The teasing's over: more than 1 million of you have got your hands on the Consumer Preview that enables you to see exactly what Microsoft's up to with Windows 8.
The new OS has an exciting new interface, exciting new apps, exciting new processor support and exciting new touch controls, and it's very, very different from the Windows we know and love. It's also very different from Apple's OS X Lion, which also introduced massively improved touch features and a host of interesting new things. So which one are you likely to prefer?
Will Metro tempt you away from the Mac? Would you be better off sticking with Windows 7? Let's find out.
By the way, we know that Apple has previewed OS X Mountain Lion already, but we haven't got hands on with it ourselves as yet, so that's why we've used Lion for comparison here.
While Windows 8 will be available on ARM-powered devices, the Consumer Preview is for 32-bit and 64-bit Intel and AMD machines only. OS X Lion, of course, is a 64-bit, Intel-only affair. System requirements are fairly undemanding: Lion wants a Core 2 Duo or better with 2GB of RAM, while Windows 7 and 8 both want a 1GHz processor with 1GB of RAM or 2GB for 64-bit.
Lion is only (officially) available for Apple PCs, and it's strictly a desktop/laptop OS. Despite appearing on the odd tablet we'd argue that Windows 7 is really just a desktop/laptop OS too. Windows 8, however, is designed to encompass desktops, laptops, tablets and possibly smartphones too, and should ship on a dizzying range of devices later this year. For more about Windows 8 tablets check out our need to know piece.
Lion's interface is the first step in an ongoing process: Apple wants to deliver a unified experience across its OS X and iOS apps, so while the operating systems remain separate their interfaces are starting to share things.
The jury's out on some of them - Lion's reversed mouse scrolling is designed to match the iPad's way of doing things, but drives some users demented; Calendar's iOS-style makeover has been widely mocked - but despite the iOSification it's still essentially a more refined version of the Snow Leopard UI.
Windows 7, similarly, is a refinement of the traditional Windows interface we've had since Windows 95: it's essentially Vista given a bit of spit and polish. The move to Windows 8 is much more dramatic.
The start button is gone, replaced with "hot corners" that make things happen when you move the mouse to the edges of the screen, and there's a new Metro-style user interface that ties in nicely with Windows Phone and the Xbox 360 Dashboard. A feature Microsoft calls Semantic Zoom enables you to zoom out for a birds-eye view of your programs, and you can easily reorganise the tiles by dragging them around.
The Windows 8 Metro interface is beautiful, but the traditional Windows one is there too for applications such as Windows Explorer, Office and legacy apps (on ARM devices it'll be there for Explorer and Office, but legacy software won't run). The jump from Metro to old-Windows is rather jarring, but the alternative would be for Microsoft to say "no, you can't use your old apps" to every Windows user. That would be commercial suicide.
OS X has had an App Store since Snow Leopard, and it's becoming an increasingly important way to get software - in the forthcoming Mountain Lion release, you'll be able to block non-App Store apps completely if you wish.
Windows 8 gets an app store too, although Microsoft calls its one the Windows Store. That's where you'll get your Metro apps, which take advantage of the new interface and which are sandboxed for security. Windows 8 will also run traditional Windows apps unless your hardware is ARM-powered, although there will be an ARM-specific version of Microsoft Office.
Metro apps are lovely things, resembling big versions of Windows Phone apps - which, after all, is essentially what they are. We like what we've seen so far but it'll be a while before it's clear what Microsoft's developer army comes up with. For the duration of the Consumer Preview all apps will be free to download, although Microsoft stresses that the apps are "app previews" rather than the final versions you'll get when Windows 8 ships.
Metro apps aren't necessarily the same as their desktop equivalents: for example you get two versions of Internet Explorer 10, one for Metro and one for desktop mode. The latter supports plugins, toolbars and Flash but the Metro version doesn't.
What we think Windows 8 has that Windows 7 perhaps didn't is the wow factor, the iPad-y desirability that Apple fans know so well.
While the Consumer Preview looks and feels largely finished there's still plenty of work for Microsoft to do, but from what we've used so far we're very excited. Unless Microsoft does something spectacularly silly at the very last moment, Windows 8 is going to be something special.
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