As most of you know by now, Microsoft offered approximately 5,000 free Samsung Windows 8 Developer Preview devices to just as many developers attending BUILD, its Windows 8-centric event.
Actually, both Microsoft and Samsung are calling this device a PC and not a slate. Having played with it for the last 24 hours now, I tend to agree with the two companies.
It’s enough to look at the hardware specifications of the Samsung Windows 8 Developer Preview device and you’ll also have to agree that this is a fully-fledged PC, a next-generation PC, that is.
Under the hood, the Samsung Windows 8 Developer Preview form factor packs a 2nd generation Intel Core i5 processor at 1.6 GHz, 4GB DDR3, and a 64GB SSD. With an 11.6 inch diagonal, the device sports a beautiful Samsung Super PLS display with a resolution of 1366x768. For those asking, the Windows Experience Index score is 4.3.
Windows 8 boots quite fast on it, since in addition to the SSD, the next-generation OS from the Redmond company also gets to use UEFI BIOS to accelerate startup speed. There are a range of additional sensors included, as well as technologies such as: USB, micro SD, HDMI, and Pen.
The package that Microsoft offered to BUILD devs also includes a dock and a keyboard, so the Samsung Windows 8 Developer Preview ends up feeling like a more traditional machine when it’s docked.
The device comes preinstalled with Windows 8 as well as a range of developer tools, including Visual Studio 2011 and Expression Blend 5, both pre-release builds offered as part of the Windows 8 SDK.
It’s important to underline that the Samsung Windows 8 Developer Preview PC is offered to devs to build Windows 8 tailored applications.
This is not a commercial product but a prototype, and it’s not available for sale. It’s also not what you could call the first Windows 8 PC.
What consumers need to understand is that a very similar device from Samsung will go on sale, pre-installed with Windows 7.
The commercial variant of the Samsung Windows 8 Developer Preview PC, the one featuring Windows 7, will be lacking some of the hardware components offered in the prototype.
I’ve also asked Microsoft guys whether users that buy the Windows 7 version of this Samsung device will be able to upgrade to Windows 8 when it comes out, and they hesitated to say yes. In fact, they stressed that they cannot guarantee such an upgrade scenario would be successful because of the hardware differences.
Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3) is available for download here.
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