Tech Trend 247

Who out there is excited for a new Windows 10 Mobile phone? Did your eyes just light up and your heart skip a beat? You're in the very small minority that cares about Windows 10 Mobile then.

For some reason, the Japanese company NuAns is kickstarting a Windows 10 Mobile phone. It would be a great idea if Windows 10 Mobile was relevant at all, but it's not. With only 0.7% of the worldwide smartphone marketshare as of Q1 2016 (that's worse than the 1.7% ending Q3 2015), according to Gartner, the mobile platform is as a good as dead.

Even Microsoft knows it, which is why we're seeing the company pivot towards providing its excellent apps and services on iOS and Android instead.

With so little marketshare and more importantly, such a puny selection of apps, you have to wonder who will buy this phone.

The dream of carrying just your Windows 10 phone and using Continuum and a dock to transform it into a desktop PC was an idealistic pursuit, but ultimately one nobody cared for. Each of us is a multiple device person with each device serving a different purpose. 

With so little marketshare, and more importantly, such a puny selection of apps, you have to wonder what NuAns is thinking with its campaign for the NEO phone. The company's asking for $725,000 to produce its phone, but who the heck is going to buy it?

The niche guy you say! Well, of course, Windows 10 Mobile is a niche — not by choice, but by Microsoft's own failure.

Like a thick old Nokia Lumia smartphone, the NEO isn't competing with the ultra-thin flagship iPhones and Android phones on the market.

As a phone, the NEO is decidedly midrange. It has a 5-inch HD display (1,280 x 720), Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage (expandable up to 128GB via microSD card), and a 3,350 mAh battery. On the back is a 13-megapixel f/2.0 aperture camera and on the front is a 5-megapixel f/2.4 aperture camera. Yeah...not exciting. But at least it has a reversible USB-C port!

Instead of performance, NuAns is banking on customizability. The NEO has two back cover panels that are interchangeable and the company hopes to sell a variety of different materials for each cover (i.e. wood, plastic, leather, etc.). There's even a cover with a slot for storing cash or credit cards.

Don't want to buy their cover panels? No problem. The company's planning to make the designs available for users to 3D print for themselves.

Not to totally poo-poo over NuAns — I applaud them for taking this risk — but they are almost certainly destined for failure. 

Windows 10 doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of gaining popularity and catching up to iOS and Android.

The NEO phone is something Windows phone fans needed years ago. And even if it had launched then, it's questionable if it would have found any success at all seeing as Windows Phone 7 and 8 were flops as well.

To NuAns, I say good luck. There are still 38 days left to the NEO phone's campaign and the company's already received more than $37,000 in crowdfunding at the time of this writing. 

Who knows, maybe the phone will get funded and the few people who backed it for $399.99 (early bird special) will be able to enjoy a device that has swappable panels.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Microsoft's latest research project may make you wish you had a Windows Phone.

The company showed off a new, still experimental, display technology Thursday that uses sensors to predict your movements before you touch a smartphone's touchscreen,

Dubbed "pre-touch sensing," the tech uses sensors embedded in smartphones to predict how and when you will touch the display. It can detect interactions with the touchscreen itself as well as how you are holding the phone. 

One example of this in action is a video player app. When you move your hand near the display, the app automatically surfaces the playback controls before you touch the screen. Similarly, if you're using the phone one-handed, the controls will appear only on the side where your hand is.

But, as Microsoft points out in its demo video, the technology could also have interesting applications for games, web browsing and just about any app you use on your phone today.

“It uses the hands as a window to the mind,” Ken Hinckley, a principal researcher at Microsoft, said of the project in a post detailing the experiment. 

Though Microsoft showed off the technology on a Windows Phone, the project is still in an early phase and it's unclear if there are plans to bring it to consumer devices. Still, it offers an intriguing look into what a future Windows Phone (or Surface Phone ) device could look like.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

There are so many different apps, programs and services we use on a daily basis, or even a minute-by-minute basis. Navigating through all those different things, while important, can be annoying. Email, texts, Twitter, Slack, Google Drive and Dropbox are just a few examples, and being able to condense that list down would be a huge help.

Microsoft made Flow to do just that, allowing you to connect apps and services and automate portions of your workflow, easing the need to check each thing every minute to make sure you didn't miss anything new. You can set up notifications across platforms, sync up folders in different programs or automate software approvals.

