Recently Microsoft announced Windows 8 Release Preview. If you are looking for an ISO image to download and try Windows 8 release preview, you can refer the following link to download Windows 8 Release Preview ISO image and how to install it.
Ok, before you continue to download Windows 8, here is a quick view on the minimum system requirements for Windows 8. In addition to the hardware requirement that you can see at the later part of this post, you will need a Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver.
Some features like snap the apps, a screen resolution of at least 1366 x 768 is required. Windows 8 is integrated with Windows App Store. In order to access the App Store and download Apps, you need internet connection.
Here is the minimum system requirements for Windows 8:
- 1 GHz or faster processor
- 1 GB or higher RAM for 32 bit Windows 8
- 2 GB or higher RAM for 64 bit Windows 8
- At least 16 Gb hard disk space for 32-bit Windows 8 and 20 Gb hard disk space for 64-bit Windows 8.
You must be already aware that Windows 8 is touch optimized. So, in order to use the touch features of Windows 8 Release Preview, you must have a touch based screen. If you don't want to take advantage of the touch features, you can use the traditional screen and it would work perfectly with the mouse and keyboard. You will just miss the new and cool touch features.
In addition to the officially published requirements, it appears that you must have a compatible CPU that support NX and you should have PAE enabled if you are using virtual environment.
Many people who do not have an incompatible CPU are getting the error Your PC's CPU isn't compatible with Windows 8. Which we will discuss in our next post.
