibians, the Google doodle on February 29 has a number of frogs, all four of them.

The doodle is motivated by Gioachino Antonio Rossini's famous 1816 comic opera The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia), one of the most performed operas. Of the four frogs in the scene, one is at the piano and the soprano is the only one leaping. The barber frog is Figaro and the frog getting a shear is Count Almaviva (Characters created by French playright Pierre Beaumarchais and The Barber of Seville is one of the three Figaro plays penned by him).

[Read it here]

Rossini’s other famous operas include William Tell (1829), Semiramide (1823) and Cinderella (1817). Rossini was born on 29 February 1792 in Pesaro, Italy, and died on Nov. 13, 1868.

Facebook uses Twitter Like Verifying Services

Social networks are a hub of fake profiles. If you go and search a name of any celebrity on a social networking site, I am sure you will find 100’s of profiles in the name of that particular celebrity. I had once given a try on Facebook & found numerous profiles in the name of the founder of the site, Mr. Mark Zuckerberg.

Looking into the matter of fake profile, way back in 2009, Twitter was the 1st social networking site, who launched a feature which verified the accounts. From then Twitter has got famous as it has a single & a verified profile of the celebrities. Last year, soon after the launch of Google+, even Google+ launched the feature to get the profiles verified.

So now, in the social network cold war, Facebook was lagging behind a bit because of this feature. But from today Facebook has said that it will get the profile verified which have got many subscribers. These verified profiles will be given an option to display their nick names in place of their birth names & would be given a lofty place in “People to subscribe to” suggestions. As per the naming policy of Facebook, you will be allowed to use your nick name as your profile name but your birth name will be appeared on your “About” section of your profile.

 

To get yourself verified, you need to get selected by Facebook. There is no way to get you voluntarily verified. If Facebook feels that your profiles needs to get verified then only you will have to verify your profile.

If Facebook would choose you, then you will get an option to submit a snap of any of your identity proof which is been verified by the government. After the verification, Facebook will delete the proof from its database.

So now, Facebook might surely try to get verified profiles of Stefani Germanotta aka Lady Gaga & Marshall Bruce Mathers II aka Eminem. If they are the real identities, then soon their profiles will show their real birth names or at least their birth names would be shown in the “About” section of their profiles.

Finally, I would say that this is a nice step taken by Facebook. May be this could impact Facebook a bit as all the updates from fake profiles will stop. Thus overall interaction on Facebook might reduce. But the 750 million users using Facebook will be surely benefited as they will start getting updates from all verified profiles.

Originally posted @ techtricksworld