Flow works similarly to If This Then That (IFTT), creating "recipes" between apps and services so that when certain events happen in one, something will happen in another.

With Flow, you can set up text notifications for when certain people email you, get a message in Slack when a file or folder in Dropbox is changed or added, save tweets or share them on Facebook, automatically copy files between Google Drive and Dropbox, or automatically approve new members for a MailChimp list.

Microsoft has already set up a bunch of different Flow templates you can try for yourself, which are available on the Flow website. You can easily browse through categories like "social media," "productivity" or "collect data." You can also create your own Flows using a large number of apps and programs.

Flow is currently available as a preview and is free to sign up for as long as you have a work or school Office 365 account. 

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Windows 10 is getting even better.

Now that Microsoft has successful undone the damage wrought by Windows 8 and delivered Windows 10 to at least 270 million systems, it’s time for the company to start ever-so-gingerly moving forward again.

Last month at Microsoft’s Build developers conference, the company unveiled the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Instead of a major overhaul, it’s the “tock” to Window 10’s “tick,” offering thousands of small updates — all designed to polish was is actually a very good operating system.

This week, Microsoft delivered a beta to Windows Insiders. These are brave folks like me who are willing to install preview builds on their PCs. The current one is officially called Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14328 and it took me an entire day to get it properly downloaded and installed on a Microsoft Surface Book.

But it was worth the effort.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update Preview Build 14328 highlights some of the best of Microsoft’s thousands of planned updates. At this early stage, though — the final OS won’t ship until the late summer — virtually all the features are subject to change. In addition, I fully expected (and encountered) bugs during my tests. It’s the reason Microsoft puts these builds out there: to get feedback from Windows Insiders and incorporate bug fixes and changes as necessary.

For example, the company unpinned File Explorer in this build, which means you have to find it through the Start Menu. This, in my opinion, is a bad idea that will generate swift and critical feedback for Microsoft. By the next build, that slightly redesigned File Explorer icon should be back on the Taskbar where it belongs.

Most of the changes I saw in this build, though, improve the Windows 10 experience.

Shuffling the pieces

Some changes are small, but very smart. Windows 10 marked the return of the Start Menu, which looked a little like the pre-Windows 8 menu, but also had a little Windows 8 flavor to it.

In Windows 10, you can scroll through a list of apps and watch key features like Settings, File Explorer, Users and Power slip out of sight. Windows 10 Insider Build 14328 essentially pins them to a spot in the Start Menu, just to the left of the scrolling App list. I love simple, clever changes like this. The app list itself is now a bit more of a throwback to old Windows. No more hiding the full app list unless you choose to select “All Apps.” The preview offers a full list that’s still front-loaded with “Most Used” and “Recently Added.” The alphabetical list follows.

All the way on the other side of the Windows 10 screen, Microsoft pulled the Action Center and Notifications icon out of its confusing spot in the middle of the Task Tray and moved it all the way to the right. This actually does help you eyeball changes in it — like the fact that you now have 16 waiting notifications and action items — a little more easily. I’m also glad Microsoft finally cleaned up the Notifications area so it no longer repeats the name of an app over and over again.

Speak

Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, is a critical part of Microsoft’s broader strategy for user engagement. It permeates all corners of Windows 10 and, naturally, got a bit of a promotion in this Insider Preview Build.

In the current version of Windows 10, Cortana asks you a lot of annoying questions before you can start using it. In the preview, you just start, whether that’s typing or speaking to it.

You can now start using Cortana even when the system is locked. I set this feature up and the PC reminded me that, as long as it was plugged in, it wouldn’t actually go to sleep. I also had the option of training it for my voice or letting anyone use it (I chose to train it by repeating a bunch of phrases). Before you start freaking out, the always-on Cortana won’t unlock the PC or give access to apps unless you unlock it. Still, I do question whether it should, in this locked state, give access to calendar info.

In addition to using it to check my schedule, I asked Cortana to check the weather and when my Mets were playing, though it stalled in this middle of this operation and I had to tap the keyboard before it would tell me who the Mets were playing in the afternoon.

The always-on-while-plugged-in thing didn’t always work in this build, and for every time Cortana heard me, there were a few times where I ended up shouting her name to no avail. Welcome to preview builds.

