Windows 10: A whole new thing

It has been long since Microsoft introduced its next new OS as Windows 10. And while we are still months away from the launch, Microsoft has started an insider program, which enabled me to get my hands on the Windows 10 Technical Preview. While the developers claim it to be just a tiny rough subset of the actual OS, it actually got be quite hooked on it….

Why windows 10? What happened to Windows 9?

Microsoft wants a fresh start. Indeed they NEED a fresh start. After the large scale bad name Windows 8 gathered for it, it’s natural for them to distance their new OS from the present line up.

Windows 10 is actually different. A skip of 9 signifies a shift where people will not have to tackle unintuitive ways to tackle with their PC, like touch based UI for a Non-Touch Computer. The new OS will not just be a new edition of the same line of crap systems. Instead it will be a reboot. It will be something that understands the way people interact with their PC and adapt thereby. It is a whole new OS.

What’s New?

Start as we knew it

Open up Windows 10 and click that little windows logo on your taskbar. Behold! The old and familiar start menu that we had come to love and know until Windows 8 came along, is back.

The start menu features the best of both the worlds, handy old recent menu and new live tiles.

While Windows 8 brought a lot of real time activity to your start menu with the live tiles that constantly poured in useful information and notifications, the all-touch full screen UI was a bit of a nag. We do most of our works in Windows with a keyboard and mouse. Windows 8 start screen demanded a full screen focus, neglecting the multi-tasking wants of the users.

Windows 10 brings the best of both the worlds. The familiar start menu complete with the recent apps and all apps menu that shows all the apps in one list (alphabetically categorized…. No ends to perks it seems) is restored. While the other split side provides you with all the social bytes from the animated live tiles organized there. The Live Tiles can be arranged into separate groups, and those can be labeled (just like in Windows 8). Also a maximize button allows you to span the menu across whole screen, making a windows 8 start screen look-alike possible.

Windowed Windows

Windows 8 came with Windows store pre-bundled. The apps that came with it, had the same touch based philosophy behind Windows 8 start screen. They are beautifully made, with smart UI design but they took the focus of the whole screen. While that may provide greater workspace in finger operated operations, it was hardly conducive to multitasking.

Windows 10 rectifies this mistake and now the same modern apps open as windowed applications, with a maximize button allowing seamless transition to the full screen tablet mode. This is a welcome change, allowing us to sample the new aesthetic Microsoft is pushing for the next generation of Windows without sacrificing our entire display. These apps can now be dragged, resized and snapped to a certain part of your screen facilitating easy organized multitasking.

Features a recent window overlay and virtual desktop panel

Also a task view button is available in the taskbar that neatly lines up all the opened apps and windows, almost the same thing that the Alt+Tab key did in previous versions of windows. A black strip underneath it also enables us to add Virtual Desktops. That's a sort of private island that keeps everything you open there as an independent workspace. You can, for example, create one desktop for all of the applications you use for work, another to browse sites and yet another for games or whatever you want.

In Windows 10, you can press Ctrl+Windows key to jump between desktops, triggering a slick little sliding animation that was added in an October update to the Technical Preview. You can also right-click an app when you're in task view and select a specific desktop to move it to.

Continuum, One OS to rule them all

One of the strongest point of Windows 10 is actually one of the most sought after feature in windows community. It’s the feature of using a single unified OS for all platforms. Windows has a large user base, belonging to large hardware and platform variations. The problem is PC, tablet, phablet, phone, TV etc. all running a plethora of different flavors of windows. This greatly diminishes the intuitive sleek user experience that an OS should provide.

Xbox, Windows 10 and Continuum provide a seamless user experience

Enter Continuum. A feature that serves up a device-specific interface that'll scale from desktops down to tablets. Joe Belfiore, the Corporate Vice President, Operating Systems Group at Microsoft says,

“Windows 10 is built for screens from 4 to 80 inches”

Consider a two-in-one convertible device like the Surface Pro 3: pop it off its keyboard base, and a little prompt will pop up asking if you'd like to switch to "tablet mode." Press it, and the apps on your desktop will instantly transform into their full-screen, tablet incarnations -- this includes traditional Windows desktop apps, too. You'll be able to use all of the gestures you're accustomed to on a Windows tablet, and can switch back to the desktop by popping the device back onto its keyboard, or by pressing the "tablet mode" toggle button in the Windows 10 Action Center.

Windows 10 would thus be prevalentin PC, tablet, phablet, phones, TV, wearables and even your Xbox One as Xbox live will allow games from your console to be directly streamed to your PC.

