The task switcher now includes labels on top of thumbnails.

Dig deep enough and you'll find other changes as well. Even when Windows 8 is locked, you can now change the volume, pause songs and skip to new songs. Multimonitor support has been tweaked so that you can now drag an app from the screen of one monitor to another. Microsoft also says that this version of Windows 8 includes touchpad multitouch gestures for tasks such scrolling, although they didn't work on my machine.

According to Microsoft, there have been a number of under-the-hood changes as well, including a smaller memory footprint, faster performance and reduced disk space requirements. I can't say that I saw a difference in performance between this and the Consumer Preview, though.

Windows Store is the place to go for Metro apps -- in fact, it's the only place to go for Metro apps, because Windows 8 is a closed store, like the App Store for iOS. Although it's not quite as bare as it was for the Consumer Preview, it still doesn't offer an overwhelming number of apps.