The Windows 10 Review: The Old & New Face of Windows
by Brett Howse on August 25, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Operating Systems
- Microsoft
- Windows 10
Digital Inking gets a Promotion
Microsoft launched the Surface Pro with a Wacom stylus, and the Surface Pro 3 switched that up to a N-Trig model. Microsoft ended up buying the N-Trig pen technology outright, and they now offer pen support in the smaller, less expensive Surface 3 model.
They have had a good response to the stylus input support, and some of their first-party apps like OneNote and Fresh Paint have great stylus support. Using the rest of the operating system with the stylus was more for easier selection of items, and navigation. That is of course still there, but the stylus has gotten a big promotion in Windows 10.
With this release, the system now supports pen input for any text field. Let me say this again. Any text field now supports pen input. Even desktop apps like Skype can be written to with the stylus now, and that is a big change over previous versions of Windows.
And, the text support is really good. I have, well let’s be honest here, I have atrocious handwriting. Windows 10 consistently had no issues knowing what I was writing and getting the right word added. It also offers a text correction box so you can tap on a word to correct it if it wasn’t right, much like a touch keyboard offers.
Some 3rd party tools have tried to emulate this, but it is really hard to compete with built in tools, and this addition to Windows 10 really moves the operating system forward for anyone who loves to use a stylus as an input tool. Before, you had to use in in combination with the touch keyboard, but now you can drastically increase text input by using a pen.
If you look ahead, you can see that this may also be a big feature of Windows 10 Mobile, coming to smaller tablets and phones in the near future. This should be a nice benefit to those devices, and the rumblings are that the new flagship Windows 10 Mobile devices from Microsoft are going to come with stylus support.
To a big chunk of users, adding pen support as a first-class citizen may not seem like a big deal, but going forward it may end up as one of the differentiators for the platform. For those that do have a device with pen support already, you are going to find it to be a big change that is very welcome.
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Notmyusualid - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
I saw two of them in my PC. Promptly removed.yuhong - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Not most of them.ddriver - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
I remember back when the win 10 tech preview came out, and it was discovered to be riddled with spyware. Back then I remember them saying "well, that's tech preview, it needs to analyze itself to be improved, that won't be in the final release".Few months latter the final release is here, and the spyware is still all there.
WorldWithoutMadness - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link
It's kinda funny considering smartphone in general is also 'spyware'.Of course you can opt to turn the stuff off with the consquence of retardation in some features.
Same as win10 as well so I couldn't be bothered anymore since the guys behind my phone probably knows me better than I do.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link
Microsoft pushed out a telemetry update via Windows Update for 7, too, so if you didn't notice that, it has some of the reporting capabilities.chrome_slinky - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
I did, and hid it. Who knows how many more times I will have to do that, as Microshaft does not respect things like hiding updates any more.Flunk - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link
Most of the uproar about that is speculation, Microsoft claims they're not doing anything shady at all. Plus, Android and iOS BOTH do have similar agreements. If you're staying on Windows 7 to avoid spying you'd better also stop using your iPhone or Android Phone. Also, better stop using Google or any Google services because their EULA is actually much worse.baka_toroi - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link
It's not speculation. Network traces have been analyzed and they've shown the sheer amount of callback-to-the-mothership Win10 does. Worse of all: they can't be stopped, even if you deactivate the service. MS knows better than you what you want (or so they seem to think).It also doesn't help when they pay The Verge or some other crappy site to convince the masses spying on its users is OK because "Google already does that!" And I'm seriously thinking most of the people denying all this are paid shills, cause I seriously find it very hard to believe your reasoning against this is "MS said they're not doing anything shady." I mean, are you actually believing them? What do you think they're going to say? "Hey guys, yeah, it's true. We spy the shit out of y'all."
prophet001 - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link
^ ThisNotmyusualid - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link
Agreed: http://i.imgur.com/p2DYhbd.jpg