Windows 10 has more to it than meets the eye...
Windows 10 is a surprisingly secretive operating system. Considering it looks a lot like Windows 8, you might be surprised to learn about all the things it does different under the hood. Some of these things are good, some you might think are bad - but Microsoft, perhaps not surprisingly, didn't go to great lengths to make it clear which are which.
That's where we can step in, though, because we've got all you need to know about the hidden machinery of Windows right here. What's it doing? What's it not doing? And why should you care?
P2P Update Distribution
For more than a decade now, peer-to-peer (P2P) file transfers have been the go-to choice of pirates everywhere. In a way, that makes sense: the technology is robust and durable, and the wider the user base the lower the burden on everyone. It's hardly a surprise, then, that Windows 10 has its own P2P functionality built in.
Oh, didn't you realise? Well, it's not like Microsoft wanted it to be too obvious. This isn’t because it's useful for piracy (it's not), but because they'd prefer that you switched it on when you installed Windows and then left it that way.
The Windows P2P network is there so your computer can receive updates, patches, and Windows Store downloads from a distributed source - everyone else's Windows 10 computers - rather than solely from Microsoft's own servers. In theory, that's great: the downloads you're getting should happen a lot faster, they shouldn't become unavailable if the server has a heavy load or goes down, and if any one copy gets attacked or altered the rest of the copies will be able to verify it.
Of course, it also means that once you have the software that's being distributed, you have to upload copies of it too. That can be a problem, especially if you're on a slow Internet connection that's already using a lot of bandwidth, or have metered data. You won't notice Windows is using your connection - you'll just notice that the speed has dropped, or that your video starts stuttering, or worse still, that you reach your data cap more quickly than expected. Luckily, if the Windows P2P network is enabled, it's a simple matter to disable it. The problem is that you may not be aware whether it is or isn't running!
To switch it off, click on Start > Settings > Update & Security then 'Advanced Options'. Here, click on 'Choose how updates are delivered and you should find yourself looking at a window with the heading 'Updates from more than one place'. This, as it explains, downloads Windows Updates and purchases from the Microsoft Store from other people's PCs - and may also send data to other systems.
To disable it, just make sure the option is switched to 'off'. If you want it enabled, it's also possible to restrict sharing to just your local network, which is a decent halfway implementation. It means you'll share files to and from computers using your LAN connection, but never over the Internet. If you’ve only got one system there's no value in this option, but if you're on a large work or education network, it's worth having it active.
Once that switch is flicked, you'll never have to use your Internet connection to do Microsoft's dirty work again!
Why Not 9?
The announcement that the version of Windows following version 8.1 would be called Windows 10 caught a few people by surprise. It's not the first time Windows has screwed around with its version numbers - Windows 7 and Windows 8 had version numbers of 6.1 and 6.2 respectively - but there doesn't seem to be any obvious advantage to skipping Windows 9.
If you're not a software engineer, you've probably chalked this up to some marketing gimmick. After all, Microsoft has the 'X' stitched up in DirectX and the Xbox, maybe they wanted the opportunity of a Windows X brand as well. However, as much sense as that makes, it's not actually the case.
The reason is simple, and it dates back all the way to Windows 95 and its successor, Windows 98. Since those two operating systems were very similar, some software engineers made the choice to not check which version of Windows they were running on. It didn't matter if they were on Windows 95 or Windows 98, because whatever happened next would be the same. For that reason, a large number of programs only check whether the windows version reported starts with a 9.
Having read that, you can probably figure the rest out yourself: if Windows 9 had been used as the name for the new OS, a fair number of old programs could have been prone to getting confused when checking the version number - because it would spot the '9', not check whether there was a 5, 8 or nothing after it, and then think it was running on an operating system 20 years older than the one it actually was.
Faced with potential backlash from organisations that run on legacy software, Microsoft decided they could just as easily skip 9 and go straight to 10.At least, that's the rumour from those who have contacts within Microsoft's engineering department and reported in various reports. It's possible, of course, that it was just marketing guff. Either way, what's in a name?
Cortana Commands
Microsoft's new Windows voice-assistant Cortana is a digital persona to rival Apple's Siri - but like Siri, it's kind of hard to get it to do what you want unless you know the right words to use. Simple questions that it can plug into a search engine are easy to work with - but what if you want something that requires a little extra context?
Perhaps because they think people should be able to interact with Cortana using natural language, Microsoft is a little shy about giving people a definitive list of Cortana commands. We do have few that should get your started, though - and if you're wondering how Cortana compares to the competition, we've got that covered elsewhere in this issue.
What's the weather like?
If you have location services enabled, Cortana will check Microsoft's weather app and give you a summary. You can also add 'in [location]' to get details for somewhere else in the world.
