Windows 8

Windows 8 is beginning to take shape. At a developer conference at the start of June, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off some of the features that will be included in the next version of Windows. It’s not due for release until next year, but we’ve now got a pretty good idea of what to expect from what may prove to be the last ever Windows operating system.
Both Apple CEO Steve Jobs and former Microsoft big-wig Ray Ozzie have said that we are entering a 'post-PC' world. So the challenge for Windows 8 is to prove that desktop computing as we know it is not consigned to history.
We’re far from sure that Windows as we know it is done with yet, but the details we’ve seen so far suggest Microsoft has rethought how we interact with technology in a far more substantial way than ever before. Software will be written in programming languages more applicable to the web, while Explorer menus and even windows themselves look set to be shown the door. Not everything will be radically different, of course, but there’s enough that is to pique even the anti-Microsoft brigade’s interest.
Here, we look at some of those features in detail, outline what we’d like to see in Windows 8, and report on what’s still missing.
We also take a look at the alternatives to Windows, from Apple’s brand-new OS X 10.7 Lion to the most user-friendly version of Linux to date, and the OS that perhaps offers the clearest indication of where desktop computing is heading.