Windows 8 fondleslabs rock up on eBay

Can't wait to touch and poke a Windows 8 fondleslab? Well now you can, but it'll cost you big bucks.

A trio of Samsung tablets running the developer preview of Windows 8, which were dished out to 5,000 attendees of Microsoft's BUILD Conference, have popped up on auction site eBay.

Microsoft has not yet given a release date for Windows 8 and has not named any of the OEM partners who will be making tablets for its operating system.

The price for the 64GB Samsung tablets, at the time of writing, was breaking the $2,000-barrier mark, compared to about $700 for a similar spec'd iPad - the gadget Microsoft is gunning for.

One machine has gone to a successful bidder for $2,700, while the bid price on another has jumped from a bid of $1,225 when the tablets were first detected here by Win Rumors, to $2,025.

A third was going priced $2,385, at the time of writing.

Bidders are taking their chances; these handsomely spec'd devices are running an early unfinished build of Windows 8. Microsoft only released the developer build of Win 8 last week, and it lacks the final polish of the interface and web store that will target consumers. ®