"We shunned the incremental," Sinofsky said as he described the development of Windows 8. "This is the next generation of Windows, computing for the next billion people. This is the best release of Windows ever ... [and] these are the best PCs ever made."

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Gartner who was also on site, called Sinofsky's "incremental" comment the best line of the day. "Sinofsky is telling a complex story of Windows 8 and [Windows] RT very well," Gartenberg tweeted from the floor.

Sinofsky handed off to Julie Larson-Green, vice president of Windows, and Mike Angiulo, vice president of Windows hardware and the PC ecosystem, who together touted a score or more new devices that run Windows 8 and Windows RT.

Their part had a distinctly QVC flavor to it, with quick recaps of each device's or PC's attributes, with Larson-Green sometimes searching for adjectives to apply.

"You just can't keep from touching these," Larson-Green exclaimed at one point after talking up several touch-enabled devices. She also boasted of Windows 8's desktop, saying, "We made the desktop in Windows 8 even better than Windows 7."