Checking out Microsoft’s Ink

The new Windows Ink Icon in the task tray — which will only appear on pen-enabled touchscreen models — is one of the biggest and smartest improvements. If you’ve never tried a Surface Pro or Surface Book with a Surface Pen, you are missing something.

There are five options under the Windows Ink icon. The three main ones are Sticky Notes, Sketchpad and Screen Sketch. In addition, you’ll find a list of recently used Ink-enabled apps and a list of Suggested Ink apps.

Of all these options, I’m most impressed with the Sketchpad and Screen Sketch. A tap on the latter grabs an image of your current desktop and then lets you annotate and share the final image. The drawing tools, which are the same for SketchPad and Screen Sketch, offer pencil, ink, highlighting and an eraser. These are, essentially, the same drawing tools, with the exception of the pencil, that existed in the inking function in Windows 10.

Microsoft has also added a pretty cool virtual ruler.

I was impressed with how the ruler looked and worked on screen. To use it, I placed two fingers on the virtual ruler and moved it around on the screen, while drawing perfectly straight lines along the top edge of it with the Surface Pen. It was intuitive and easy to use.

Neither the Sketchpad nor the Screen Sketch offers an explicit way to save your images. This seems like an odd omission. Yes, you can easily share to a variety of apps and social media, but I hunted in desperation for a way to simply save my sketches locally. All I could do was mail them to myself and then clear the screen and start anew. I suspect these Windows Ink features will get an update in future builds.

I don’t really get the Sticky Notes. They look like Post-It notes and you can create as many as you want, draw and write on them (only in ink) and move them around. But they do not seem to live outside the Sticky Note application. I want tiny thumbnail versions of them on my desktop that I can expand and view when I need to (or have them auto-expand on a schedule).

The Edge

The good news is that Microsoft Edge Web browser finally has extension support. I could see it in the Preview Build version of Edge; there's actually an "Extensions" option under the ellipses menu. It sits right above "Settings."

The bad news is that, as of this writing, there are exactly five available extensions to download: Pinterest Pin Button, Mouse Gestures, OneNote Clipper, Microsoft Translator and Reddit Enhancement Suite. None of these is the extension I need the most: LastPass. 

I'm certain we'll see a lot more Extensions, and I will test them in the coming months.

Tiny changes

There were a bunch of other small, useful changes, like the ability to hide the Taskbar in tablet mode. This worked for me, but is a feature that only applies to users of PC/tablet "convertibles."

I really liked how you can now quickly filter searches in the Cortana bar by type thanks to a header of icons at the top of the search results. Microsoft, though, may want to do some more work refining these icons. There’s no text and the difference between “Folders” and “Documents” was not obvious.

Overall, I was extremely encouraged by my first experience with the features expected in Windows 10 Anniversary Update, even if it was only in an Insider Preview Build. Based on what I’ve seen, the next Windows may be a no-brainer update for most users.

BONUS: A tour of Windows 10

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Windows 10 is getting even better.

Now that Microsoft has successful undone the damage wrought by Windows 8 and delivered Windows 10 to at least 270 million systems, it’s time for the company to start ever-so-gingerly moving forward again.

Last month at Microsoft’s Build developers conference, the company unveiled the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Instead of a major overhaul, it’s the “tock” to Window 10’s “tick,” offering thousands of small updates — all designed to polish was is actually a very good operating system.

This week, Microsoft delivered a beta to Windows Insiders. These are brave folks like me who are willing to install preview builds on their PCs. The current one is officially called Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14328 and it took me an entire day to get it properly downloaded and installed on a Microsoft Surface Book.

But it was worth the effort.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update Preview Build 14328 highlights some of the best of Microsoft’s thousands of planned updates. At this early stage, though — the final OS won’t ship until the late summer — virtually all the features are subject to change. In addition, I fully expected (and encountered) bugs during my tests. It’s the reason Microsoft puts these builds out there: to get feedback from Windows Insiders and incorporate bug fixes and changes as necessary.

For example, the company unpinned File Explorer in this build, which means you have to find it through the Start Menu. This, in my opinion, is a bad idea that will generate swift and critical feedback for Microsoft. By the next build, that slightly redesigned File Explorer icon should be back on the Taskbar where it belongs.

Most of the changes I saw in this build, though, improve the Windows 10 experience.

