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
Changing the Way You Interact With Your PC: Meet Cortana
Digital personal assistants have graced our smartphones for a couple of years now. Traditionally, computers reacted to specific commands. Double click to open calendar. Select tomorrow. Right click. New. Reminder. Meeting about mortgage. At the bank. 3pm. Save. It’s the way it has always been, because as fast as computers are at certain tasks, they don’t speak any languages other than the commands that they know. Google Now, Siri, and Cortana on Windows Phone have allowed us a glimpse at natural language input on mobile devices, Microsoft is extending that functionality to all Windows 10 PCs with Cortana now available on the PC as well..
“Hey Cortana, remind me to go to the bank at 3pm tomorrow for my mortgage”
There is nothing you can do with Cortana that you could not have done manually yourself, but the goal of these digital assistants is to make certain tasks easier. At the moment, Cortana is certainly not an AI being, and as such, is still limited in what commands are possible. Anything that falls outside of the features of Cortana end up in a web search. For a full list of commands, ask Cortana for help and a list will appear. Cortana is able to do contextual searches and replies too, and can respond to follow up questions without having to restate the original question again.
You can use Cortana to search for what music is playing, track your flights, set appointments, give directions, and more. Over time, this will also expand to offer more functionality.
Cortana will of course respond to speech inputs, and can even be set to always be listening for Hey Cortana much like you see on smartphones these days, but it is also just as capable with text based input, and it is smart enough to know that if you talk to it, it can reply in audio, but if you type something in, it will reply with a text response.
Sitting at your desktop, you may be thinking that you don’t need or want this on your PC, since you have it on your phone. If you are someone who uses your PC for any amount of time, being able to type in quick reminders or check calendar appointments can be a great feature. Cortana is also proactive, and knows your appointments and can remind you that you need to leave. Once again there is nothing new here, since smartphones already have this functionality, but for those of us who spend a lot of time at a PC during a day, it is very nice to have this.
I think one of the untapped potentials of Cortana will evolve over time. Microsoft has been pushing to add Cortana support to iOS and Android, and while you may feel that effort is in vain because they already have their own integrated personal assistants, Cortana will be the link between any of your devices. You can set reminders on your PC but if you are out at the gas station with your Android phone, you’ll get notified. Cortana also supports geo-fencing, so you can tell it to remind you to do something the next time you are at a location, and that will work from the desktop to the phone as well, no matter what phone you use.
The one major issue with Cortana at the moment is just how limited it’s deployment is. Microsoft is tuning Cortana to each region where Windows is available, and as such it is only available in seven countries right now, with the U.S., UK, China, France, Italy, Germany and Spain being available at launch. More countries will be coming online in the next couple of months. By tuning the experience to each location, they can ensure that the experience fits in with the culture which varies so greatly across the globe.
I have only had a small glimpse of Cortana on the desktop, although I have used it quite a bit on my phone, because being from Canada I am on the list of countries waiting. But that small glimpse, as well as the integration of Cortana with the rest of the system, shows that Cortana might be one of the most important additions to Windows in this release.
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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