There has been no shortage of buzz and chatter about the Windows 8 Developer Preview that Microsoft let fly during their BUILD Developer's conference this week. What's even more interesting is that they made their new beta baby available for public download as well. So we wasted no time in installing the pre-release software on one of our Intel Core i5-based notebooks here in the HH Lab. We came away impressed at the current state of the new operating system, however, there is little question that Win 8 is a radical departure from previous versions of Windows. In fact, it could be easily said that Windows 8 isn't really "Windows" at all.

And performance? Well, just watch at least the first 30 seconds of our video walk-through of Windows 8 and see for yourself. If boot times are any indication of Microsoft's performance targets, we think speed freaks and performance enthusiasts might be in for a nice surprise as well.