A stable release of Windows 8 in the ARM edition could come as soon as February, or so say developers in the know. Previous info had this release coming in mid 2013, but that seems to have been untrue, if we take into account the new information. There’s really no reason for such a huge delay, honestly speaking and the differences between the x86 shouldn’t be that huge, so the launch has no real reason to be delayed like this.
The insider who said that February is the month to look out for spoke to CNET and also said that the ARM alternatives to Intel and AMD-based Windows 8 tablets could be cheaper than them even with hundreds of dollars. Back in October 2011 everyone was panicking because Windows 8 ARM edition was unstable, but now everything is OK and the OS is viable. Microsoft has yet to confirm a release time frame for the OS to its partners and in the meantime sources say that feedback on the ARM build is positive.
Words like “impressive” and “stable” keep being thrown around, in contrast with what we heard previously and right now MS isn’t very anxious is handing everyone the new build, since there aren’t many apps to play with and demo Windows 8. There aren’t any third party legacy applications running on Windows 8 on ARM says the same source, so that’s got to be a problem. As far as hardware goes, Windows 8 on ARM is supposed to run stably on “at least two” ARM platforms, most likely Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.
