Windows booted in a blink of an eye. Microsoft didn’t state the type of hardware that the OS was running on, however.

Windows 8 is designed to run on low power systems, too.

The Windows Store is the location where you’ll download fresh apps.

Microsoft demonstrates an app with Windows ‘s Metro interface

Microsoft shows how app creators can add their software to Windows Store.

You can take a closer look at an onscreen object with this magnifier.

Microsoft demonstrates Windows 8’s compatibility with cloud services.

The first thing you have to do when you start Windows 8 on a new machine is to give it a name.

As with Chrome OS, you need a WiFi connection to properly set up a Windows 8, since you’ll be signing into your Windows Live account to use all its capabilities.

These default settings at machine setup grant your permission for apps to use your location, name, and account picture, as well as enabling security and updating options.

After choosing setup settings, you’ll see this Preparing screen for a few minutes.

You can sign in by touch gestures on a photo of your choice instead of by entering a password.

The lock screen shows your chosen image, time, date, wifi status, and battery status. Swiping up gets you to the login screen.

After swiping up on the lock screen, you can log in from this screen.

After you log in, you’ll see your Metro interface Start screen. This takes the place of Windows’ Start menu, and apps can serve data into their tiles, such as stock prices or notifications.

The Charms are the icons to the right, which offer search, share, start, and so on. Swiping from right to left from the left edge of the screens brings these up, wherever you are.

Hitting the Search Charm brings up this page, showing all your apps and gives you more searching options.

If you swipe from the left side of the screen, other running apps appear, and can be dropped in this left sidebar area.

Here you can see that the keyboard app has re-oriented itself to fit better in the sidebar.

Here’s the standard touch keyboard. Note the small keyboard icon at bottom right, which lets you switch its appearance.

For thumb typing, you can choose this layout.

Windows 8 will convert handwriting to text, whether from a finger or stylus.

The Control Panel uses the Metro UI and lets you change user accounts, whether apps can send notifications, personalization, and more.

The Metro version of IE shows no interface, just the web page, unless you hold your finger on the screen. It can’t play Flash as it’s HTML5 only—no plugins.

Windows Explorer gets an Office-like ribbon of controls at the top.