We still don't have a release date for the Consumer Preview, but we'll have a new build of the Specialized Preview sometime in the next few weeks, and a build for Windows Phones coming in February. There was also some pretty good news for folks who are currently running Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8 -- upgrades to Windows 10 will be free for a year. There's no word on pricing after that (or for folks still running Windows XP), but if Microsoft has its way, we will have all made the switch by then anyway.
A fresh start
Boot up a PC running the Windows 10, and you'll be dropped off at the oh-so-familiar desktop. The taskbar and its icons sits on the bottom, and the recycle bin sits in the upper-left corner. It looks, at first blush, like Windows 8 all over again.
But press the Start button, and you'll be greeted by the return of the Start menu. It's a proper Start menu too, with your apps all stacked in that endless column of nested folders we've all been scrolling since Home Windows 95. Sitting alongside that column are Windows 8's lovely Live Tiles, with news-bites and social updates.
Windows 8 was a bold re-imagining of Microsoft's operating system, but the Start screen proved contentious. The colorful Live Tiles offer useful notifications and information, but they were created with touchscreen devices in mind: much of the work we do in Windows involves a keyboard, a mouse, and multiple, large displays chock-full of windows and apps. Windows 8's Modern apps need a full screen's attention, oblivious of our need to multitask. The Windows 10 Start Menu gives us the best of both worlds.
What's old is new again
With Windows 10, the common and the new are mashed together in a form that's only a little various, but suddenly more useful than ever before. The new Start menu behaves much like older versions of Windows, with frequently used apps and any folders you've pinned lined up in a neat little column. To the right of that column are the Live Tiles, which function much like they do in Windows 8 in a fraction of the space. You pin apps as new tiles on a whim, and also resize and rearrange tiles to your liking. You can also resize the entire Start menu, making it tall and narrow, or short and wide. And if you'd rather not deal with the Live Tiles at all, just right-click them and remove them.
Press those Live Tile shortcuts, and the Modern apps released in Windows 8 open as classic windowed apps. This is a welcome change, allowing us to sample the new aesthetic Microsoft is pushing for the next generation of Windows without compromising our entire display. You can now drag these Modern apps around, snap them to half of your display, or minimize and maximize them at will.
Windows 10 lets you work smarter, too. Click the Task view button, and you'll get a quick glimpse of all of your open apps and windows. A black box running along the bottom of the display prompts to create a virtual desktop: that's a sort of private island that keeps everything you open there as an independent workspace. You can, for example, create one desktop for all of the applications you use for work, another to browse gaming forums or sites like Reddit, and yet another for games or whatever you want. The virtual desktop feature alone tempts me to install this technical preview on my primary machine. Of course we've had virtual desktops on Linux and Mac machines for years (and on Windows, from third-party apps), but it's nice to see Microsoft catching up here.
In Windows 10, you can press Ctrl+Windows key to jump between desktops, triggering a slick little sliding animation that was added in an October update to the Technical Preview. You can also right-click an app when you're in task view and select a specific desktop to move it to. It's not completely there yet, however. I'd really like to be able to drag and drop open apps to different desktops instead of right-clicking all of the time. And being able to rearrange the virtual desktops I've created would be a huge boost to my productivity.
A step forward
We finally got a chance to see more of Windows 10's real game-changing possible: this will be one working system to rule them all. It's all thanks to Contiuum, a feature that serves up a device-specific interface that'll scale from desktops down to tablets. Consider a two-in-one convertible device like the Surface Pro 3: pop it off its keyboard base, and a little prompt will pop up asking if you'd like to switch to "tablet mode." Press it, and the apps on your desktop will instantly transform into their full-screen, tablet incarnations -- this includes traditional Windows desktop apps, too.
You'll use all of the gestures you're accustomed to on a Windows tablet, and can switch back to the desktop by popping the device back onto its keyboard, or by pressing the "tablet mode" toggle button in the Windows 10 Action Center. The Action Center showed up in the October update to the Windows Technical Preview, but it's been completely revamped with new functionality and a host of new improvements. We'll have more time to check those out in coming weeks.
Windows 10 will also be present on smartphones and devices like gaming consoles too, and Microsoft is building universal apps that will run almost everywhere -- and encouraging developers to follow suit. We still haven't seen much of Windows 10 on Windows Phones, but we did get a glimpse of universal apps like Mail, Calendar, and the new Photos app running on both phones and PCs. There will need to be allowances based on particular devices -- a desktop without a camera has little need for a Camera app, for example. But this unified, universal experience eases a lot of work for developers trying to spread their app across as many systems as possible, as well as opening up new possibilities.
Microsoft's own virtual assistant Cortana is a great instance of this. It's made the jump to PC, but Microsoft hopes that the transition will actually strengthen its presence on mobile, too. As you use Cortana on your phone, and your tablet, and you’re PC, it'll learn more about you and tuck relevant facts into a "Notebook." You can duck into this list of preferences and tweak things to your liking (much like Google Now), while leaving some variables off limits to preserve your privacy. As Cortana gets to know you, you'll presumably find it more useful, and use it more often.
That last part is key. Cortana's ability to parse organic language will only enhance as millions of people (Microsoft hopes) start chatting with Cortana on their PCs, thanks to their free Windows 10 upgrade. This will improve the virtual assistant's functionality, permitting "her" to handle increasingly complicated conversational queries, such as "Who is the President, What is his wife's name, How old is he," without tripping up.
Future-proofing
Windows 10 isn't going to fix everything, but these changes to Windows 8's most divisive elements has made a world of distinction to the OS. And that's crucial to Windows' future, as Microsoft is still looking at the big picture: PCs are old news.
Desktops and laptops still handle most of our work and play, but tablets and smartphones have long since stolen the limelight: future working systems will need to work to bridge that gap. We've seen steps in this direction from Apple, with OS X Yosemite's ability to hand off files and things like emails and calls from your phone or tablet. And some Android apps are making their way to Google's Chrome OS, an interesting sign of where Google might be headed.
Microsoft's vision of tomorrow's ideal operating system is grander still. The goal is to offer a unified experience across devices of all shapes and sizes, and one that will morph to make sense: icons to tap and home screens when you're on a phone or tablet, but windowed apps and nested folders when you're armed with a keyboard and mouse. And then there's Windows 10 on the Xbox One. We might not want to run Excel on our consoles (OK, I might), but the fact that Microsoft's console and PCs will be able to share apps puts quite a bit of power in the hands of developers.
Windows 8 dreamed of dragging us into that upcoming, but we kicked and screamed at the inefficiency of its one-size-fits-all approach. With Windows 10, Microsoft seems to be getting it right.