So, I got a communication from a source (in Microsoft) who has been right before on this site.
He/She had some very interesting gossip regarding the deployment of the Windows 8 Beta.
This is the gist of what he/she had to say:
Microsoft have started thinking about the process of distributing the Beta.
The 5000 developer approach (obviously) won’t work. You need massive testing for an effective Beta.
Several options are being discussed regarding how to get the public to test the Metro Tablet interface.
The least popular option is (obviously) a regular beta release and consumers would have to figure out how to test the Tablet piece themselves.
The most popular option at this point is selling (at a steep discount) Windows 8 tablets with Beta software and (get this) allowing them to be (optionally) upgradeable upon final launch.
Windows 8 would be able to be upgraded via internet updates (that seems hard to believe)
The price for the hardware would be approx $250 to $300
Unclear what the price of the software would be when it was RTM’ed (obviously).
There are 4 partners that are being considered and – get this – Samsung was not a shoe-in.
