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There are any number of reasons you may want to praise the new usage model being previewed by Microsoft for Windows 8. Like many, you may come to appreciate the company's apparently enhanced understanding of the requirements of the mobile user. Financial analysts had been worried about whether Microsoft could address a tablet PC skill set with an operating system born and raised on the desktop.

At last, you may join the chorus in saying, the desktop is dead and "the world is moving to mobile." If there is one prevailing truth about this industry in the past quarter-century, it's that things that are dead are the hardest to kill. (For more, see "Reed Hastings," "DVD.")

It used to be called the Windows Professional Developers Conference. This year, it absorbs some of the functions of the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, and some of the MIX Web developers' conference. The result is Build 2011 in Anaheim, which this year is Microsoft's premiere event for the next version of Windows for PCs and tablets. It begins Tuesday, but at this moment, exactly how it will pan out remains an artificial mystery.

This week at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference the company made its tablet strategy more clear. As reported by Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft Windows Phone President Andy Lees said: "We view a tablet as a sort of PC. We want people to be able to do the sorts of things that they expect on a PC on a tablet, things like networking to be able to connect to networks, and utilize networking tools, to get USB drives and plot them into the tablet."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said in the past that tablets won't run Windows Phone 7. The reasoning is now more clear: Microsoft wants the full version of Windows on tablets, not the Phone version. This might not be the only reason - the company might also be worried about cannibalizing Windows license sales with tablets.

Is the decision to focus on putting one version of Windows everywhere a mistake?