The IT Nerd

This week has been a slow week in the tech space. However that changed today because Microsoft has announced details of Windows 10. Let me hit the highlights:

• It’s going to be free. You read that correctly. Updates in the first year for Windows 7, 8.1 and even Windows Phone 8.1 users will be free. That’s sort of like what Apple has been doing for some time with OS X. And it helps them to get quick adoption of their OSes.
• Windows Siri like assistant Cortana will be baked into the OS and it doesn’t matter if you’re on a desktop, tablet, or phone. And it’s been enhanced to be everywhere in everything that you do.
• If you have a Windows 10 desktop and a Windows 10 tablet or phone, you’ll be able to unify the user experience across them. MS Office apps under Windows 10 will automatically sync your place so each time you zoom in on your calendar or flag an email or pick some photos to look at, those actions will be reflected on your other devices as well. OS X Yosemite users may not be impressed by this as they have had a flavor of this feature for months now.
• Internet Explorer is dead. In its place is the Spartan browser. At least that is what it is codenamed. You can take notes by drawing onto the browser. You can rearrange web view to make them easier to read. And Cortana even works in the browser.
• If you happen to have an Xbox One in your house, you’ll be able to stream games to a Windows 10 device. Not only that. There’s going to be an Xbox app. It will let you do things like interact with the Activity Feed, right from your desktop, laptop or tablet. It can list Xbox and Steam games alongside each other. Finally there is a game DVR feature that lets you capture and edit footage on your Windows 10 device in similar fashion to what can already be done on the Xbox One.
• Microsoft is jumping into the virtual reality game with something called Hololens. They are Holographic Glasses that include a CPU, a GPU, and something Microsoft is calling a Holographic Processor. The latter is a big deal for Microsoft as they’re calling it “the next PC.” Cue the cynics. It will ship around the time Windows 10 hits the streets.
• On top of showing off Windows 10 today, Microsoft showed off the Surface Hub. It’s a 84″ 4K TV that includes an all-in-one PC-come-display that is fully-loaded with sensors, WiFi, a mic, camera and Skype for Business. Clearly this is the net result of Microsoft’s purchase of Perspective Pixel a while back. It’s likely aimed at businesses, but it’s a safe bet that someone will buy it for their home to impress the neighbors.

There’s a lot here. So let me make life easy for you and link you to a blog entry on the Windows Blog.

This entry was posted on January 21, 2015 at 4:04 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.