Windows 8.1: A Visual Tour

Your IT career has been an odyssey from server jockey to architect to having the C-suite in your sights. You can't help but see the parallel in how end-user computing's evolved from clunky beige CRT monitors to laptops to ultrabooks.

You've made a big data plan, calmly explained why the sales manager can't carry the complete customer database around on his personal iPhone, and managed through zero-based budgets and the public cloud go-go days.

Somewhere along the line, you've let an operating system or two rub off on you. The question is: Which one? Take our quiz to find out.

1. What are you wearing right now?
a. Collared shirt and chinos
b. An ironic Woot tee and cargo shorts
c. Why do you want to know?

2. What's your favorite HBO series of all time?
a. Curb Your Enthusiasm
b. True Blood
c. What's HBO? Host Bus Optimizer?

3. What music are you listening to now?
a. Michael Bublé on Pandora
b. Daft Punk on Spotify
c. C418 on a Tor stream

4. Who is your favorite superhero?
a. Captain America
b. Green Lantern
c. Loki

5. What's your top fantasy book?
a. Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets
b. Game of Thrones
c. Watchmen

6. What's your favorite vacation spot?
a. Branson
b. Austin
c. Thailand. And none of your business.

Figure 1: Image credit: Sticky Comics

7. What are your drinks of choice?
a. Bud Light mostly, a nice Merlot on special occasions
b. SBux vegan soy latte, maybe a Shaken Iced Passion Tea Lemonade if I'm feeling frisky
c. Red Bull with a side shot of Jack. Mountain Dew if it's close to bedtime

8. What's the last thing you do before going to sleep?
a. Brush and floss my teeth thoroughly
b. Hatha yoga and meditate on the oneness of all things
c. Set up some tripwires and tack a blanket over the window to keep the sunlight out

9. Which element are you?
a. Gold
b. Helium
c. Unobtanium

10. What do you drive?
a. Ford F150
b. Toyota Prius
c. My bike

11. What's the biggest injustice in the past 20 years?
a. The iPad
b. Bush v. Gore
c. Token Ring

12. What keeps you awake at night?
a. The iPad
b. Planned obsolescence
c. Red pill or blue pill?

See page two to see the truth about your OS type.

If you answered mostly:

A = Windows: You're popular with business colleagues, who find your lack of full-arm tattoos and multiple piercings comforting. You like mom, software patents, and apple pie. Not necessarily in that order.

B = You're OS X: You're reliable and well-liked by most business colleagues. It wasn't always that way, but since iOS hit, your stock has risen. You can be counted on to deliver hummus, fair-trade coffee, and back issues of Mother Jones to the Save the Orcas group camped out near your loft.

C = You're Linux: Independent and self-reliant, you're happiest crafting scripts or hacking together apps to get work done. However, you also think the NSA is always watching and have been known to miss work after a particularly wild night of cosplay. Business colleagues live in fear of you, and that's the way you like it.

If your answers were mixed, you're likely Chrome OS: Post-modern, you live in the cloud and think fat OSes are for suckers. Business users would be in awe of you -- if they ever met you, which they haven't. You travel light, evolve fast, and plan to live forever because you're untethered from the corporeal plane.

Thanks for taking our quiz. Now help us shape future OS coverage. Tell us in the comments section below what aspects of Windows 8.1 you are most interested in learning more about. Also, do we give enough space to your preferred OS?

Engage with Oracle president Mark Hurd, Box founder Aaron Levie, UPMC CIO Dan Drawbaugh, GE Power CIO Jim Fowler, former Netflix cloud architect Adrian Cockcroft, and other leaders of the Digital Business movement at the InformationWeek Conference and Elite 100 Awards Ceremony, to be held in conjunction with Interop in Las Vegas, March 31 to April 1, 2014. See the full agenda here.