I’ve got to play with a copy of Windows 8. It’s a strange feeling, sort of like getting to drive the next Porshe a year before it’s released. I not quite comfortable with spending so much money on something conspicuous, I won’t buy it myself, and I prefer my Aston in any case (that is, Unix). But, nonetheless, it is strangle interesting and cool to have a play. It looks very different: the thoroughly predictable base of Windows 7, but with the ‘start’ menu replaced by a touch interface, and other big changes. It’s going to break lots of people’s code, people will complain about how it looks, and I haven’t had long enough with it yet to judge myself whether it’s worth it or not, but it won’t be long before we start seeing it everywhere, for better or worse. I’d rather follow the release of FreeBSD 9 though…