Shuffling the pieces

Some changes are small, but very smart. Windows 10 marked the return of the Start Menu, which looked a little like the pre-Windows 8 menu, but also had a little Windows 8 flavor to it.

In Windows 10, you can scroll through a list of apps and watch key features like Settings, File Explorer, Users and Power slip out of sight. Windows 10 Insider Build 14328 essentially pins them to a spot in the Start Menu, just to the left of the scrolling App list. I love simple, clever changes like this. The app list itself is now a bit more of a throwback to old Windows. No more hiding the full app list unless you choose to select “All Apps.” The preview offers a full list that’s still front-loaded with “Most Used” and “Recently Added.” The alphabetical list follows.

All the way on the other side of the Windows 10 screen, Microsoft pulled the Action Center and Notifications icon out of its confusing spot in the middle of the Task Tray and moved it all the way to the right. This actually does help you eyeball changes in it — like the fact that you now have 16 waiting notifications and action items — a little more easily. I’m also glad Microsoft finally cleaned up the Notifications area so it no longer repeats the name of an app over and over again.

Speak

Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, is a critical part of Microsoft’s broader strategy for user engagement. It permeates all corners of Windows 10 and, naturally, got a bit of a promotion in this Insider Preview Build.

In the current version of Windows 10, Cortana asks you a lot of annoying questions before you can start using it. In the preview, you just start, whether that’s typing or speaking to it.

You can now start using Cortana even when the system is locked. I set this feature up and the PC reminded me that, as long as it was plugged in, it wouldn’t actually go to sleep. I also had the option of training it for my voice or letting anyone use it (I chose to train it by repeating a bunch of phrases). Before you start freaking out, the always-on Cortana won’t unlock the PC or give access to apps unless you unlock it. Still, I do question whether it should, in this locked state, give access to calendar info.

In addition to using it to check my schedule, I asked Cortana to check the weather and when my Mets were playing, though it stalled in this middle of this operation and I had to tap the keyboard before it would tell me who the Mets were playing in the afternoon.

The always-on-while-plugged-in thing didn’t always work in this build, and for every time Cortana heard me, there were a few times where I ended up shouting her name to no avail. Welcome to preview builds.

Checking out Microsoft’s Ink

The new Windows Ink Icon in the task tray — which will only appear on pen-enabled touchscreen models — is one of the biggest and smartest improvements. If you’ve never tried a Surface Pro or Surface Book with a Surface Pen, you are missing something.

There are five options under the Windows Ink icon. The three main ones are Sticky Notes, Sketchpad and Screen Sketch. In addition, you’ll find a list of recently used Ink-enabled apps and a list of Suggested Ink apps.

Of all these options, I’m most impressed with the Sketchpad and Screen Sketch. A tap on the latter grabs an image of your current desktop and then lets you annotate and share the final image. The drawing tools, which are the same for SketchPad and Screen Sketch, offer pencil, ink, highlighting and an eraser. These are, essentially, the same drawing tools, with the exception of the pencil, that existed in the inking function in Windows 10.

Microsoft has also added a pretty cool virtual ruler.

I was impressed with how the ruler looked and worked on screen. To use it, I placed two fingers on the virtual ruler and moved it around on the screen, while drawing perfectly straight lines along the top edge of it with the Surface Pen. It was intuitive and easy to use.

Neither the Sketchpad nor the Screen Sketch offers an explicit way to save your images. This seems like an odd omission. Yes, you can easily share to a variety of apps and social media, but I hunted in desperation for a way to simply save my sketches locally. All I could do was mail them to myself and then clear the screen and start anew. I suspect these Windows Ink features will get an update in future builds.

I don’t really get the Sticky Notes. They look like Post-It notes and you can create as many as you want, draw and write on them (only in ink) and move them around. But they do not seem to live outside the Sticky Note application. I want tiny thumbnail versions of them on my desktop that I can expand and view when I need to (or have them auto-expand on a schedule).

The Edge

The good news is that Microsoft Edge Web browser finally has extension support. I could see it in the Preview Build version of Edge; there's actually an "Extensions" option under the ellipses menu. It sits right above "Settings."

The bad news is that, as of this writing, there are exactly five available extensions to download: Pinterest Pin Button, Mouse Gestures, OneNote Clipper, Microsoft Translator and Reddit Enhancement Suite. None of these is the extension I need the most: LastPass. 

