I installed Windows 8 Release Preview

Last month I mentioned that Windows 8 Release Preview is on the way, which was improved version of the Consumer Preview.

Last night I installed it.

Release Preview. You can get it from here.

Installation took 3min 15sec, which is 6 seconds less than that of consumer preview. In other words, it's about the same.

Release Preview

The overall interface seems about the same. It let me choose the color scheme after the installation (I don't recall choosing colors with Consumer Preview. I might be wrong), and that's the only noticeable difference I can find so far.

One really interesting (or creepy) thing about this new installation is that it restored most of my settings.

Before I installed it, I wiped the C drive clean (well, sort of. I just removed the system reserved partition). When you remove drive partition, all the data in the drive is lost.

After the installation, I gave it my Hotmail address and password. Then, voila. It restored my language settings and desktop picture. The Internet Explorer 10 remembered the the 10 most visited websites as well as my homepage address.

Wait a minute. That means the MS is collecting this information and keep it somewhere remote.
Last few years using Google's service, one thing really bothered me was "they know too much about me".

Now I start to suspect MS is doing the same with my computer. I wonder what else they're collecting.
With Google's service, if you feel uncomfortable with sharing too much info, you can switch to others (like yahoo or MS).
If you feel your Windows is collecting too much information about you, what are you going to do? Switch back to XP?

Hmm.....