What's on my schedule?
If you use Outlook's calendar of the built-in Windows 10 calendar app to run your life, this command will tell you what's going on in the immediate future. If you use Google Calendar it is possible to sync the information so Cortana can tell you, but you can't use it to add new events.
Show me directions to [location]
Again, if you have location services enabled you can use Cortana to get directions from where you are now to somewhere else. It can also tell you travel time. The only downside is that it defaults to using Bing's mapping service; while you can switch services, in theory, none of the big-name contenders - the ones you'd actually want to use, like Google Maps - actually have Cortana-compatible apps in the Windows Store.
Set a Reminder/Alarm
Reminders and alarms can integrate with the Outlook calendar, but they also work as a standalone function. Here, Cortana will pop up an alert that's especially useful for short-term notifications if you're worried you'll get distracted.
Define [any word]
Get a definition of a word directly to your search area.
Xbox One Streaming
After years of flirting with Xbox integration, Windows 10 has finally managed it to a reasonable extent. The operating system's Xbox One streaming features allow you to play a game off your console from anywhere on your home network, so you don't have to hog the TV if you want to play, and, if you prefer the keyboard and mouse to the game controller, you've now got the option to use it. You need...
• An Xbox One with streaming enabled in the Settings menu
• A Windows 10 PC
• To be signed into the Xbox app with the same gamertag you use on the console.
• Both devices to be on the same Local Area Network, using either Ethernet or Wireless N/AC.
To enable streaming on the Xbox One, enter the settings and in preferences tick 'Allow game streaming to other devices' and then enable the smartglass connection 'From any SmartGlass device'. Leave your device active.
Now, on your Windows PC, sign into the Xbox App and click 'connect' on the left hand side. The software should find your Xbox One console (the default name is MyXboxOne, but you may have changed this already). When you've selected the console, you'll see the option to control it remotely, including launching apps and controlling media.
If you select 'Stream' from the top of the window, you'll be given the option to launch a game. Click 'Play from console'. You'll now be able to control the game from your Windows PC.
Of course, that's not necessarily the secret thing about this process. What's really secret is that you can hack in an extra option to improve the streaming quality. The default options are found in Settings > Game Streaming, and you can access high, medium and low settings. Perhaps because it had problems on slower networks, Microsoft removed the 'very high' option - but if you think your hardware's up to it, you can put it back by using the following four-step process:
• Open file explorer and navigate to C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.XboxApp_######\LocalState (the # symbols will be replaced with an actual number on your system.)
• Right-click on 'userconsoledata' and open it in notepad, or another simple text editor.
• Find the 'IslnternalPreview' value and change it from 'false' to 'true'
• When you next look at the streaming quality section, you should find that it has the 'very high' option enabled. If not, try rebooting your PC and checking again.
Be careful, though - if you break the 'userconsoledata' file your Xbox App might stop working, so keep a backup copy of it before you make and save any changes!
Privacy Settings
Windows 10's privacy issues have taken such a beating in the media that it's hard to imagine you don't know about them on some level. Obviously Microsoft has downplayed quite how closely Windows is watching what you're doing on the basis that it improves the Windows experience and is (notionally) a safe thing to do. But if you'd like to make an informed decision, here's what you need to think about.
The first thing is that Windows 10 tracks a lot of your details without you even realising. There are things you might expect to be tracked by your operating system, such as what programs you run often and what websites you visit - but it goes a lot further than that, and it's much more granular that you're probably thinking.
For example, Windows 10 can store data about how you type. Things like the speed, the number of times you press delete, whether you use keyboard shortcuts or not - this data is aggregated and can be used by Microsoft to better the Windows experience. It's not particularly harmful data, but it's slightly sinister in that it's opt-out, rather than opt-in.
Worse still is that there are more things being tracked that you might not want shared with anyone who might one day intercept the data, from the online purchases you make to the locations you travel to. You can turn off a lot of these personalised tracking options by looking in the Start > Settings > Privacy section and disabling anything that doesn't look immediately useful to you. As we say, the problem isn't so much that Windows wants to collect these things - it's that it collects them without asking your permission first. At the very least, we recommend that you disable the Advertising tracking ID, because like Google, that’s what Windows uses to build up a profile that stitches together everything about who you are and what you like. Without that information to sell to advertisers, the data that's being collected is a lot more anonymous - and therefore less interesting to everyone.
Hopefully that's given you some idea of what's going on underneath Windows 10's shiny, cost-free, exterior and given you some idea about what you can do, why you can do it, and whether or not it affects you. And if you're looking for some more ways to tweak and improve Windows, head over to our Windows 10 Tips & Tricks article.