BUILD 2011 | Windows 8 already reaches 500,000 downloads

In a surprise appearance at Anaheim’s BUILD 2011 conference, Microsoft's Chief Executive Officer took to the stage and announced some staggering numbers for the recently unveiled Windows 8.

According to CEO Steve Ballmer, the Windows 8 Developer Preview has already been downloaded 500,000 times since it was first made available yesterday.  The CEO did, however, acknowledge that this is still the beginning of the road, and said “We still have a long way to go with Windows 8 … It’s not going to be Intel or ARM, It’s going to be Intel and ARM.”

The outstanding reception for Windows 8 doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise, as the OS brings some interesting features to the table. In addition to having extremely low system requirements (Atom CPU and 1GB of RAM), the OS uses much less system memory than its predecessor and is meant to unify tablets, notebooks and other PCs.

 The OS is expected to launch sometime in the 2^nd half of 2012. 

Source(s)