This is the Windows 8 Beta that will be released this month

Feb 6, 2012 08:57 GMT  ·  By

The beta flavor of Windows 8, expected to be released to the public as Consumer Preview, will emerge before the end of this month.

Thus, Microsoft has already started to make the necessary preparations to raise awareness on its platform, and came up with a new Bing video background for that.

The said special Bing background shows a HTML video of a beta fish that swims across the screen. For those out of the loop, we should note that the fish has become a symbol of preview/beta flavors of Windows.

Such a fish was present on the default wallpaper in the Windows 7 Beta version, and might reappear in Windows 8 Consumer Preview as well.

As the guys over at Liveside note, the Windows 8 Consumer Preview name appears two times on the page, which clearly shows that the official release should be near.

Moreover, the page appears to confirm the fact that Microsoft chose the Consumer Preview name for Windows 8 Beta (which falls in line with the Developer Preview name it chose for the first public version of the OS).

Previously, Microsoft promised the beta flavor of Windows 8 for late February. While that might have not changed, there is the possibility that the company will start touting the upcoming OS flavor before that.

In addition to showing to the world the said fish, the new Bing video background page features four hotspots with links to pages that don’t work as of yet. There are also three sections at the bottom of the page, with links that don’t work either.

The said hotspots and sections present on that Bing page are:

Meet your new browser - See what’s new and improved with Internet Explorer Connect to the Cloud - Take your apps files and settings wherever you go Frequently asked questions - Get answers to your questions about the Windows 8 Consumer Preview Building Windows 8 Blog - Get an inside look from the Windows engineering team See what’s new - Windows 8 Consumer Preview Windows Store - Discover great apps Windows Dev Center - All the tools you need to start coding your own apps When released, Windows 8 Consumer Preview will offer us the possibility to have a look at the Windows Store (thus the second section on the Bing webpage), as well as to get a better glimpse of Internet Explorer 10 (which was made available for download in an early flavor several months ago).

Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 M3 is available for download from Softpedia today.

Download Internet Explorer 10.

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Windows 8 Consumer Preview video background on Bing
Windows 8 Consumer Preview video background on Bing
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