Windows 10 - The Essential Guide

Windows 10 is now available and it introduces loads of new features, platform-unifying designs, and the new Windows-as-a-service strategy.

Start

Firstly, the Start menu has made a welcome return since its retirement in Windows 8; this time, it's better than ever. Not only does it contain your applications and most recently used programs as before, but it also shows tiles, which are user-defined icons you can configure to access programs, websites and apps more easily. This means your most used shortcuts are never more than a click away.

It's also easier to search and find applications; just hit the Windows key to bring up the Start menu and start typing to trigger Microsoft's "search anywhere" tool. It can search your applications, files, browser history, and the Internet.

The Action Centre

The action centre is a new panel for Windows 10, where you can get an overview of your common settings and application notification messages. Those yellow balloon tooltips are now notifications in the action centre. You can also change some common settings, such as turning wireless, Bluetooth on/off, connecting to projectors, etc. It functions much in the same way as the notifications on a smartphone.
You can access the notification area by clicking the little comment speech bubble icon next to the clock. This will slide out of the action centre. Clicking anywhere outside the action centre will close the window.

Windows Store

As with many platforms, Microsoft has introduced the "store" concept for delivering applications via the Windows 10 unified platform design. The store contains all the apps you could wish for. To access the store, click Start, then Store.

You must create or sign into a Microsoft account to use the store, even to download "free" apps.

Video Recording

Windows 10 has an excellent built-in digital video recorder (DVR), which records what's on the screen to a video file, which you can share online on sites like YouTube. While this feature is mainly aimed at gamers, the video recording can be used anywhere.

To access this feature, you need to open the Xbox application. You don't need to sign in; run it and close or minimise it. Once the Xbox application runs, press Win+G to bring up the recording bar. You can click the record button or press the Win + Alt + R to start and stop your recording.

Your computer must support certain hardware requirements, which my PC does not. Your PC must support Intel Quick Sync H.264, NVIDIA NVENC or AMD VCE.

Once you start recording, all your video recordings will be saved in a folder called 'Capture' in your Videos folder.

Virtual Desktops

While not a new idea, as they have been around in Linux and Mac OSX for years, Windows 10 finally introduces native virtual desktops to Windows. Virtual desktops allow you to organise many open applications into groups, which you can easily switch between.

Virtual desktops are called "Task View" in Windows and can be accessed easily from the taskbar.

When you click the icon, the Task View interface will open, where you can see the virtual desktops you've added. When you open the Task View interface for the first time or only have one desktop, the "Add a desktop" button is available. Click it to add another virtual desktop.

You can easily switch between virtual desktops using the Win+Tab combo, like Alt + Tab, to switch Windows.

The Bad Bits

While there are plenty of great features and new improvements in Windows 10, there are more than a handful of bad features or annoyances. Here are my top 5.

Bing!

The new search anywhere features could be useful tools, aside from the fact that, when searching the Internet, it can only use Microsoft Bing, which is next to useless compared to Google. There is no way to change this.

On a similar note, Cortana, a Microsoft Siri-like assistant, also uses Bing to find answers, and like Siri and Google, will record audio and invade privacy even when it's not in use.

My PC is not a tablet!

Windows 10 seems to think that my desktop PC is, in fact, a laptop or tablet or some mobile device. It keeps on telling me to activate location features (I don't have any GPS device), it keeps telling me to swipe here or swipe there for things, and it gives me battery notifications (I have no battery?). Then, it keeps asking me to try the "tablet mode" in the notification area.

Windows as a service

Microsoft is pushing for Windows as a service model, where instead of the one-time purchase, you pay monthly subscriptions to receive updates and the latest versions of Windows as they are released. It isn't really clear if the options will be a pay-per-device model, a yearly contract, or some hybrid.

There are also rumours that this will lead to Windows being loaded from the Internet rather than a hard drive, making the desktop computer more of a dumb terminal. I'm not keen on either of these.

Windows Updates

Windows Updates are a good thing, but as a power user, I like to be able to decide what gets installed and when. I generally wait a while for a service pack before installing it in case breaking issues need to be addressed. I've been burnt several times when a Windows update gets released and automatically installed, resulting in a non-functioning computer. In Windows 10, updates are required and mandatory. You don't even get to say when the next reboot will be; they guess at 3 am, and it reboots regardless.

Quick Tips

Here are a few quick tips and tweaks to help you get the most from Windows 10.

Bash Shell

This fantastic feature lets you install the Bash UNIX shell, which Canonical developed for Windows 10. You can enable it by heading to Settings > Update & Security > For Developers and switching to Developer mode. This will install the developer packages. Next, head to Control Panel > Programs > Turn Windows features on or off. Scroll down to the bottom, locate the option "Windows Subsystem for Linux (beta)", and enable it. You should now reboot.

After a reboot, click on Start, then search for bash. You should have the option to run this command. You will then get a prompt to install Ubuntu for Windows. Hit "y" to continue, and it will download and install.

When that is done (it takes a while), you will have a fully functioning "Bash on Ubuntu on Windows", which will let you effectively use the Linux command line within Windows. It will create a Linux environment for you with mounts to Windows drives and share and let you run Linux commands. Genius!

Privacy Options

I covered some of the privacy options in the guide to installing Windows 10, but here is a complete list of all the privacy options provided by Microsoft. Unfortunately, Microsoft has not put all the options in one place, nor have they made turning off these options easy. Some options you cannot turn off. Hey, you did read the EULA, right?

Disable Quick Access

To remove frequent folders and recent file lists from Quick Access, open File Explorer, click on the View tab in Ribbon and then click on Options. Change "Open File Explorer To" to This PC, and untick the options "Show recently used files in Quick Access" and "Show frequently used folders in Quick Access".

Disable annoying notifications

If you get too many notifications, or one particular application is giving annoying notifications, you can disable them from showing. Firstly, you need to open the settings menu from the action centre. You can find and select 'System' followed by 'Notifications & Actions' from here. You can now turn notifications on or off for any installed application which uses the notification API.

From here, you'll see a breakdown of all the notifications by category, and you can turn them all off or leave some on if you find them useful.