UPDATE – 27th October 2012 – THIS WAS DONE ON THE WINDOWS 8 CONSUMER PREVIEW, BACK IN FEBRUARY 2012. NOT ON THE RECENT PUBLIC RELEASE OF WINDOWS 8 (OCTOBER 2012). THINGS HAVE IMPROVED SINCE.

Good news, Microsoft just put out last Wednesday, 29th February 2012, their new “Windows 8 – Consumer Preview” [Ref 01]. I had the “Developer Preview” on my beautiful tablet (gift from Samsung and Microsoft to the BUILD conference attendees last September, thank you!), but it was not that stable, so I have been patient and I was looking forward this new release.

So, I updated my tablet (I did not sell it like some did 😉 ) on Thursday 1st March and played with it for the last 2 days. I must say it is a lot more stable and it boots on my tablet in about 10 seconds : that’s a change !

I went to the “Appication Store” and started to download almost everything they had on the first page – it was free. Then, As I developer, I started to install Visual Studio 11 Beta from the link provided by “Microsoft App Dev Center page” [Ref 02]. It is only at the end of the installation that I noticed it was “Express edition” and not “Ultimate” or “Pro” edition. This was not the edition I wanted – sorry, nothing wrong with “Express” : it is a fantastic product and its is free, but I am used to “Pro” and “Ultimate”. So, after half-hour of installation I am reduced to unsinstall “Visual Studio 11 Beta Express Edition” and start again.

Wait a minute ! Where is the “Add/Remove Programs” on Windows 8?

I spent nearly 15 minutes to find out where “Add/Remove Programs” is located now. I hope this is something that Microsoft will improve. Here are the steps I had to do (I will talked about the gestures I did as I am running this on my tablet):

Step	Description
1	Press the “Start” button to be on the “Start” page of Windows 8.
2	Swipe your finger from the right side to display the “Charm bar”.
3	Press “Settings”, the “Charm bar” will disapear and another panel on the right side will be displayed:
4	At the top, press on “Settings” (a second time).
5	The “Start Settings” panel will be displayed. Switch on the feature “Show administrative tools”.
6	Now, go back to the “start” page (Press button “Start”)
7	Slide your finger “from right to left” and go to the end.
8	Try to find the “System Configuration” tile. Press it.
9	Windows will navigate to the “Old desktop App”, and a Window “System Configuration” will be displayed.
10	Go to the “Tools” tab and look for a tool named “Programs”. Select it and click on the button “Launch” (maybe you can double-click it, but I am not doing it on my tablet because my finger is too big 🙂 and the regular windows buttons are small).
11	Now you can select the program you want to uninstall – for me it was VS 11 Beta Express Edition. This list only contains the programs for “regular” windows, i.e. not designed and developed as “Metro-App style”. For “Metro-App style” I am assuming you can uninstall them from the “Store” – but I have not yet tried.

I hope this helps.

If like me you want to install VS 11 Beta Ultimate edition see [Ref-03].

Happy “swiping” on the new Windows 8.

References

• [Ref-01] Download “Windows 8 – Consumer Preview”.
• [Ref-02] MSDN, Windows | Dev Center – Metro style apps, “Download for Developers”.
• [Ref-03] Download Visual Studio 11 Beta Ultimate edition.