Nvidia Kal-El tablet running Windows 8 developer build (exclusive hands-on video)

Well, talk about being in the right place at the right time: We just ran into VP of Windows Planning Michael Angiulo at the Nvidia booth, who was kind enough to snatch that quad-core Kal-El tablet from its glass cage and let us play a bit with Windows 8 on ARM. We’ll admit, it wasn’t a very in-depth demo, but we were able to see snappy transitions between the Desktop and Metro interfaces. Even better, scrolling on the Start screen was nearly as smooth as that on the Samsung Core i5 developer tablet. You’ll see in the video below, he was able to swipe through open apps as well as open Windows Explorer. It’s really the first live demo we’ve seen of Windows on ARM as well as NVIDIA’s quad-core Kal-El, and while the tablet we saw certainly isn’t ready for primetime, the progress we’re seeing here suggests that Microsoft’s initial reluctance to show ARM running Windows 8 isn’t necessarily about performance. Hit the break to see a short video and some hands-on pictures.