Microsoft’s new version of Windows is fantastic, jarring, and risky at the same time. If you want to see for yourself, download the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and let us know what you think of it in the comments. It wants to have the same operating system running across all its devices. It's important to note that sharing in Windows 8 is based on what are called contracts. When you run any program designed for today’s Windows in the new OS, it will show up in the Desktop interface. I found the Metro interface easy to get the hang of, and for the most part I enjoyed using it. As with Apple’s tablet, you won’t be able to download Metro programs from just anywhere on the Web—a change that’s certain to flummox longtime Windows users. There’s only one major difference: the Store is not yet functional, so these impressions are based only on the apps built into the Windows 8 Consumer Preview itself. That's really just scratching the surface of Metro, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Metro Start screen is very customizable... again, in theory. In the shot below, for instance, I’ve got a PDF displayed on the right side while the Finance app is scrunched on the left. It’s not quite right to say that Windows 8 kills windows, because as Microsoft takes pains to point out, most Windows 8 machines will still be able to run every Windows program ever written. (lots more after the gallery) 
 
 Windows 8 Consumer Preview: The Good and the Bad 
 
 Sharing 
 
 Sharing — from any app — is built directly in to Windows 8. In the end, Microsoft isn't just asking you to get used to a different interface for Windows. Another example: the Start screen allows you to scroll left and right simply by pushing your mouse icon right up against the edges of the screen. Contracts are little pieces of software that an app uses to tell Windows that something in the app is shareable. Metro, borrowed from the Windows Phone platform, takes a hard right turn from traditional Windows: Instead of files and folders, there are touchable tiles that fire up your apps, and those apps take up the whole screen. The Start screen’s tiles constantly surface new information without you opening them up: The email tile shows you new messages, for example, while the calendar tile displays your upcoming appointments. Windows 8 wants me to do a lot of things through the Metro interface that I used to do on a desktop interface, and there was some natural resistance to that at first.
– Microsoft unleashed Windows 8 on the world today, in the form of a "Consumer Preview" (read: Open Beta), and it's definitely not business as usual. The OS is designed to work on both tablets and PCs, and that means that, while it still has a familiar Windows "Desktop" mode tucked inside, its default is a bold new "Metro" system that (gasp) does away with "windows" entirely. Apps, which must be purchased from the Windows Store, all run essentially full screen. Here's what people are saying: Farhad Manjoo of Slate calls it "fantastic, jarring, and risky at the same time." Microsoft clearly thinks Metro is the future—"You get the sense that the company is keeping the Desktop interface around the same way it included the command prompt in Windows 95"—but he found it awkward on his desktop. "I felt like I was wasting a lot of my display." "It's by far the most integrated and most capable operating system Microsoft has ever put out," gushes Seth Rosenblatt of CNET. "There's a speed and responsiveness to Windows 8 that no other version of Windows has ever had." His assessment: "It would be beyond shocking if Windows 8 landed like Vista did." But Peter Pachal for Mashable "the same problem bubbles up time and again in Windows 8: unintuitiveness. Metro is a beautiful and powerful interface, but it's hard to get used to," and lots of little things don't work the way you'd expect. "I think it's going to get rough welcome," predicts Jason Cross of PC World. "People often don't like change at first." But he likes it. "I'm impressed by its speed and elegance. Let me say that again: I'm impressed by the speed and elegance of a Micrsoft interface. Really!"