It is still in the pre beta stage so it is hard to tell, but here are my impressions.
You boot into a metro touch screen desktop filled with widgets. From here you select your program from a widget. If it is windows 8 compatible, it opens up naively. If it is not windows 8 compatible, it throws you into a windows 7 compatible mode which makes windows 8 feel like it is in two parts. Almost like you are working in a GUI on top of windows 7. The new internet explorer feels like a beta product and is totally inflexible. Control panel is very simplistic and feels unfinished. I cannot tell of performance since I was running it in a VM, but from what is talked about they are making Windows 8 a better performer than windows 7 which is yet to be seen.
My first impression is most people will make a beeline to the control panel and turn off the widget screen to make it appear more windows 7ish. I do not like the widget screen and most people will not either. I will keep an open mind until a true beta version, but my first impression on the graphical changes is fail.
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