Possible Duplicate:
Can you install you own apps on your windows 7 phone
Sideloading apps on Windows 8 Pro
I am planing to buy and windows 8 phone and port some apps for private use to the system. I however read this article about the deployment process, which scared me off. If I understood the article correctly, you can only let Microsoft check your apps before they are accessible to everyone over the marketplace, or you use some overkill enterprise deployment eco-system which also requires all kinds of vetting processes. Is there a way just to create an installation package, put it on the sd card and then install it, without any additional overhead? And maybe hand the app to a few friends, that they can also use it.
I come from an android background where such an easy installation process is common. How does that compare to Windows 8 phone? Is there maybe some development mode? Devs must at least be able to debug their apps on the phone... I really can't find too much information on the internet, which is odd.
EDIT: I just read here that you require a pricy dev account for testing apps on the phone. After installing the required Windows 8 OS to be able to install Visual Studio for the Windows 8 phones development, my emulator won't start because my PC doesn't support some odd virtualization stuff. That makes it really easy to develop apps...