Windows 8 Secrets: Windows Setup

With tech enthusiast web sites from around the world starting to leak Windows 8 Release Preview information, your intrepid “Windows 8 Secrets” co-authors offer a bit of color commentary about what you’re seeing and how these features will really work. In this new co-post analyzing these leaks, we look briefly at the some new Setup shots from the Windows 8 Release Preview.

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With the Windows 8 Release Preview, Microsoft will no doubt offer the same basic Windows Setup options it provided with the Consumer Preview—electronic software delivery, plus ISO downloads with the option to burn to disc or copy to bootable USB device—but the question remains: How has Windows Setup changed since the Consumer Preview?

Not much, if the leaked screenshots from WinUnleaked.tk are to be believed. And they’ve provided a few.

In the first of the most recent leaks, a WinUnleaked.tk forum member shows off what will one day be a very crucial point of Setup: Where you choose between an Upgrade (including migration) of the current OS and a custom (or “clean”) install. We wonder whether Microsoft will support upgrades from the Consumer Preview to the Release Preview?

Another leaked shot shows the Release Preview build number, 8400, as well as the date that the build was created: May 18, 2012, over ten days ago. Surely the Release Preview is imminent.

Of course, the single biggest change to Windows Setup is occurs in the Out Of Box Experience (OOBE), when the user gets to choose between the available color schemes: There are now 25 possible color schemes in the Release Preview, up from just 6 in the Consumer Preview.

We should have more to say about Windows Setup and other changes in the Release Preview when this next milestone hits the public in the days ahead.

Have you seen any other Windows 8 leaks you’d like to know more about? Drop us a line and let us know!

–Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera