hi with the windows 8 beta not long away just wondering what users are going to use to run Windows 8 as am going to format my bootable VHD and use that as its got developer preview on it atm

I'm testing new Windows 8 builds on VHD, because it's always nice to run on a real machine, also they are very resource intensive.

Yes i agree with you i like to see how it works and feels on my laptop hardware i got an acer aspire 5740 running windows 7 professional x64

I will test it using a VHD on my laptop and on a spare partition on my Desktop. Of coarse it will take me upwards of a month to get...sigh.

I'm going to install it over my WDP partition, which I'm running right now as primary OS

I would test them in a VHD, but I can't. Computer fried.

Main OS.

I will upgrade from wdp in virtualbox

It'll go on the spare 40 gig laptop drive I have, currently has Snow Leopard on it but I have 4 gigs free, so need to find a larger SL drive.

thats a interesting suggestion do you think it be stable enough for day to day stuff i was going to use W7 as my main OS and test W8 Beta on a VHD

Well, I don't think 8102 is so stable to use now as a main OS (I tried once), but the upcoming 8220 or the Consumer Preview (or whatever it's called) will probably be better, and then you can try.

am waiting for my brother to give me back my pc as he building another one for himself can't remember my specs for that as its a custom built but proberly will test it on it if its back at mine by than but not sure what windows 7 edition going on which i got W7 Home Edition and W7 Professional both x64 and genuine thinking about it i might put professional on my pc for beta testing as it be more powerful than my laptop

I have 2 test rigs, I'll install it on one or both of them = real hardware install.

I think I'll choose to dual-boot with my current Windows 7 installation.It's a little faster for me on a physical partition than in a VHD.

what specs are your test rigs

and i like it in a vhd no need to mess with installs partitions or mbr just one simple file

I'm going to test the beta in a virtual machine.

Same as the WDP, my current laptop on a dual-boot.

On this:

I have a Dell E5400 running WDP right now, I'll probably slap it on that when it drops.

I've been using the Dev Prev as my main OS since the day it released haven't had a single problem.

I also used 7 as my main OS starting with its Dev Prev 6801, didn't have any problems there.

I also started Vista as my main OS with Beta 2 5384 no problems there either.

I've never had any problems with Betas or Dev Previews as my main OS and I'll continue to do it this way until I run across some problem that makes it not work, but generally the publicly released builds are stable enough to use. Windows 9 will be my primary OS when its dev preview comes out too all the way until WinTen dev prev.

The only reason I never used the WDP as my main OS is I could never use stand-by or hibernate properly. Stand-by would work, but resuming wouldn't do nothing. The fans would come on, but it seemed there was no hard drive activity at all. Hibernate just failed to resume from boot.

Hopefully this is fixed, I hate having to shut-down when I just want to go away for a bit and not waste power.

Good luck with that… The screens are quite low-res… even for the time…


I'll be trying it on my Mac.

I'll be testing it on an external laptop drive I've got hooked up to my computer through an eSATA dock.

Ya, I've used a VHD too, works good also.

Test Rig 1 (11/2008)
P5QC MB
Q6600 core 2 Quad
4 GB Micron DDR3
GeForce 6800 Ultra/ 256 MB
500 GB WD hard drive
500 GB WD hard drive
160 GB WD hard drive, Storage

Intel Test Rig 2 (3/29/2008)
Biostar GF7050-M7 mATX , NVidia GeForce 7050 Chipset ,
Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.2 Ghz , 65nm
2 GB DDR2 -667
GeForce 9600 GT PCIe/ 512 MB GDDR3
Onboard Sound
WD 320 SATA2 HDD, divided into 4 Partitions.
WD 500 SATA2 HDD, Storage

I prefer to test it in VMware at first. And if possible, I may test on real PC.

Mainly I will get used to new UI and see what programs are there and what third party apps can be used, and that's what I usually do in VMware. Then I have a netbook and maybe I will write the ISO into my USB-flash and install on that netbook (I hope the drivers can be found easily. This netbook has Windows 7 preinstalled.)