There is no constraint on any reviewers (or real users) about taking own photos or videos... there are of course (as with most new product launches) screenshots, how-to videos, user guides etc. that are made available by Microsoft. Given the preview just started, more hands-on reviews are just making their way out. Several have been posted already - and are pretty representative of the diversity of experiences ("magical/awesome" to "can't handle my accent/recognize my speech"), and have continued to be helpful in improving the system - which is the entire point of a preview release. Here are a couple that I bookmarked: http://mashable.com/2014/12/15... http://www.gizmodo.in/news/Sky... This is work that's been done at Microsoft Research for a long time, and we have been continuously improving it (and sharing a lot of the research behind it with the world). Remember this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?... It's exciting for us to be able to see real people use it! (full disclosure: I work at Microsoft Research and am involved with Skype Translator)

I work on Skype Translator. Given the complexity of the technology in the back-end, the team looked for a client code base that was fast to experiment with, develop and release on - and so the modern windows 8 app seems like a good way to go - no other nefarious reason. Also, users of skype translator can call other Skype clients (Skype Desktop is officially supported, while I have certainly called ios, xbox on other clients successfully).

Thank you :-) It has been fashionable to diss everything related to Real on Slashdot. Over the last two years though, I have seen a change in the perception - a just reward for the hardwork by the teams (be it the Mac player, or the new better-behaved windows player and of course the linux player) and the commitment shown by management to these efforts.
I am very much for calling a spade a spade, especially when it comes to pointing out what we could do better. Having a simple GUI to setup the helix server would be nice - might be a good project to propose on the helix community? http://www.helixcommunity.org