There's plenty of great new stuff to discover in Microsoft's latest OS
The size of Windows 10 means that discovering its new features isn't necessarily as easy as it might seem. You could have been using the software for months and still not have noticed some of the best new features in it. Similarly, if you've not used Windows 10 at all you might not realise, based on screenshots alone, what the full extent of its capabilities are.
So whether you're a new Windows 10 user who wants to find out what's available, a potential one who wants an advance look at what's in there, or a seasoned pro who could do with a refresher, we've compiled this list of the best new features in Windows 10 to help you figure it all out.
The Start Menu
It's fair to say that if one thing can be credited with putting people off Windows 8, it was the removal of the Start Menu. In what amounts to Microsoft's biggest mea culpa ever, Windows 10 has restored the menu to its rightful position, even if it is amped up a little.
For instance, in the past the Start Menu held nothing more than links to desktop apps and documents. These days, it incorporates live tiles, which were Microsoft's big innovation for Windows 8, but which failed to convince users that they were better than the start menu. They weren't a bad idea, though - they display data and thumbnails from a program, replacing the generic, simple, static icon - and incorporating them into the start menu means getting the best of both worlds.
If you're not a fan, though, it's simple enough to turn them off, and if you unpin all of the Metro-interface apps from your start menu you're left with something pretty classic-looking. Likewise, if you're one of the few people who actually liked Windows 8, you can expand the start menu to fill the screen like the Metro interface. If nothing else, it seems like Microsoft has learnt the value of giving users some choice about their experience.
Windowed Metro Apps
Along similar lines, the apps developed for the Windows 8 Windows Store - the ones that used to launch directly on your Metro screen and take up the entire screen - have now been reworked so they launch in more classic application windows. It's all a lot more familiar, and a lot less obstructive to people who want to use their PC the way they want to.
This probably took quite a lot of work, especially now that apps resize and reorganise themselves to fit a window that changes size and shape, but it's for the best. If you used to ignore Metro apps completely, now you'll have a fun time discovering them in a less irritating way.
Cortana
A rival to the likes of Siri, Microsoft's digital assistant was launched on Windows Phone 8.1 and has made the jump to PCs as of Windows 10. Named after the computer from the Halo game series, Cortana is largely powered by Microsoft's search engine, Bing, but assumes a natural-language interface not present on the web.
Like Siri, Cortana can take requests for a variety of things, including creating and managing appointments, checking apps for information, and searching the web. If you want to see how it fares against the alternatives, we've compared it with Siri and OK Google elsewhere in this issue, but at the very least it's a fun toy and something that Windows can at least boast is keeping it up with the competition. Whether you end up using it or not, it's a good thing that it exists.
The Edge Browser
Theoretically Windows 10 has replaced Internet Explorer with its new browser, called The Edge Browser. Of course, Internet Explorer is still tucked away inside Windows 10 for compatibility purposes, but in theory you're not supposed to be using it.
Edge is a brand new web browser, which has been rebuilt from the bottom of its code base up for speed, smoothness and security. It uses a new rendering engine to load pages faster, and it integrates with Cortana to provide you extra information - like an automatic map of a restaurant's location when you visit their homepage, or Yelp reviews of an attraction. A digital inking function allows you to annotate sites and then share those annotations with others.
Best of all is the new 'reading view' - a minimalist, design-stripping approach to websites, which is common on mobile devices, is now transported to your desktop. If you're not familiar, it allows you to rid sites of flashy design elements and leave you with just the important stuff: the content. As far as we're concerned, that's a good thing that should probably be enabled permanently.
Whether or not Edge is as good as Firefox or Chrome remains to be seen, though. Certainly it hasn’t picked up many evangelists but, given the mess that Internet Explorer became, any change of direction has to be a good thing for Microsoft and the browser market at large.
Virtual Desktops
Windows' multi-monitor support has been rudimentary for years, but Windows 10 has significantly improved its multi-screen support with the addition of hundreds of new features and, for that matter, virtual desktops, which build the idea of a multi-screen interface into Windows on its most basic level.
Virtual desktops allow you to switch between different workspaces, all of which are running on one computer but independently. If you want to have one screen with your work on and one with your leisure, that's possible. If you want to spread multiple apps out so they're easier to read rather than tiled into lots of tiny windows, that's possible too. And if you want that second desktop to appear on another monitor, or switch between it on just one, you'd better believe it's possible.
Combine that with the new Task View and app switching functions, and Windows 10 is better than ever at managing programs, apps and workspaces. It’s been a feature missing from the OS for years, but now that it's here it's definitely one that's worth a look.
Action Centre
If you're used to using a smartphone or tablet then you'll probably be familiar with the idea of notifications and alerts sticking around so you can check back on them later or read them again if you missed them. It's a feature Windows has been sorely lacking over the years, and now it's finally caught up with the competition.
Notifications aren't new-Windows 8 had the kind of informative, non- interruptive, automatically-dismissed alerts we're thinking of - but the Windows Action Centre, which collates and compiles alerts, is absolutely new. The easily-accessible side panel also contains the ability to quickly enable and disable features like wi-fi, Bluetooth and tablet mode, sort of like you'd find on a smartphone. As with many of Windows 10's innovations, it's pulling from lots of different sources to come up with something that works better than all of them. For the most part, that's exactly what is succeeds in doing.
Windows 10 isn't perfect, but it's probably as close to it as Windows has come in some time. If you're on the fence about installing it, or unsure whether the time is right, we recommend it. It's been long enough since its initial release that any major problems should have come to light by now - and we're happy to say that, for us at least, none have.