samedi 21 janvier 2017

What are the best features of Windows 10?

Some of you may remember a thread from a while ago in which my computer was slowly dying. Well, now I've got a new one and, it being a new one, it's installed with Windows 10. So far I like it (with Classic Shell installed), although I've had a few niggles here and there and it's difficult to tell how much of the speed improvement is due to upgrading from Windows 7 and how much is due to now having an SSD, a much faster processor, 8 times as much RAM, and it just plain being a new install.

There's a few things which are definite improvements over 7 - the Task Manager is much better, searching is much improved, and I like little cosmetic things, like being able to have the desktop be a slideshow and have Windows automatically choose a highlight colour from whatever's currently on display. But, on the whole, it's mostly the same-old same-old, as far as I'm concerned.

Most of the additions seem rather pointless to me:

Cortana is useless - I can search my files using the search function, and I don't want to use either Edge or Bing to search the web. So it seems like a less efficient way to do things that I can otherwise do for myself.

Ink seems to be little but a toy. I can perhaps see the utility of directly being able to annotate screenshots, but this is only just a little more convenient than hitting Print Screen and opening Photoshop - and I don't think I've ever had actual cause to do it, anyway.

Most of the little apps seem pointless (unless there's configuration stuff that I'm missing). The news app seems like a nice idea, but seems to only get news from Bing, which would not be my choice. The weather app might be a nice idea, but it seems to be, if anything, a little quicker just to hit the "Weather" bookmark on my toolbar and be taken to the Met Office's prediction, rather than one from a source that I don't know. OneNote seems like an interesting idea in terms of converting handwriting to text, but I've heard that it's terrible at doing so, it's not something I'd really use as a desktop user, and I don't have and am not about to get a Microsoft account so I can't actually use it, anyway. And so on.

But I'm sure that's not the whole of it. I've looked through several "10 best features of Windows 10" articles, but most have made me think "so what?" or "why would I want that?"1, rather than "that seems useful/cool".

So, can anybody tell me what there is new in Windows 10 (or any build above 7, so long as it's in 10 too) that I ought to give a try? Bear in mind that I'm fairly ungregarious and have never seen the point of a smartphone or tablet, so am likely not at all interested in any facility or application which could be described using terms like "sharing", "connectivity" or "integration".

1If anybody can explain the point of virtual desktops, I'm listening, but it just seems to me to be a less efficient way to switch between applications.


via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2keC3aI

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