5 Windows 10 Features We Cant Wait to Use
Microsoft will release Windows 10 as a free upgrade on July 29, introducing a host of new features for Windows users. Here are five stand out features that can't come soon enough, The Start Menu  It's the little things that count. In Windows 8, Microsoft banished the start menu from the start screen, bewildering users with a sprawl of "live tiles" for launching apps. In Windows 10, the start menu will make a grand re-entry into the left-hand corner of the screen, albeit with a few clever tweaks. The live tiles for launching apps will now appear as an embedded column in the start menu. An embedded search bar makes it easier to surface lesser-used apps. Cortana  Microsoft's personal digital assistant will feel familiar to anyone who regularly gives commands to Siri or Google Now, with one essential difference Cortana will be baked into your desktop. As a result, Cortana can conduct a single search across your hard drive, as well as the cloud and the web, bundling the results into a single pop-up menu. Microsoft Edge  Microsoft's new web browser draws its name from a graphic rendering engine, the Edge, which uploads web pages at much zippier speeds than its aging predecessor, Internet Explorer. A smarter Bing-powered search, built into the address bar, draws results directly from the web as you're typing. Weather forecasts, for instance, automatically appear in a pop-up menu below the address bar. Expand that predictive search to stores, restaurants and other items of interest, and it could circumvent the need to visit Google's search page entirely. Continuum  Windows 10 will automatically detect a screen size of any device and tailor the display accordingly in a new screen-sensing feature called "continuum." Connect a PowerPoint demonstration on a smartphone to a large screen display, and the view will automatically switch to desktop mode. Like that, the phone can offer a PC experience, blurring the line between what can be done on various devices. Universal Apps  Microsoft could finally end its app drought with the introduction of a unified code that works across desktops, tablets and smartphones. A new code base makes it easier for iPhone and Android developers to transfer their code into the Windows ecosystem, rapidly filling in the gaps in the Windows Store. A preview of the next generation of Microsoft Office apps showed how Microsoft had managed to pack more desktop features into smartphones and tablets by giving the interface a thumb-friendly redesign.