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It's the single greatest dilemma of modern society: How much freedom would you trade to get more security - or vice versa? Since Windows XP became the most exploited operating system in history, Microsoft has taken bold moves - not all of them very popular, but usually very effective - to sever the routes of exploit. User Account Control, though controversial, eliminated perhaps 90% of account-elevation exploits. Now the company makes another bold security move - changing how Windows 8 boots to increase security, potentially at the cost of some freedom for certain users and non-commercial developers.

Your typical hard disk drive today measures its capacity in the half-terabytes. If you’ve got a 250GB drive – or maybe a half-dozen of them – you may think they're not good for much anymore. But what if you could use them to build a private cloud just like those OpenStack folks in the enterprise? In Windows 8, Microsoft is bringing the power of private clouds to consumers with the inclusion of Storage Spaces.

The disk maintenance tools that Microsoft ships with Windows have always been, at best, tolerable. Now that there's an entire industry centered around archival storage systems and services, it's about time Microsoft gave its consumer versions of Windows a file archiving system appropriate for the 21st century.

Replacing Windows Backup, Windows 8 File History is the file archiving system that should have been in Windows 7 - and it points the way toward a post-PC future for Microsoft.

Yes, there really are 10 important and beneficial changes you'll find in Microsoft Windows 8, beginning with Refresh. Let's just say it's closer to perfect than Windows Backup. Refresh is Microsoft's first real attempt to address Windows' most touchy consumer pain point: Reinstallation as a solution to problems that no one can diagnose or understand. Now, there's a chance that with this partial installation feature, you can have Windows start over without losing absolutely everything, including your applications and the files in your libraries.

Raise your hand if you want a Windows 8 tablet just so you can use that cool new Start screen. Wait, first put your iPad down. Now raise your hand.

After two public previews of Microsoft's new Windows 8 technology, the one major difference we've seen thus far in what it does, compared to its predecessors, comes from a few of its cloud-reliant apps, including Pictures. You can store your pictures on Microsoft's SkyDrive and have them automatically sync across your (Windows-branded) devices. That's very nice, but no longer new. Come October, it may even be old hat. ReadWriteWeb asked the Panel of Esteemed Grown-ups (who reminded me to say thank you for the esteem) to deduce what kinds of functionality might make you consider purchasing a Windows 8 device, whether or not you have an iPad. Joining us for this round are (left to right):

Ross Rubin, Executive Director and Principal Analyst, NPD Connected Intelligence
Al Hilwa, Program Director for Applications Development Software, IDC
Sarah Rotman Epps, Senior Analyst for Consumer Product Strategy, Forrester
Carmi Levy, Correspondent, Yahoo Finance Canada; Contributing Technology Analyst, CTV

Assume for a moment that you don't own an iPad. Which device do you want more: a new, multitouch-endowed Windows 8 notebook computer, or a new iPad with the vastly improved resolution? Okay, so the latter is available now and the former is not. But if you have already acquired that iPad, or are just about to, will you want that Win8 Ultrabook come October?

These are serious questions for serious people, and it's a good thing that ReadWriteWeb knows their numbers. We've convened the Panel of Esteemed Grown-ups (PEGs) to take up the issue of Windows 8's success against Apple's iOS-based steamroller. Joining us for the discussion (left to right):

Ross Rubin, Executive Director and Principal Analyst, NPD Connected Intelligence
Al Hilwa, Program Director for Applications Development Software, IDC
Sarah Rotman Epps, Senior Analyst for Consumer Product Strategy, Forrester
Carmi Levy, Correspondent, Yahoo Finance Canada; Contributing Technology Analyst, CTV

On the day that Windows 7 was generally released in October 2009, Microsoft announced that it was "simplifying" the PC. It was a long awaited, much appreciated response to nearly three years of wrestling with the sea of sloth that was Windows Vista.

My review of Windows 7 was both notorious and, even in hindsight, correct. I called it "Vista without the crap." For that review, I ran a scientific test which produced this real-world calculation: Windows 7 expedited the Web browsing process for folks who use Web apps and browsers for their full-time work (like myself) by three-and-one-half minutes per hour. That's 385 hours of productivity regained per year, which is enough time for my company Ingenus to produce one book and rake in a nice heap of cash. I suggested to Microsoft that it use the following slogan: "Use Windows 7, Get Six Weeks of Your Life Back."

I look at the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 and I fear I may lose those six weeks again.

We live in a post-something era. This much, Microsoft is willing to concede; the iPad's thundering success changed the landscape. It has shown that the buyer is willing to imagine a different form factor than the PC commanding her principal information delivery platform. Apple has yet to conquer that platform, but it has fired its third round of volleys and the castle walls have been breached.

For Windows 7 to succeed, it needed to do one thing swiftly and unquestionably: kick Vista to the curb. It did not have to be different from Windows as we had come to know it, to be better than Vista. It needed to be comfortable, almost from the first moment of its existence. Windows 7 met that goal. Windows 8 has a much steeper mountain to climb.

CIOs and managers who answer to CIOs attended the keynote sessions at the CeBIT conference in Hannover yesterday expecting Microsoft to explain to them, for the first time, where the business value in Windows 8 will come from. What they got may have been a bit of a shock: It was a demonstration of all the new Windows 8 features that Microsoft expects consumers to flock to in high numbers.

It was followed by this argument, by the company's Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Turner: Employees will be bringing devices into the workplace that run Windows 8, whether it wants them or not. Running Windows 8 will be as simple as plugging in a USB stick, even in a Windows 7 machine. So enterprises had better "get ahead" now, and embrace the wave rather than try to repel it.

As part of a carefully timed preview of the forthcoming Windows on ARM (WOA) operating system, which borrows the new "Metro-style" usage model from Windows 8, Microsoft released a video showing WOA running what were described as technical previews of four "Office 15" applications - Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. But the key question for which Desktop application developers have been seeking an answer may have been obscured: As Microsoft adopts a new usage model with elements gleaned from the "Metro" style, will Office be moving away from the ribbon? The first clips of the new Office in action deliberately obfuscate the answer.