WINDOWS 8 RP REVIEW:-
What has changed from Win 8 CP to Win 8 RP:
Gone is the fish image in the center with blue bakground booting screen(which I never liked), now you see full black background screen wit "Windows" word in white letters in the middle of the screen during booting. The new booting screen is very nice & simple.
In Win 8 CP, I couldn't use metro apps except 'reader' unless I sign in with my Microsoft Account(e-mail). But in Win 8 RP, you can use metro apps(which doesn't require Internet connection) like music, videos, etc., without any loging in required, which is fantastic.
Overall the UI in Win 8 RP feels so refined(may be it just me feeling that).
The basic Metro aps does the work they supposed to in a simple & effective way:
Mail app: You can set it up to use with one of your Microsoft E-mail account. To add other account just hover your mouse to the bottom-right corner or top-right corner for charms bar, then on charms bar Settings --> Accounts--> Add Account, to remove a account or changes the settings of the account Settings(charms bar) --> Accounts --> click on the account you want to remove or change the settings for then you are given a host of options like the frequency of account syncing etc,. and you can remove the account from there itself.
People app: You can set it up with Microsoft & you can sync contacts from other accounts like: Facebook, Google, Linkedin, Twitter etc, by adding those accounts to the app, for adding an account hover your mouse to the bottom-right corner or top-right corner for charms bar, then on charms bar Settings --> Accounts--> Add Account
Message app: You can sign in with your MSN & you can also add your facebook account.
Photos app: You can set it up to sync your flickr, facebook, skydrive, other deivces(cameras) photos and ofcourse you can local library too.
Video app: You can add a local library or you can simply navigate to the desired video file within the video app.
Music app: You can add a local library or you can simply navigate to the desired audio file within the music app.
News, Sports, Finance apps do work & display the local content if you allow them to use your location(you will be asked to do so at first setup during the installation process), you can turn off the option which allows apps to use your location in PC settings --> Privacy.
5. Among all Weather app is wonderful, the main screen displays the Weather forecast for next 5-6 days, scroll horizontally you will get hourly weather forecast of the present day, scroll further you will get a graph with Historical stats of the weather of your city of whole year, not only that they divided the Historical weather stats into three categories namely Temperature, Rainfall & Sunshine, if you select Temperature category(below the graph) the stats of the temperature of complete year will be displayed in the graph & further if you select a month in the graph the corresponding stats of the selected month will be displayed adjacent(right side) to the graph. All in all this is the best weather app I've seen so far. See the below pictures to know what I'm saying.
Tips:
1) By default the Windows 8 RP doesn't contain Media Center Enabled, to enable the Media Center on your system, you need to upgrade or add new features by using the following the following key: MBFBV-W3DP2-2MVKN-PJCQD-KKTF7, Go to My computer Properties, Click "View Details in windows Activaton" under windows activation details", then click "Add Features" and follow the onscreen options & use the given key when asked.
2) Every Metro App has it's own settings, access these settings by hovering your mouse at bottom-right or top-right corner to get the charms bar & on charms bar you can access the settings of the particular app. The options you get under settings depends on the app you selected.
3) You can get old start menu using 'Classic Shell' & 'Vistart' Softwares & enjoy both Metro UI as well as classic Aero Desktop in Windows 8 RP.
4) Allow apps to use your location to get the location relevant content on the Metro apps, you can enable this option while setting up the system first time during the installation or by going to PC Settings --> Privacy
5) This is more an opinion of mine than a tip on Reset PC feature that Microsoft introduced with Win 8 CP. I used this to test it out. To start with it asks the Installation Source to copy some missing files to start the RESET process, once you provide the Installation Source, it asks to you to wipe all the drives or the only the drive on which Win 8 is installed, obvisiouly we choose the later one, then it asks how to wipe the selected drives(like slow or fast format) here also we choose fast wipe option unless we need the slow one. Then it starts the process, restarts the PC, Reset's the PC, after that it reboots, now it asks for product key & you can skip entering it too, unlike in normal installation procedure, where you have to enter the product key before itself & you can't skip entering the key. Then the normal first time system set up procedures to follow. All this process took about 15-minutes on my system. I think normal installation procedure is much more than this.