• PC World, Thursday, June 2, 2011 11 AM

Say goodbye to the traditional desktop with windows, a taskbar, a start menu, and the like. Demoing Windows 8 this week, Microsoft showed the world its vision for the future of desktop computing, and it "looks reminiscent to Windows Phone 7, [Microsoft's] smartphone operating system--complete with touch-friendly live tiles," according to PCWorld.

Hoping to make a smooth transition into emerging channels, the latest version of Windows is designed for not only laptops and desktops, but for tablets as well -- "which makes sense, given its big, touch-friendly buttons and visual style," PCWorld notes. That said, Windows 8 is expected to run standard Windows apps, and support standard Windows peripherals.

Likewise, regular Windows apps will be able to run in a separate, traditional desktop mode that users can switch to with the press of a button. Apps made specifically for Windows 8, meanwhile, will "use the power of HTML5, tapping into the native capabilities of Windows using standard JavaScript and HTML," Microsoft said.

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