Its out and I have it installed. The installation has some peculiarities:
Remember this is an early beta and glitches are par for the course.- First I had to download and install an "Installer app"
- The installer app installed helper app and then opened App Store to download the High Sierra Installer
- Not unexpectedly the High Installer Kernel Paniced until I unplugged most of the external devices
- APFS is the default file/volume format, but that can be turned off
- As I hoped the conversion from HFS+ to APFS is non-destructive
- the installer time estimates, contrary to my expectations, were close to dead on
- Total installation time including the HFS+ to APFS changeover roughly an hour (I should have kept closer track of time.)
- First broken app: Safari Technology Preview Safari 11 works but it is pinwheeling a LOT (at the moment lots of things are pinwheeling )
- I attempted to reconnect the Thunderbolt hub I had disconnected for the install but that created an immediate Kernel Panic Tomorrow, I will start adding things back one at a time to see where the stopper is and investigate converting my other drives to APFS
Update: the pinwheeling is apparently Safari related. Quit Safari and the pinwheeling stops.