 Hey guys, this is Tom Warren with The Verge and we're looking at Windows Blue which is basically the upgrade to Windows 8. So it's a new version of Windows and from the lock screen and sign in pages you won't notice a whole host of changes. Now if we start to look at the start screen you'll start to see some additions. Swiping through the tiles is pretty much identical to Windows 8 but if we go back and pick out one of the live tiles you'll see we're presented with some options to resize this to a smaller one that's pretty much identical to the small live tiles found in Windows Phone 8. You can edit the tile sizes for all apps and there are large, medium and small options available. However, the desktop tile also has an extra large mode too, it's the only tile that can be increased to this size. Microsoft has also tweaked the way that you arrange live tiles on the start screen, moving away from the drag down on the tile movement towards the customise button that then lets you move tiles around and also name the groups of tiles as you please. We suspect this is probably to prevent accidental movements of the new smaller live tiles. There's not a whole host of new gestures here but one addition is the ability to swipe up on the start screen to present the all apps view. The view is identical to Windows 8 but is simply more easily accessible. You'll notice we're using the default colour options here but Microsoft has added the personalisation options into the settings charm for the start screen. There's background wallpaper, background colour and even accent options and you'll notice that it's fairly easy to pick between all of them. The colour options are a lot different to Windows 8, allowing you to pick a number of different shades and the accent colour will alter the colours that you see on the start button and elsewhere in the operating system. There's also a lot of changes in the PC settings options within the start screen. Microsoft now includes frequently changed settings in the landing page, providing quick access to regular settings. Lock screen settings also include a reference to a new picture frame option for photos and an option to enable camera access on the lock screen. Microsoft has also extended the settings to include access to display options and you can set the resolution, orientation and number of displays here without jumping into desktop mode. There's also the ability to change some of the touch preferences. Moving on to account settings, there's not much to see here beyond the regular options and a sync section that's not currently in use. A new addition to the settings section is SkyDrive. It appears that Microsoft is integrating SkyDrive even more into Windows with Blue. There are options to backup devices to SkyDrive and control how they're stored and there's even automatic uploads of pictures and videos taken with the camera and that's an option that's very similar to a Windows phone. Moving on to the privacy section, you'll notice that you can change location preferences and have really granular options on privacy here. The devices section has been improved to include access to add and remove devices and autoplay options. And a network section has also been added which lets you toggle connections very easily and you can also add in VPN settings. There's also access to network options including proxy settings and home group management. Finally there's also a new app section that lets you control a new setting for quiet hours to ensure notifications don't trigger at certain times. You can also control individual app notifications and there's even the ability to view app sizes to see which applications are taking up the most storage space. There's also a new settings panel to change the app defaults to control how files are opened. Overall the settings are greatly improved from Windows 8 and it should prevent people from having to go into desktop mode more often. In terms of new apps there's clearly an alarms app that Microsoft is working on. This application lets you add multiple alarms and it includes a neat looking radial menu to select the hours and minutes. There are options to control when the alarm repeats and the sounds but overall it's fairly basic right now. Next up there's also a calculator app and this includes the standard calculator that works as you'd expect. There's also a scientific version but Microsoft's also including a converter option to quickly convert a variety of options including volume, length and weight. There's also a basic sound recording app that lets you record audio from a microphone and then share it to other applications. So you can see here you can share it to SkyDrive and Mail but we'd expect other apps will be able to support that in future. The final built in app addition is Movie Moments. This appears to be a Windows Movie Maker replacement. It's fairly basic right now but you can add captions into videos very easily and the results are processed and then saved into the pictures library. You'll see that the end result of the video is extremely basic but we'd expect that Microsoft's actually improving this quite rapidly. Although there aren't any other additional applications at the moment in Windows Blue, Microsoft is also making changes to its existing ones elsewhere. Internet Explorer has some minor changes that hint at further improvements for Blue as a whole. You can see that the layout is pretty much identical to the Windows 8 version with a settings menu and pin options but on the tab section which can be found at the very top, there's also a new Sync Tabs option. We expect that Microsoft is building in tab sync functionality for Windows Blue itself but it could also expand this to Windows Phone Blue in the future to make Internet Explorer more like Google's Chrome browser. The internet options here are fairly unchanged so it's only tab sync that's a new addition. Now this version of Internet Explorer in Windows Blue is actually Internet Explorer 11 and you can see that if we switch to the desktop version that that's available in the about screen. As for other changes in Windows Blue, it looks like Microsoft is working on a shutdown screen that's similar to Windows Phone and the company has also developed new snap views. By default, apps will snap into a 50-50 view which will basically allow you to open up two apps directly alongside each other. You can then drag apps to the snap view on the side and on higher resolutions, you'll actually be able to drag as many as three or four apps alongside each other. There's also improvements to the charm options in Windows Blue. If we bring up Internet Explorer and try to share a page, you'll notice that there are options to share a screenshot of Internet Explorer or simply link to the page. Now the same applies for other charms. While the search charm hasn't been updated to include improved search just yet, the device's charm shows new options when you're attempting to play music or video. The charm has been updated to include a play option which we suspect is the normal play to option that lets you play content to Xbox and other devices and there's also the usual print and then quick access to projector options. Finally we also noticed that Microsoft has tweaked its keyboard layout making it easier to access the number keys by holding down and swiping up. And that was a quick look at Windows Blue which we're expecting to be made available as an upgrade to Windows 8 later this year.