I'm certain we'll see a lot more Extensions, and I will test them in the coming months.

Tiny changes

There were a bunch of other small, useful changes, like the ability to hide the Taskbar in tablet mode. This worked for me, but is a feature that only applies to users of PC/tablet "convertibles."

I really liked how you can now quickly filter searches in the Cortana bar by type thanks to a header of icons at the top of the search results. Microsoft, though, may want to do some more work refining these icons. There’s no text and the difference between “Folders” and “Documents” was not obvious.

Overall, I was extremely encouraged by my first experience with the features expected in Windows 10 Anniversary Update, even if it was only in an Insider Preview Build. Based on what I’ve seen, the next Windows may be a no-brainer update for most users.

BONUS: A tour of Windows 10

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Windows 10 is getting even better.

Now that Microsoft has successful undone the damage wrought by Windows 8 and delivered Windows 10 to at least 270 million systems, it’s time for the company to start ever-so-gingerly moving forward again.

Last month at Microsoft’s Build developers conference, the company unveiled the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Instead of a major overhaul, it’s the “tock” to Window 10’s “tick,” offering thousands of small updates — all designed to polish was is actually a very good operating system.

This week, Microsoft delivered a beta to Windows Insiders. These are brave folks like me who are willing to install preview builds on their PCs. The current one is officially called Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14328 and it took me an entire day to get it properly downloaded and installed on a Microsoft Surface Book.

But it was worth the effort.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update Preview Build 14328 highlights some of the best of Microsoft’s thousands of planned updates. At this early stage, though — the final OS won’t ship until the late summer — virtually all the features are subject to change. In addition, I fully expected (and encountered) bugs during my tests. It’s the reason Microsoft puts these builds out there: to get feedback from Windows Insiders and incorporate bug fixes and changes as necessary.

For example, the company unpinned File Explorer in this build, which means you have to find it through the Start Menu. This, in my opinion, is a bad idea that will generate swift and critical feedback for Microsoft. By the next build, that slightly redesigned File Explorer icon should be back on the Taskbar where it belongs.

Most of the changes I saw in this build, though, improve the Windows 10 experience.

Shuffling the pieces

Some changes are small, but very smart. Windows 10 marked the return of the Start Menu, which looked a little like the pre-Windows 8 menu, but also had a little Windows 8 flavor to it.

In Windows 10, you can scroll through a list of apps and watch key features like Settings, File Explorer, Users and Power slip out of sight. Windows 10 Insider Build 14328 essentially pins them to a spot in the Start Menu, just to the left of the scrolling App list. I love simple, clever changes like this. The app list itself is now a bit more of a throwback to old Windows. No more hiding the full app list unless you choose to select “All Apps.” The preview offers a full list that’s still front-loaded with “Most Used” and “Recently Added.” The alphabetical list follows.

All the way on the other side of the Windows 10 screen, Microsoft pulled the Action Center and Notifications icon out of its confusing spot in the middle of the Task Tray and moved it all the way to the right. This actually does help you eyeball changes in it — like the fact that you now have 16 waiting notifications and action items — a little more easily. I’m also glad Microsoft finally cleaned up the Notifications area so it no longer repeats the name of an app over and over again.

Speak

Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, is a critical part of Microsoft’s broader strategy for user engagement. It permeates all corners of Windows 10 and, naturally, got a bit of a promotion in this Insider Preview Build.

In the current version of Windows 10, Cortana asks you a lot of annoying questions before you can start using it. In the preview, you just start, whether that’s typing or speaking to it.

You can now start using Cortana even when the system is locked. I set this feature up and the PC reminded me that, as long as it was plugged in, it wouldn’t actually go to sleep. I also had the option of training it for my voice or letting anyone use it (I chose to train it by repeating a bunch of phrases). Before you start freaking out, the always-on Cortana won’t unlock the PC or give access to apps unless you unlock it. Still, I do question whether it should, in this locked state, give access to calendar info.

In addition to using it to check my schedule, I asked Cortana to check the weather and when my Mets were playing, though it stalled in this middle of this operation and I had to tap the keyboard before it would tell me who the Mets were playing in the afternoon.

The always-on-while-plugged-in thing didn’t always work in this build, and for every time Cortana heard me, there were a few times where I ended up shouting her name to no avail. Welcome to preview builds.

