A prerelease development milestone of Windows 8 belonging to the Beta stage is already being tested by some early adopters, seem suggest some recently leaked screenshots.
One of the images included with this article, courtesy of
MDL, has been snapped during the boot process, when the tester needed to select which operating system to launch, Windows 8 Beta, or Windows Server 8 Standard Beta.
The second screenshot reveals that Windows Media Center will be included into Windows 8 Beta.
Just a reminder, Windows Media Center is one of the Windows components that was not packed into the Windows Developer Preview Microsoft released at BUILD. The software giant did this deliberately, but stressed that the feature would make a comeback in a latest pre-release Build.
The fact that some testers are already running Windows 8 pre-release Builds belonging to the Beta branch should not be a real surprise.
After all, the Redmond company was already working on the Windows 8 Beta when it released Windows 8 Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3) in mid-September at BUILD.
It’s only to be expected of Microsoft to advance the development of Windows 8, and it has already a month and a half since Windows 8 Developer Preview downloads went live.
Personally, I don’t think that the latest leaked screenshots are of the fully-fledged Windows 8 Beta. I believe that Microsoft still has a bit of work ahead of actually signing-off the Beta development milestone for the next version of Windows.
One thing is clear however, as the company promised, Windows 8 Beta will sport a number of new features compared to the Windows Developer Preview release, including Windows Media Center.
An official release date for Windows 8 Beta has yet to be announced, although speculation indicates that testers might receive the bits in early January 2012.
Windows 8 Developer Preview Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3) is available for download here.
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