Windows has changed a lot since Windows 95 ushered in the modern era of the desktop operating system almost two decades ago—the underlying technology that makes Windows what it is has completely changed since those early days to keep pace with new technologies and usage models. Despite all of those changes, though, the fundamental look and feel of Windows 7 remains remarkably similar to its hoary old predecessor.

Windows 95 and Windows 7: We're not so different, you and I

All of that's changing—the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is here, and it brings with it the biggest fundamental change to the default Windows UI since 1995. Metro is an interface designed for the modern, touch-enabled era, and when Windows 8 (and its cousin, Windows on ARM) is released, it will signify Microsoft's long-awaited entry into the tablet market that the iPad created and subsequently dominated.

The difference between Microsoft's strategy and Apple's strategy is that Microsoft is not keeping its operating systems separate—iOS and OS X are slowly blending together, but they remain discrete OSes designed for different input devices. Windows 8 and Metro, on the other hand, are one and the same: the operating system running on your desktop and the one running on your tablet are going to be the same code.

The question is, is Windows 8 a worthy upgrade to the successful Windows 7? Will the Metro interface work as well with a keyboard and mouse as it does on a tablet? For answers to those questions and more, just keep reading.

Yesterday Microsoft released the first public beta of the next version of Windows Home Server, currently going under the codename of Vail (or as we like to call it, WHS v2). WHS v2 has been something of a poorly kept secret, as word leaked out about its development as early as 2008. In more recent times an internal beta leaked out late last year, confirming that WHS v2 existed and giving everyone an idea of what Microsoft has in store for the next iteration of their fledgling home server OS.

One thing in particular caught our eye about the WHS v2 beta: the new Drive Extender. Drive Extender is the secret sauce of Windows Home Server that gives it its storage pool and data redundancy features, and now Microsoft has rearchitected it for WHS v2. We'll take a look at just what they did, why it's going to be more compatible and fault-tolerant than WHS v1's Drive Extender was, what the costs of all of this are, and why we think it's a great deal like Sun's popular next-generation ZFS file system.