Checking out Microsoft’s Ink

The new Windows Ink Icon in the task tray — which will only appear on pen-enabled touchscreen models — is one of the biggest and smartest improvements. If you’ve never tried a Surface Pro or Surface Book with a Surface Pen, you are missing something.

There are five options under the Windows Ink icon. The three main ones are Sticky Notes, Sketchpad and Screen Sketch. In addition, you’ll find a list of recently used Ink-enabled apps and a list of Suggested Ink apps.

Of all these options, I’m most impressed with the Sketchpad and Screen Sketch. A tap on the latter grabs an image of your current desktop and then lets you annotate and share the final image. The drawing tools, which are the same for SketchPad and Screen Sketch, offer pencil, ink, highlighting and an eraser. These are, essentially, the same drawing tools, with the exception of the pencil, that existed in the inking function in Windows 10.

Microsoft has also added a pretty cool virtual ruler.

I was impressed with how the ruler looked and worked on screen. To use it, I placed two fingers on the virtual ruler and moved it around on the screen, while drawing perfectly straight lines along the top edge of it with the Surface Pen. It was intuitive and easy to use.

Neither the Sketchpad nor the Screen Sketch offers an explicit way to save your images. This seems like an odd omission. Yes, you can easily share to a variety of apps and social media, but I hunted in desperation for a way to simply save my sketches locally. All I could do was mail them to myself and then clear the screen and start anew. I suspect these Windows Ink features will get an update in future builds.

I don’t really get the Sticky Notes. They look like Post-It notes and you can create as many as you want, draw and write on them (only in ink) and move them around. But they do not seem to live outside the Sticky Note application. I want tiny thumbnail versions of them on my desktop that I can expand and view when I need to (or have them auto-expand on a schedule).

The Edge

The good news is that Microsoft Edge Web browser finally has extension support. I could see it in the Preview Build version of Edge; there's actually an "Extensions" option under the ellipses menu. It sits right above "Settings."

The bad news is that, as of this writing, there are exactly five available extensions to download: Pinterest Pin Button, Mouse Gestures, OneNote Clipper, Microsoft Translator and Reddit Enhancement Suite. None of these is the extension I need the most: LastPass. 

I'm certain we'll see a lot more Extensions, and I will test them in the coming months.

Tiny changes

There were a bunch of other small, useful changes, like the ability to hide the Taskbar in tablet mode. This worked for me, but is a feature that only applies to users of PC/tablet "convertibles."

I really liked how you can now quickly filter searches in the Cortana bar by type thanks to a header of icons at the top of the search results. Microsoft, though, may want to do some more work refining these icons. There’s no text and the difference between “Folders” and “Documents” was not obvious.

Overall, I was extremely encouraged by my first experience with the features expected in Windows 10 Anniversary Update, even if it was only in an Insider Preview Build. Based on what I’ve seen, the next Windows may be a no-brainer update for most users.

BONUS: A tour of Windows 10

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Windows 10 is getting even better.

Now that Microsoft has successful undone the damage wrought by Windows 8 and delivered Windows 10 to at least 270 million systems, it’s time for the company to start ever-so-gingerly moving forward again.

Last month at Microsoft’s Build developers conference, the company unveiled the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Instead of a major overhaul, it’s the “tock” to Window 10’s “tick,” offering thousands of small updates — all designed to polish was is actually a very good operating system.

This week, Microsoft delivered a beta to Windows Insiders. These are brave folks like me who are willing to install preview builds on their PCs. The current one is officially called Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14328 and it took me an entire day to get it properly downloaded and installed on a Microsoft Surface Book.

But it was worth the effort.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update Preview Build 14328 highlights some of the best of Microsoft’s thousands of planned updates. At this early stage, though — the final OS won’t ship until the late summer — virtually all the features are subject to change. In addition, I fully expected (and encountered) bugs during my tests. It’s the reason Microsoft puts these builds out there: to get feedback from Windows Insiders and incorporate bug fixes and changes as necessary.

For example, the company unpinned File Explorer in this build, which means you have to find it through the Start Menu. This, in my opinion, is a bad idea that will generate swift and critical feedback for Microsoft. By the next build, that slightly redesigned File Explorer icon should be back on the Taskbar where it belongs.

