As far as download numbers are concerned, the Consumer Preview of Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 has gone down pretty well - building on the popularity of the early Alpha release with over a million downloads in its 24 hours.
Personally speaking, I am not a big Facebook fan, but there are millions upon millions of people all over the globe who can't go a day without logging into the world’s largest social network and checking out what kind of sandwich their old school friend had for lunch, or poking their best friend in an act of online bullying. Although already wildly popular, the whole Facebook experience may be a distinctly better one for a large portion of users if they didn't need to be constantly signed into the web service with a browser running all the time.
It was only yesterday morning that the Microsoft team held an event at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and announced that the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, essentially a prerelease version of Windows 8, would be made available immediately for public download. Windows 8 was described by Microsoft was "Windows reimagined", which sounds awfully familiar to the "Inspired by iPad, reimagined for Mac" tagline that Apple are muttering with their Mountain Lion OS.
Whether you're eager to get the freshly released Windows 8 Consumer Preview installed but don't have DVDs at hand, or if you'd prefer to not use such an outdated method of installation, we'd recommend that you install by creating a bootable USB stick with the ISO. When the Windows 8 Developer Preview was released, we wrote an extensive guide covering just how to do this by using the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. So, to go about preparing the bootable USB step, follow the steps in the guide with the Consumer Preview ISO of your choice.
Right on the heels of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview launch, Microsoft has also released the bits of Windows Server 8 on MSDN and TechNet. Available in both 64-bit ISO and VHD flavors, it is only available in all languages - Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, and Japanese - through the former; the VHD is available in English only.
All eyes have been firmly fixed on the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona over the last few days as consumers watch eagerly to see what technology-related goodness is set to hit the shelves in the coming weeks and months. So far we have seen Symbian smartphones with whopping 41-megapixel cameras, a tablet device which comes equipped with a stylus, and a Samsung Beam smartphone which has the ability to project images, videos and presentations onto any surface. Exciting stuff.
As I noted in my editorial about what Microsoft should do next with SkyDrive, something that the Windows Live set of services are in dire need of is a redesign. I never was a fan of the current design that they have adopted: With design, it's often the details that make a world of difference - padding, margins, text - and all of these things are off, resulting in a set of products that lack finesse. So, what can Microsoft do to solve this problem?
The mobile smartphone and tablet industry seems to have a very prominent divide, with a lot of consumers having their favorite operating system and choosing to stick to hardware which is powered by their chosen OS. Obviously fans of Apple's iOS use the iPhone and iPad devices, whereas Android lovers have a wide range of hardware to choose from due to the fact that the OS is available to multiple manufacturers.
Remember those leaked SkyDrive features I touched on in yesterday's editorial? Well, much of them remain in rumor territory. However, Microsoft has confirmed two things: One, a major SkyDrive update is in the pipeline, and two, the rumor that we're getting a SkyDrive desktop client is spot-on. In a Building Windows 8 post written by two SkyDrive program managers, Microsoft detailed the SkyDrive Metro app, the service's tight integration with Windows 8, SkyDrive on the desktop, and fetching files through SkyDrive.com.
VLC is, without a shadow of doubt, one of the most popular media players available. Combining a sleek, simplistic interface with the ability to play seemingly any audio or video file, its underbelly of rich features have seen the application become an essential utility to the masses.
