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
Touch-Enabled Office Apps Arrive with Windows 10
When Windows 8 launched, Microsoft had built a touch-first version of their operating system, but they had not yet completed their touch-enabled version of their most popular productivity suite. In fact, in the almost three years between Windows 8 and Windows 10, Microsoft released Office on iOS first, and then Android, leaving their own platform as the only one without a touch-enabled version of Office. Finally, with Windows 10, Office Mobile is here.
These are, like practically all pieces of Windows 10, Windows Universal Apps, and therefore they are made to scale all the way from a phone to a large display desktop. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote are all available. The experience is very similar to how it looks on the other platforms, and Microsoft has done a nice job keeping the look and feel consistent across the different mobile operating systems.
I think most people are familiar with the Office trio of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and perhaps not quite as familiar with OneNote, but the mobile apps are surprisingly competent versions, and can likely easily replace the full Office suite for a lot of people. If you need some of the extra functionality like conditional formatting in Excel, or the ability to open password protected documents, you will need to go with the full version of Office, at least for now.
In pretty typical Microsoft fashion, the apps have been created to allow basic file reading, creation, and editing for free, but if you want to access all of the features you need to purchase an Office 365 subscription. There is a big caveat here though. This only applies to devices under 10.1 inches in screen diameter. Anything larger than this requires a subscription to gain access to edit, which is a pretty big concession. According to Microsoft, they want to keep the free capabilities available for devices that are mostly used with touch, and the Office team feels this cut-off is 10.1 inches. Amazingly, the same company also sells a consumer version of their tablet line, the Surface 3, which is a 10.8 inch device and therefore over the cut-off. They do sell it with a one year subscription, but it’s a rather odd way to market the new Office Mobile apps.
There is also a new piece to the Office puzzle, which is called Sway. Luckily, like OneNote, Sway is free for all users. So what is Sway? It is an interactive storytelling app, and it lets you easily add some text and media, and it will create a sway for you. It’s very much a cloud based app, and you can share links to your sway to view or edit. Think of it like a simpler version of PowerPoint. Here is a sway as an example of what it can do.
OneNote is of course back, and this is Microsoft’s app which lets you do a lot more than just take notes. The touch version is changed from Windows 8, and it now fits in with the theme of the other Office Mobile apps. Fans of the Windows 8 version’s radial menu will be disappointed though since that has gotten the axe.
I think the capabilities of these apps are going to improve over time, but it is unlikely they will ever offer the full functionality of the desktop version of Office. They are targeted towards a different set of needs. It was certainly one of the key missing pieces of the Windows 8 era, so it is great that they have made their debut with Windows 10. Only OneNote is installed out of the box, and the other apps can be found in the store.
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Brett Howse - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
If you are talking about Family Safety, it needs to explicitly be turned on, and it's been there since Vista. And, when you log in, there is a prompt every time letting you know the account is monitored with family safety. This is not new to Windows 10.jameskatt - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
Privacy is a concern. After all, Microsoft IS STORING your data on its servers. And it can EXTRACT THAT DATA in order to send you reports about activities on your computers.So OBVIOUSLY, someone else can gain access to that data - for example the GOVERNMENT, THE NSA, THE FBI, THE POLICE, HACKERS, LAWYERS, etc. Anyone who wants data on you can obtain it straight from Microsoft. Microsoft has built the ultimate tracking system into Windows 10.
Notmyusualid - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
I completely agree.name99 - Saturday, August 29, 2015 - link
Shorter Brett (and a million other MS fans):"a thousand bugs, limitations, restrictions, and not yet implemented features that, on an Apple OS would be considered utterly unacceptable, are just fine in this context because it's MS'.
I'm glad that MS has (finally) stepped up its game to some extent --- for example I hope the WiFi Sense stuff puts pressure on Apple to get its act together in this area --- but, come on, you know I am right about. Every damn page contains an apology for some problem or other with the OS. MS released this WAYYYY too soon; and unlike Apple they don't even have the excuse that "oh, we had to do it to hit our hardware dates" (an excuse that is wearing very thin with Apple, and if they can't release iOS 9 and OSX 10.11 essentially bug-free, I think it's time to decouple the OS releases from the new phone hardware, starting next year).
Vinchent - Saturday, August 29, 2015 - link
I think that the key words for Windows 10 are redundancy and inconsistency. Ok, I've installed the new OS over W8 a couple of weeks ago, so it's a bit early to judge any OS whatsover but ""A good beginning makes a good ending".Dear Microsoft, we don't want apps. Do you get it? No apps on desktop machines. By now, 99% of desktop users use their PC only to work or play.
We don't e won't use Cortana, we are faster by using mouse+keyboard.
We will never open an app, we just use the browser for almost anything.
We just use Edge to download Chrome (or whatever). Yeah it's good, but it's too late now.
We are not happy with having 2 Control panels. 99% of the time, if we want to set things up, we will use the classic tools, which are way more powerful.
My dream? When I install the new W10 I'd like to have just 2 options: Baby mode (with apps, cortana, edge) and classic mode (no apps, no redundancy, no garbage).
Ignatzz - Saturday, August 29, 2015 - link
So how come everybody I know who's upgraded thinks Windows 10 stinks? As for me, it just won't upgrade - it fails every time.But there's also this:
"Windows 7 is used by hundreds of millions of people, but its touch support is practically zero."
Maybe that means there's still a large market for no touch screen. Speaking for myself, I see why you'd want touch screen on a computer that you carry with you, but I have zero interest in it for a home computer. The keyboard simply works better, and getting rid of it offers no real advantage.
Ignatzz - Saturday, August 29, 2015 - link
I've often said that Windows does a good job with every OTHER operation system. XP was good, Vista was lousy. Windows 7 was good. Windows 8 was lousy.By going from 8 right to 10, they seem to have skipped the good one.
jabber - Saturday, August 29, 2015 - link
Oh anyone who uses the term 'M$' loses all credibility instantly.Be a little more original please. Otherwise you look like 'new kid on the internet'.
cjcox - Monday, August 31, 2015 - link
Article was a bit too "pro Microsoft" without pointing out all of the losses of feature / functionality, especially vs. Windows 7. I know we had to put the Zune software onto our Windows 10 because of all the features lacking in Groove. And the Zune software isn't supported anymore, but still the only full featured product that Microsoft made. Oh well. Microsoft continues to take many steps backwards... hard to figure out what their end goal is. So... Microsoft 10 adds features you likely don't care about, didn't ask for and removes many things you used to use. That's a better summary review.cjs150 - Tuesday, September 1, 2015 - link
cjcox: Having used w10 for several weeks now, I completely agree about Groove - I went back to Windows Media Player.There are good points and bad points in w10 (multiple desktops good, new start menu bad), but it feels slightly faster than w8.1 on my NUC