Chances are you may have seen the little ‘Get Windows 10’ icon in your taskbar. You may be asking ‘Is this a scam? They’re saying I will get it for free!’ No it is not a scam; you will, in fact, get Windows 10 for free if you are currently using Windows 7 or 8/8.1.
What are the benefits though? Many are not pleased with the way Windows 8 turned out and are not terribly excited about 10 for that very reason. Your feelings about Windows 10 are up to you, but let’s highlight some of the changes and key features of this new flavor.
Hybrid Start Menu – One of the biggest complaints about Windows 8 is that the Start menu changed too much. Instead of the menu list that we are all used to being there, we were greeted by all these crazy ‘tiles’ upon clicking the Start button. Windows 10 is rolling that back a notch and giving us the best of both worlds. Now when the Start button is clicked you will see an actual menu and not be whisked away to another screen. This menu will provide a list similar to the Windows 7 Start alongside the tiles that Windows 8 introduced. It’s a bit more subtle than Windows 8/8.1 and should be a bit more user friendly.
Modern App Integration – Another thing that threw people off about 8 is that it had these new apps that y couldn’t use on our comfortable ‘classic’ desktop. These still exist, but they’ve been tweaked a bit to be able to operate in a window on the desktop view so one can still multitask AND use the new apps.
Cortana – Many of us are familiar with Apple’s Siri and Google Now, but what if you could have something like that on your computer? Cortana is Microsoft’s answer to those services and is pretty neat. You can use voice commands or typed commands to find things on your computer or on the internet. Cortana will even respond to requests for jokes or other info much like Siri.
This post provided by Adam Kobler of Kataku Technology
Contact him at
adamk@katakucomputersupport.com
612-643-1011
