We’ve had the “Developer Preview” of Windows 8 and now that the beta is due in the next month we could find it being called the “Consumer Preview”, at least according to Janelle Poole, Microsoft’s director of public relations who in a statement at CES was found to have said…
We haven’t talked about the release date and we generally don’t. We are talking milestone to milestone, so for us right now, we’re talking about the next milestone being the Consumer Preview happening in late February.”
ZD Net blogger Mary Jo Foley reported the phrase yesterday for the first time and is wondering if this will indeed be the official title for the beta with perhaps the release candidate being the “Enterprise Preview”. In her blog post she said…
Such a name also could help Microsoft’s PC partners who need a way to make new tablets and PCs that they’re bringing to market from now until the time that Windows 8 is shipping seem more up-to-date and palatable. (â€This runs the Windows 8 Consumer Preview — so you know it’ll be able to run the final Windows 8 with no problem.â€)
Let’s have a look at what this might mean though if it happens. So far Microsoft have been promising somewhere near 300 features for IT Pros that were not ready in time for the Developer Preview release last September. We still don’t know what most of these features are but some have leaked including new multi-monitor support features and the ability to pool the storage on your computer in a RAID-like system.
IT Pros are still very concerned about Windows 8 however, I’m giving a talk this Thursday to a large group of them in Manchester which is one of the UKs biggest technology hubs, and this isn’t the first such talk I’ve been asked to give. What will they take from the name “Consumer Preview”?
It’s mostly likely I think that Microsoft are desperate for Windows 8 to be popular with consumers and that they want to reassure the general public that while they might be very late to the tablet game, by some three years or more, that they’re ready now and Windows 8 tablets are what they should be buying later in the year.
It’s true that Microsoft are pinning a great deal on this release and if it fails to gain serious traction in the consumer space, IT Pros will probably feel as though they were left behind for a pipe-dream. The fact that Microsoft will want to focus very hard on consumers then will not come as a surprise to anybody, especially with major businesses only now migrating to Windows 7.
There is also the fact, as Mary Jo points out that “the current Windows organization doesn’t show code publicly at all until it’s pretty much set in stone and going to be tweaked very minimally.” We can be pretty sure that the beta, or Consumer Preview will be very usable day to day in the same way that the Windows 7 beta was. Microsoft already have a live Windows Update feature working with the Developer Preview (though it won’t update to the beta), but it’s possible that the beta might just update to the release candidate if it’s close enough to completion.
If enough millions of people then update their computers to the Windows 8 beta, then in theory all Microsoft need to do at the end of the process is to sell them a new product key online and people can continue using Windows 8 without having to reinstall. We still know nothing about this though and it might not happen this way.
It is clear though that Microsoft at this point are focusing much more on consumers than in IT Pros. This doesn’t mean they don’t care about, or aren’t going to cater for IT Pros. It just means that the company has decided to put all of its marketing might behind the consumer angle in the same way they have in the last year with Windows Phone.
So next month we’ll see what happens with the beta and what it is called, as soon as we know we’ll report back to you here at Windows 8 News.
