Windows 8 is finally ready to have its tires kicked by the masses in the Consumer Preview. Here's what's new since the Developer Preview. Anyone who's been playing with the Windows 8 Developer Preview will notice quite a few changes, both in content and user interface design. In general, the Consumer preview does a better job of integrating the two faces of Windows 8—the touch-centric Metro interface and the traditional Windows Desktop interface. It also introduces some very handy new touch gestures for tablet users. But keyboard and mouse users—Microsoft's bread and butter—haven't been left out either. Here are the changes that stood out among those in this latest pre-release of Microsoft's next big operating system.

1. The Windows Store

With the launch of Consumer Preview, we finally get a look at the Windows Store—Microsoft's answer to Apple's App Store for iOS devices and Macs. In its present form, the store only offers free software. You just need a Microsoft ID such as a Hotmail or Windows Live Messenger account to acquire the Metro-style apps in the store. None of the clever apps developed by Microsoft's college interns are pre-installed on the Consumer Preview, so look in the Windows Store if you miss them.

You'll also find the addictive game, Cut the Rope in there, along with many other games. Apps are well categorized into groups like Social, Entertainment, Photos, Music & Videos, Books and reference, News, Food, Shopping, and so on. And it's easy to swipe back and forth through them. There's also a Spotlight section, along with tiles for Top Paid, Top Free, New releases, and All Stars.There's a surprising selection for a store that just opened. Since all the current apps are free, I couldn't check out the Trial install capability—something not offered by the iOS App Store.

Each App's page shows its user star rating, icon, price (all free for now), screenshots, text summary, and Install button. Once you hit that, the activity dots animate across the screen. Then you'll see a fly-in notification at upper-right telling you that the app was installed. The new app's tile will appear at the end of your Start screen.

2. The Charms Have Moved!

In Developer Preview, the "Charms"—what Microsoft is calling Windows 8's main system menu icons—have moved from the lower left corner of the screen to the center of the right edge. The mouse point to open them has moved to the opposite point on the screen: Now you have to move the cursor to the top right corner and then down to access the Charms. For touch input, the charms are more accessible, requiring only a swipe out off right edge of the screen.

3. Semantic Zoom

This feature lets you pinch the Windows 8 Metro Start screen to more easily see all your app tiles. Just pinch on the screen, and the tiles will not just shrink, but intelligently resize to remain useful. You can rename and move groups of app tiles around using this gesture, too, for better organization.

Check out more of our Windows 8 coverage.

4. Running app stack gesture/mouse to top left corner

There's a new way to navigate among running apps. On a touch screen, you swipe a finger in from the left edge of the screen and then back out. This displays a vertical stack of thumbnails for all your running apps. Just touch one of these thumbnails to switch to the app it represents. This gesture took me a little while to get the hang of, but once I did, it proved an extremely quick and useful way to navigate around my applications.

5. Smoother transition to Desktop

It's a subtle difference, but in the Developer Preview, the animation displayed when you switched from the Metro user interface to the traditional Windows desktop interface was pretty jarring. It was a showy sliding animation with a zooming out effect. The Consumer Preview makes the desktop and Metro interfaces feel more like a single operating system, with a simple fade to black transition and reappearance of the other guise. It just feels quicker and less drastic.