Windows 10 new features

Early this week Microsoft gave us a further look of some new features in the next version of Windows known as Windows 10. Here are some brief highlights.

Free Upgrade
In a nod to Apples OSX upgrade policy, Microsoft will be making Windows 10 a free upgrade to users of Windows 7 and 8 in the first year. This is a very good move on Microsoft’s part as it gives users a compelling reason to upgrade to the latest version. Having people on the latest version of the operating system means you have to spend less time trying to fix bugs in older versions and can devote greater resources to the latest version. We have seen this work for Apple in both the desktop and mobile space.

Start Menu is Staying.
One of the largest complaints about Windows 8 was the lack of a start menu. Microsoft tried to force everyone to it’s new interface that would work for both desktop and mobile devices. While the idea was good in theory it failed to take into account that users once locked into their habits will be very resistant to change.
This very quickly became a bit of a PR nightmare for Microsoft as despite the many good things that Windows 8 brought, everyone was focused on this one bad bit of design. Microsoft has now ‘seen the light’ and will have the start menu again available.

Control panel / UI PC Settings merged back.
Another annoyance that many users had was the splitting of Control Panel options and PC related options into two completely separate locations. This increased the frustration users migrating from Windows XP or 7 had with windows 8

Cortana is moving to the desktop.
Cortana is Microsoft’s take on Apple’s Siri, a digital assistant which uses voice recognition to help you with search and similar tasks. It has proven to be quite popular among users of Windows phones and this move is a logical progression on Microsoft’s roadmap for windows.

A new browser.
Perhaps knowing that keeping the Internet Explorer name is not a good idea considering the many security issues the browser had, MS is releasing a re-written browser called Spartan. The browser sports a very clean design with a new rendering engine as well as Cortana integration. Spartan also features an updated version of Reading mode, which was first introduced with Internet Explorer bundled with Windows 8. Reading mode allows a much better reading experience by stripping away all extra content on a web-page and leaving just the text you want to read. Users of Evernote Clearly or Readability will see the similarities.

Universal Apps.
For those who have Windows 10 computer and a Windows 10 phone, all Office apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook will be rewritten as universal apps. This will allow you to have a ‘seamless’ experience across your devices. For example you could start a Word document on your Windows 10 phone and then via Skydrive storing the file you could move to your PC running Windows 10 to continue working on the document. This is a great feature providing your have all your devices running on Windows 10.

Continuum Mode.
Windows 10 will detect if you are using a tablet with an attached keyboard. If you detach the keyboard it will make some adjustments to put the device in ‘tablet’ mode. Making this work seamlessly will be an import issue for users with these sorts of devices.

Xbox Integration.
If you own an Xbox one there will be much greater integration with Windows 10. The ability to stream content from your PC to your Xbox one running on a big TV was one feature mentioned.

Release Date.
Still up in the air, I would predict mid 2015.

Final Thoughts.
Overall I have to admit I’m impressed with what Microsoft is doing of late. They are in the non enviable space of trying to appease newer users who expect innovation and a huge existing base of users and enterprises who do not want to see much difference in what they have been using. If Windows 10 pans out as MS expects it can certainly help the company moving forward. I plan to try some of the pre release build to see if the experience lives up to the hype. Don’t count them out quite yet.