From DailyTech: Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) appears to have silently rolled out "Technical Preview" builds of its upcoming Windows "Threshold" (Windows 9) to select enterprise clients. One of these clients has leaked screenshots of the new operating system and fresh details to a pair of German websites, WinFuture and ComputerBase. The screenshots and accompanying accounts confirms some things we were expecting, and hold a few suprises as well.
The biggest change, perhaps is that in the preview build version for non-touchscreen clients (i.e. traditional laptops and desktops) there is no Modern UI ("Metro") Start Screen. Metro UI, later rebranded as Modern UI always felt a bit oversided and clunky on mouse and keyboard setups. Windows 8.1 Update 1 improved the UI for traditional PC users somewhat, but ultimately it appears Microsoft decided that having a separate Modern UI start screen was more trouble than it was worth.
And there's the new settings menu. And there's the build string -- Build 9834.fbl_partner_eeal.14908.0936. Interestingly enough, it appears that the slides were sent with the build string unobscured, which was a bad move for the leaking party.
Here's the string identifying the leaker thanks to a little help from Adobe Systems Inc.'s (ADBE) impressive deconvolution algorithms, which do a surprisingly competent job removing that pesky Gaussian blur. Tsk tsk. Well, that's the price you pay when you leak to indiscrete parties. So we have Build 9834.fbl_partner_eeap.140908.0936.ec967275c53a5e576 (last three digits might be off) to thank for the leak.
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