Hands-on with Windows 8: A PC operating system for the tablet age

It’s not finished yet, and Microsoft still has plenty of work ahead of it, but one thing is clear: Windows 8 is a genuine, uncompromised tablet operating system.

It was a long time coming. For many years, Microsoft worked in vain to crack the tablet market. Its previous tablet efforts treated the finger or, more commonly, the stylus as a mouse replacement, never recognizing that touch is simply different. The mouse is precise, accurate, but indirect; touch is imprecise and sloppy, but the direct manipulation it affords makes it fast and fluid.

Windows 8 makes touch a first-class citizen. Where Windows 7 penalized mouseless, keyboardless users with a fiddly, mouse-oriented user interface, Windows 8 lets you leave the mouse and keyboard behind.