Windows 8 Milestones & Developer Previews

Public Windows 8 Milestones

In the course of the Worldwide Partner Conference (July 8-12, 2012) Microsoft presented this schedule. It seems to include a few odd milestones, but actually all of them were presented to the public in the past. Below is a table which lists each milestone plus corresponding build number and the place of presentation.

Name Shown at Date Build
Windows 8 Technical Preview Consumer Electronics Show January 6-9, 2011 6.2.7867.0 (winmain_win8m1.101020-1800)
Windows 8 Partner Preview Computex Taipei May 31-June 4, 2011 6.2.7985.0 (fbl_core1_kernel_cptx.110503-1501)
Windows 8 Developer Preview BUILD September 13-16, 2011 6.2.8102.101 (winmain_win8m3.110830-1739)
Windows 8 Store Preview Developer event, San Francisco December 6, 2011
Windows 8 ARM Update Building Windows 8 blog February 9, 2012 6.2.8194.0 (winmain.120127-1917)
Windows 8 Consumer Preview Consumer preview event, Barcelona February 29, 2012 6.2.8250.0 (winmain win8beta.120217-1520)
Windows 8 Release Preview Microsoft News Center May 31, 2012 6.2.8400.0 (winmain win8rc.120518-1423)

Windows 8 Developer Previews

According to Paul Thurrott, Microsoft released 8 Developer Preview versions to its testers since September 2011.

Microsoft released 8 developer preview versions of Windows 8 since last year. Three of these are the known public releases [Developer Preview, Consumer Preview, Release Preview], and five were secret releases given only to “a limited developer audience.”

All of these Windows 8 releases — public and secret — included new APIs and system capabilities, updated developer tools, better performance and reliability, and responses to developer feedback.

The first Windows 8 developer preview was released at BUILD in September 2011.

Developer Preview 4 and 5 were released in February 2012. (The Consumer Preview was DP5.)

Developer Preview 6 was released in April. Developer Preview 7 was released in May. (The Release Preview was DP7.)

(Microsoft doesn’t mention that Developer Preview 8 was just released, and dated from last Friday [June 29, 2012], or that the post-milestone DP releases actually have names like Windows 8 Release Preview Update.)

[…]

Windows 8 Developer Preview 1 (Windows 8 Developer Preview) September 13, 2011
Windows 8 Developer Preview 2 ?
Windows 8 Developer Preview 3 ?
Windows 8 Developer Preview 4 February 2012
Windows 8 Developer Preview 5 (Consumer Preview) February 29, 2012
Windows 8 Developer Preview 6 April 2012
Windows 8 Developer Preview 7 (Windows 8 Release Preview) May 31, 2012
Windows 8 Developer Preview 8 June 29, 2012

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