Cortana

Remember the sexy yet powerful Artificially Intelligent agent, Cortana, from Halo? Microsoft had taken it up as its answer to Siri for quite some time now. Cortana gets an extensive work out on Windows 10. It’s far from being fully autonomous AI but it does an impeccable job as the windows virtual assistant. She's able to search for files on your PC, set reminders, and do more mundane things like tracking a flight or keeping an eye on the weather. Heck, she can even tell you some jokes.

Cortana gets to know you more and more as she looks through how you use your PC, and will show you relevant results even before you ask for it. If this sounds like a violation of privacy you can just tweak her preferences to make her look for certain things and ignore others you deem unfit for her to observe.

Cortana works as a Virtual Assistant and more

As Cortana gets to know you, it will reach out to you more authentically. Cortana's ability to parse natural language will only improve as millions of people (Microsoft hopes) start chatting with Cortana on their PCs, thanks to their free Windows 10 upgrade. This will improve the virtual assistant's functionality, allowing "her" to handle increasingly complicated conversational queries.

Calling up Cortana is easy. Just click the search bar in the taskbar alongside the start button, or tap the microphone, or just say "Hey, Cortana" (once you've turned that feature on), and you'll be greeted by Cortana.

IE 12?? No… This is SPARTA!!!

Project Spartan is light-weight, speedy and tailored to suit all next-gen browsing

After years of glitches, lags, unsupported features, bad formatting and shit load of internet jokes, Microsoft finally gave up on IE. Not that IE was actually a lost cause for its performance. IE 11 was actually faster than Chrome or Firefox, but bad name is hard to wash off and in this case impossible. So now, Microsoft has made that official by announcing that Project Spartan will be the new web browsing experience for Windows 10. The new browser will feature an all-new rendering engine, but beyond that Microsoft wanted to focus on three new features.

Chief among those new features is new inking support that lets users annotate web pages and sync all of those notes to OneDrive and share them with collaborators — a service that makes a ton of sense given Microsoft's focus on the stylus with its Surface lineup.

There's also a new reading mode that strips away the clutter of a page and makes it more like reading a book — it's a feature that Apple has offered for a while in Safari on both the Mac and on iOS devices, and we're definitely glad to see it make its way to another browser now.

Naturally, Cortana will be integrated into Project Spartan, as well. It'll pop up on relevant pages where Cortana can be useful.

Project Spartan would co-exist for some time with IE 11 for backward compatibility but is soon expected to replace it entirely.

Other gimmicks

There is an Action Centre introduced to the notification tray. All your notifications from various apps corral here organized according to time. There are also some quick tabs like Tablet mode, VPN, Wifi and Airplane mode tiled in here.

The Action Centre notifications can get quite cluttered

There's also a new Settings app, which attempts to corral all of the various things you can tweak into a single, searchable menu.

New Security features has everything in place to move the world away from the use of single factor authentication options, like passwords. It delivers robust data loss prevention right into the platform itself, and when it comes to online threats, such as malware, it’ll have a range of options to help enterprises protect against common causes of malware infection on PC’s.

A new separate Store is being created (still in beta) that is supposed to cater universal apps that'll exist on PCs and mobile devices.

OneDrive and OneNote is now more intimately wired up with the system and comes pre-installed and ready to go.

There has also been some changes to the look and feel of the UI. The old Aero theme is back. Also the windows title bar and program icons feature flat UI design.

Microsoft HoloLens, the future is supported

Bring everything from your screen on to your room

Microsoft HoloLens, together with Windows 10, introduces a powerful new holographic platform. The VR wireless headset allows users to work and play in their own environment instead of a PC screen, navigating through gestures, voice and your eyes. It’s an amazing piece of evolutionary technology. Oculus Rift already had already made VR a thing of everyday talk but with Hololens and Windows 10, this actually becomes productive. HoloLens needs a review of its own, and as I won’t be having one hand’s on anytime soon, the one by The Verge would be a nice piece to check out. Maybe I will air my views on it soon.

The headset is lightweight and wireless.

The Last Words

Microsoft has turned to a bold and interesting era with Windows 10. It isn’t going to fix everything, but it is just the way windows should have been all along.

Microsoft has got the right vision. It’s not just PCs they are catering anymore. Tablets and Smartphones have effectively got their foothold and now the gap must be bridged with a new OS. The goal is to offer a unified experience across devices of all shapes and sizes, and one that will morph to make sense: icons to tap and home screens when you're on a phone or tablet, but windowed apps and nested folders when you're armed with a keyboard and mouse.

Windows 8 had us thrown into the unknowns of the future without us being ready. Windows 10 lets us climb on its shoulder and gives a scenic ride to it. Microsoft is finally going places.

And we are happy for it.