Windows 8 Features.

    Here's what's new since the Developer Preview. Anyone who's been playing with the Windows 8 Developer Preview will notice quite a few changes, both in content and user interface design. It also introduces some very handy new touch gestures for tablet users. But keyboard and mouse users—Microsoft's bread and butter—haven't been left out either. Here are the changes that stood out among those in this latest pre-release of Microsoft's next big operating system.
1. The Windows Store
     Microsoft's answer to Apple's App Store for iOS devices and Macs. In its present form, the store only offers free software. You just need a Microsoft ID such as a Hotmail or Windows Live Messenger account to acquire the Metro-style apps in the store.  

You'll also find the addictive game, Cut the Rope in there, along with many other games. Apps are well categorized into groups like Social, Entertainment, Photos, Music & Videos, Books and reference, News, Food, Shopping, and so on. And it's easy to swipe back and forth through them. There's also a Spotlight section, along with tiles for Top Paid, Top Free, New releases, and All Stars.There's a surprising selection for a store that just opened. Since all the current apps are free, I couldn't check out the Trial install capability—something not offered by the iOS App Store.  
     Once you hit Install button, the activity dots animate across the screen. Then you'll see a fly-in notification at upper-right telling you that the app was installed. The new app's tile will appear at the end of your Start screen.
2. The Charms   
  The "Charms"—what Microsoft is calling Windows 8's main system menu icons—have moved from the lower left corner of the screen to the center of the right edge. The mouse point to open them has moved to the opposite point on the screen: Now you have to move the cursor to the top right corner and then down to access the Charms. For touch input, the charms are more accessible, requiring only a swipe out off right edge of the screen.
 
3. Semantic Zoom
This feature lets you pinch the Windows 8 Metro Start screen to more easily see all your app tiles. Just pinch on the screen, and the tiles will not just shrink, but intelligently resize to remain useful. 
4. Running app stack gesture/mouse to top left corner
There's a new way to navigate among running apps. On a touch screen, you swipe a finger in from the left edge of the screen and then back out. This displays a vertical stack of thumbnails for all your running apps. Just touch one of these thumbnails to switch to the app it represents.
5. Smoother transition to Desktop
It's a subtle difference, but in the Developer Preview, the animation displayed when you switched from the Metro user interface to the traditional Windows desktop interface was pretty jarring. It was a showy sliding animation with a zooming out effect.  
6. Mouse to move Metro start tiles on Start
There's plenty of new goodness for keyboard and mouse users in Consumer Preview, too. Possibly foremost among these is the ability to move through the Metro Start page tiles by simply nudging the mouse cursor against either edge of the screen. 

7. Systemwide Spell checker
Spell checking is the newest of the features Windows 8 apps will be able to take advantage of. The others being Share (to mail, social networks, and so on), and store to SkyDrive's cloud storage. The new spell checker, in typical fashion, places a squiggly red underline under suspected misspelled words, and clicking on this proposes corrections. You also get the Word-like Add to dictionary and Ignore options.

8. No More Start Button, or Is there?

There was an outpouring of lamentation for the dearly departed Windows Start button a few weeks ago, but it's death is only virtual. When a mouse user moves the cursor to the place the Start button has occupied for decades, a new one sprouts up, looking like a mini-thumbnail of the Metro Start screen. Clicking, of course, invokes the Start screen. You can still just start typing to search for an app or document as you could with previous Windows Start buttons. Right clicking this brings up a list of geeky choices like Disk Management, Event Viewer, and Command Prompt. Microsoft (probably rightly) considers right-clicking the sole province of geeks and power users.

9. Close app by dragging down
Another new gesture lets touch users close a running app simply by holding a finger on its window and dragging all the way down to the bottom of the screen.
10. Screen Capture—Windows Key + PrtSC
Now, to create an image file of the screen anywhere in the system, you simple press the Windows key + Print Screen. On a Windows 8 tablet, you can also hold down the Windows button and volume rocker.
11. New Apps—People, Music, Mail, Messaging, SkyDrive
Apps includes with Windows 8 Consumer have been pared down to about a dozen, compared with the over two dozen that came with Developer Preview. The new ones include essentials like mail, photos, weather, finance, Maps, People (for social updates), Calendar, Video, Messaging, Photos, and Music.
12. Picture password
Microsoft has done extensive research on the security of these passwords, even testing whether screen smudges could give trespassers entry, which proved highly unlikely. Statics analysis has also shown that there are in excess of a billion three-gesture combinations.