A Developer Preview of Windows 8 was put up for download by Microsoft a couple of weeks ago after the company demoed the OS on a variety of devices, including a Samsung tablet at their BUILD 2011 conference. Since then, we’ve published plenty of guides to aid you in your testing of the upcoming OS and today we’ll talk about how you can actually make your own Developer Preview tablet.
The process isn’t as complicated as one might think, as it simply involves downloading the ISO from Microsoft, mounting it and clicking on this one file to begin installation.
There are a few obvious pre-requisites for the process. You must, well, have a tablet. This tablet, according to folks over on ExtremeTech, must have Windows 7 installed on it and must meet the minimum requirements (at least 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM).
Tablets such as the Acer Iconia W500 and ASUS Eee PC T101MT are good options for this and, if you have the budget, you can always go with a laptop/tablet convertible like the HP Pavilion tm2.
Step 1: Ensure that you read the above paragraph about the things you need before you continue.
Step 2: Download Windows 8 Developer Preview ISO on to your 32/64-bit tablet PC. If you’re unsure about which ISO to download, it is safe to go with 32-bit.
Step 3: Use an ISO mounting tool like Virtual Clone Drive to, well, mount the ISO onto your tablet PC. To do this, right click on the ISO you downloaded in Step 1 and mount it from there.
Step 4: Open up Windows Explorer and, from My Computer, open up the mounted ISO file and click on setup.exe to install.
Step 5: Follow on-screen instructions.
If you followed the pre-requisites and the steps carefully, you should now have your own home made Windows 8 Developer Preview tablet.
While you won’t able to magically enable your tablet to make calls, this is still worth the effort. Windows 8’s Metro UI doesn’t really work all that well with a mouse and keyboard but has been shown to work exceptionally well with touchscreens which you should definitely check out if you can.
You may also be interested in:
- How To Dual Boot Windows 8 With Windows 7
- How To Make Windows 8 Bootable USB Flash Drive The Easy Way
- Install Windows 8 Developer Preview In VirtualBox Virtual Machine On Mac & Windows 7 [How-To Tutorial]
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