If you are a student or a staff of a university that partners in Microsoft’s DreamSpark program (formerly known as MSDN Academic Alliance, MSDNAA), you can get a wide variety of Microsoft products for free and the list includes Windows 8. When you go in to your account of DreamSpark to download Windows 8, you might be seeing not one but around ten Windows 8 options available. In this post, we’ll see what is the differences between different Windows 8 versions in DreamSpark.

1. Microsoft Windows 8 with Apps 32-bit
2. Microsoft Windows 8 with Apps 64-bit
3. Microsoft Windows 8 Debug/Checked Build 32-bit
4. Microsoft Windows 8 Debug/Checked Build 64-bit
5. Microsoft Windows 8 SDK 32/64-bit
6. Microsoft Windows 8 Symbols 32-bit
7. Microsoft Windows 8 Symbols 64-bit
8. Microsoft Windows 8 Symbols Debug/Checked Build 32-bit
9. Microsoft Windows 8 Symbols Debug/Checked Build 64-bit
10. Microsoft Windows 8 WDF Co-installer 32/64-bit
11. Microsoft Windows 8 WDK 32/64-bit
12. Microsoft Windows Hardware Certification Kit 32/64-bit

1 & 2:

If you are looking to install Windows 8 for normal, daily life computing purposes, these two are the real candidates. You can choose either of them depending upon the your processor. Read this to find whether your processor is 32 bit or 64 bit.

3 & 4:

The  is used for debugging device drivers. It contains run-time checks for error conditions and has run-time optimizations removed. 32 bit and 64 bit has the same concept as explained above.

5:

This is just the Software Development Kit for Windows 8. It is used for developing Windows 8 apps.

6 & 7:

These are just the Symbols for Windows 8., used for debugging purposes. They are of no use.

8 & 9:

Same as above, but checked again. These too are of no use.

10 & 11:

Used for driver development. WDF means the Windows Driver Foundation and WDK refers to the Windows Driver Kit.

12:

It is extensively used for hardware certification.

Source: Superuser.com