I’m going on vacation for the next week or so. I’ll be off the grid—literally out of range of most forms of communication.
While I’m away, you can catch up on what I’ve been doing lately, with a 20% discount on the new, significantly expanded edition of Windows 8 Head Start, which covers the Consumer Preview release. The book is available in DRM-free PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats, which will work on any Kindle, Nook, iPad, or PC.
You can buy the new edition directly. The normal price is $9.95, but while I’m away you can use this code to get a 20% discount: BottNet20. (It’s OK—this BottNet is perfectly safe to join.)
That purchase gives you all three formats in a convenient single download, with EPUB and MOBI files optimized for different devices and a PDF format that is ideal for reading on a PC or Mac.
Microsoft will have one final beta—a Release Preview—in early June, and I’ll have a free update shortly thereafter to help you make sense of the changes. That update will be available exclusively to buyers of this book.
Questions or comments? Leave them here, but don’t expect an answer for at least a week. See you then!
Ed Bott (@ wordpress.com) 
I’ve been playing with the Consumer Preview on a laptop since its release, but still learned things I hadn’t discovered on my own from a quick read through the book. I used your idea to apply the Start Screen background to the Desktop. Great idea. Thank you. The transition between the two experiences doesn’t bother me as much as it apparently does others, but I like now having the ability to keep the backgrounds the same and perhaps Microsoft can make that an easy option. Here is hoping the Release Preview fixes the not very “live” live tiles (Photos, News, Finance) and the handful of other annoyances I’ve discovered.