Here’s how we installed Windows 8 Developer Preview on an Acer Iconia tab W500. The Acer Iconia tab W500 processor, AMD C-50 is a very interesting choice for the Tab; it’s low power enough but considerably more powerful than an Atom.  And Microsoft announced that Windows 8 launched with ARM support.  Remember the windows 8 developer preview is a beta version and for your information this is the OS that can’t be guaranty that it works always correct even we used proper installation instruction. This is not full version and you decide for yourselves.

Installation Windows 8 on Acer Iconia tab W500 :

Dock the Acer Iconia tab W500 into it’s keyboard
Extract the 32-bit Windows 8 Developer Preview ISO and copy the files to a USB thumb drive.
Shutdown the tablet.
Connect a USB keyboard to the iconia w500 tab.
Press and hold down the Windows button and the Power button, when the machine starts, press F2. This will display the BIOS setup.
Select the USB key to boot from and let the Windows
Save changes and exit BIOS setup, plug in the USB thumb drive, and restart the computer. You can disconnect the keyboard at this point.
The computer boots into Windows 8 setup from the USB drive.

In order to access the BIOS and Boot Device selection screen, you need to turn your Tablet OFF by holding the power button while in windows to fake a bad system crash.

Once OFF, attach USB dock/Keyboard and press and hole the Start Button and then press and hold the Power Button. You’ll see a cursor. Press F2 to enter BIOS or Press F12 to enter boot device selection screen. So that I could change the default boot device to the 8GB USB flash drive I had preloaded with both the 32 and 64 bit versions, but installed the 32 bit version due to the system only having 2GB of RAM which is not upgradeable.

Quick Gudie Instalation Windows 8 on Acer Iconia tab W500.

• Insert USB flash drive
• Run diskpart
• Type “List Disk” (or “lis dis”) to determine which drive is the flash drive
• Type “Select Disk x” (or “Sel Dis x”) with x being the drive number of the flash drive
• Type “Clean”
• Type “Create Partition Primary”
• Type “Format FS=NTFS QUICK”
• Type “Active”
• Type “Exit”
• Use your preferred ISO extraction tool to extract the files out the flash drive.

Windows 8 is snappy on Acer Iconia tab W500. I didn’t install any drivers or additional software. Setup took about 20 minutes, so there have been some obvious improvements to this process, and for those of you familiar with the setup process of Windows 7 you will find a similar folder structure, as well the as the expected WIM files.

Performance

Windows 8 is fast on Acer Iconia tab W500. It starts up in 13 seconds compared to 45 for Windows 7. The Acer Iconia tab W500 touchscreen worked perfectly on win8, the resolution was set right, sound worked, and sleep/resume worked perfect. The Metro UI was fluid flicking back and forth and opening apps. No hangs or bluescreens yet…Now the huge difference with the Acer Iconia over the ViewSonic Viewpad is the supported screen resolution. The Viewpad only supports 1024 x 680 while the Iconia supports 1024 x 768 which is what is needed for the Metro Style apps to work…:) . There are still a few devices in Device Manager that need some attention, and I’ll look into that when I get a bit more time to explore.

Windows 8 automatically installs all the drivers, except for the Bluetooth and the G-Sensor (Accelerometer). You can download these drivers from the Acer Iconia tab W500 website. You also need to download the “Device Control” application from the Acer Iconia tab W500 website listed under applications. The screen rotation will not work both the G-Sensor driver and the Device Control application are not installed.

You can also just upgrade Acer Iconia tab W500 from Win7. If you upgrade from Win 7 to Win 8, you must have the matching bitrate ISO. For example: Win 7 32-bit ==> Win 8 32-bit. Win 7 64-bit ==> Win 7 64-bit. If you had installed the 64-bit version of Windows 8 Developer Preview, the G-sensor  will not work as the driver on the Acer website is only for 32-bit versions of Windows.

Visit Acer Iconia tab W500 support sites here