No target date was offered as to when Windows 8 will be publicly available.

Windows Division President Steven Sinofsky and four Microsoft product managers demonstrated the Windows 8 client operating system at the company's Build conference in Anaheim, Calif.

Here's the upshot of the new features:

The new UI of Windows 8 is the "Metro-style" application which looks much like Windows Phone 7 with ' "Live Tiles" organized in groups and oriented first toward touch. It still supports a keyboard, including keyboard shortcuts, and a mouse, and includes a virtual onscreen keyboard, too. It natively supports a digitizing pen.

Integration with Windows Live will feature prominently and could be the feature that most worries enterprise IT professionals. When a Windows 8 user logs multiple machines into the same Windows Live account, that user can access all machines remotely, even if each of those machines is parked behind a firewall.