So, the beta was released today! Anyone looking forward to trying it out?

I don't know. I'd need a lot of convincing.
It's just so drastically different to the Windows I (and many others) are used to.
Even if the changes are for the better (I mean that theoretically), it would still take time getting used to.

Can I get a voice of experience in here? Should I get Win8?

You'll still be able to use your normal OS as long as you know how to dual boot.
No harm in it brotha.

I don't know how to dual boot, and as you know, my normal OS has a virus in it somewhere.

As long as it can run the same games / applications as 7 I'd be fine but I don't know that it does.

For the virus I'd go with a Malware Bytes Antimalware full scan.
But yeah, you run the disk for OS installation, go to custom, and add to partition or HDD of your choosing.
And then you can use that OS whenever you want by running the boot menu when you turn on your PC.
(do this by holding down the F8 key like your life depended on it.

I'm looking forward to trying out Windows 8, but it doesn't seem to be of any use to anyone currently using a standard Windows 7 system. Unless you can shell out the cash for a touch screen monitor/system, there really doesn't seem to be much gain. The current OS seems to work very well; I see the Metro system to be unnecessary. As a PC gamer, I wouldn't like to see the mouse and keyboard disappear either. I find the mouse and keyboard to be the ultimate "controller".

I'd like it without the whole metro shebang please. The new taskmanager looks nice and handy. So does the file copying stuff. More useful info presented in a nice, oversightful manner is good. I just really don't care for the smart-phone like stuff thrown into it. In other words, I think I'll stick to W7 (when I next install an OS anyways).

The Metro thingie looks interesting, and I don't know how started the whole rumor that you need a touchpanel display to use it, it's perfectly serviceable with M+K. I use a little shortcut dock thing already, Metro seems like a fancier version of that, so I think I'm ok with it. Just need to actually try it out.

New Task Manager? People need to use Process Explorer more often. Hell, check out the other SysInternals applications whilst you're there, there's some very useful utilities available.

Although I must admit the new task manager looks a little slicker and easier to get important info from at a glance than Process Explorer.

Desktop looks nice, new fancy copying dialog and superawesome task manager, shotcuts like Win+R, Alt+F4, Alt+TAB work fine. But everyhing Metro looks ugly and stupid like hell. I really like my winphone with Metro on it, but gosh the tablet thingy is pure evil. Though it seems that it will multitask better than any present tablet, that snapping feature looks nice, but I could not try it myself due to low screen resolution on a laptop.

I'm actually going to install this now, dual-boot ofc so I can easily get rid of it when I want to.
I'm pretty worried about including a killswitch, though.

Tried it for a day, wasn't really a fan of the Metro stuff

Could be worse, but could be better as well

I'll be sticking with Win 7 for a while yet, maybe until Windows 9

I thought it was common knowledge already that you should just skip every other windows version. :S

It looks ♥♥♥♥. I appreciate some of the ideas but it really just looks like they've gone "hmm let's bridge together our tablet/phone OS with our desktop OS", the whole point of desktops is multitasking, but this focusses on fullscreen "apps".

They should have just incorporated some of the metro UI into the desktop space like this: http://filesmelt.com/dl/desktop202.png which basically is just a desktop with resizeable icons, but some of the other features could be added as well.

Every other time they say "hey let's try making it simpler and more accessible!" and then for the next OS "let's just make a good OS mkay?".