Most of the changes I saw in this build, though, improve the Windows 10 experience.

Shuffling the pieces

Some changes are small, but very smart. Windows 10 marked the return of the Start Menu, which looked a little like the pre-Windows 8 menu, but also had a little Windows 8 flavor to it.

In Windows 10, you can scroll through a list of apps and watch key features like Settings, File Explorer, Users and Power slip out of sight. Windows 10 Insider Build 14328 essentially pins them to a spot in the Start Menu, just to the left of the scrolling App list. I love simple, clever changes like this. The app list itself is now a bit more of a throwback to old Windows. No more hiding the full app list unless you choose to select “All Apps.” The preview offers a full list that’s still front-loaded with “Most Used” and “Recently Added.” The alphabetical list follows.

All the way on the other side of the Windows 10 screen, Microsoft pulled the Action Center and Notifications icon out of its confusing spot in the middle of the Task Tray and moved it all the way to the right. This actually does help you eyeball changes in it — like the fact that you now have 16 waiting notifications and action items — a little more easily. I’m also glad Microsoft finally cleaned up the Notifications area so it no longer repeats the name of an app over and over again.

Speak

Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, is a critical part of Microsoft’s broader strategy for user engagement. It permeates all corners of Windows 10 and, naturally, got a bit of a promotion in this Insider Preview Build.

In the current version of Windows 10, Cortana asks you a lot of annoying questions before you can start using it. In the preview, you just start, whether that’s typing or speaking to it.

You can now start using Cortana even when the system is locked. I set this feature up and the PC reminded me that, as long as it was plugged in, it wouldn’t actually go to sleep. I also had the option of training it for my voice or letting anyone use it (I chose to train it by repeating a bunch of phrases). Before you start freaking out, the always-on Cortana won’t unlock the PC or give access to apps unless you unlock it. Still, I do question whether it should, in this locked state, give access to calendar info.

In addition to using it to check my schedule, I asked Cortana to check the weather and when my Mets were playing, though it stalled in this middle of this operation and I had to tap the keyboard before it would tell me who the Mets were playing in the afternoon.

The always-on-while-plugged-in thing didn’t always work in this build, and for every time Cortana heard me, there were a few times where I ended up shouting her name to no avail. Welcome to preview builds.

Checking out Microsoft’s Ink

The new Windows Ink Icon in the task tray — which will only appear on pen-enabled touchscreen models — is one of the biggest and smartest improvements. If you’ve never tried a Surface Pro or Surface Book with a Surface Pen, you are missing something.

There are five options under the Windows Ink icon. The three main ones are Sticky Notes, Sketchpad and Screen Sketch. In addition, you’ll find a list of recently used Ink-enabled apps and a list of Suggested Ink apps.

Of all these options, I’m most impressed with the Sketchpad and Screen Sketch. A tap on the latter grabs an image of your current desktop and then lets you annotate and share the final image. The drawing tools, which are the same for SketchPad and Screen Sketch, offer pencil, ink, highlighting and an eraser. These are, essentially, the same drawing tools, with the exception of the pencil, that existed in the inking function in Windows 10.

Microsoft has also added a pretty cool virtual ruler.

I was impressed with how the ruler looked and worked on screen. To use it, I placed two fingers on the virtual ruler and moved it around on the screen, while drawing perfectly straight lines along the top edge of it with the Surface Pen. It was intuitive and easy to use.

Neither the Sketchpad nor the Screen Sketch offers an explicit way to save your images. This seems like an odd omission. Yes, you can easily share to a variety of apps and social media, but I hunted in desperation for a way to simply save my sketches locally. All I could do was mail them to myself and then clear the screen and start anew. I suspect these Windows Ink features will get an update in future builds.

I don’t really get the Sticky Notes. They look like Post-It notes and you can create as many as you want, draw and write on them (only in ink) and move them around. But they do not seem to live outside the Sticky Note application. I want tiny thumbnail versions of them on my desktop that I can expand and view when I need to (or have them auto-expand on a schedule).

The Edge

The good news is that Microsoft Edge Web browser finally has extension support. I could see it in the Preview Build version of Edge; there's actually an "Extensions" option under the ellipses menu. It sits right above "Settings."

The bad news is that, as of this writing, there are exactly five available extensions to download: Pinterest Pin Button, Mouse Gestures, OneNote Clipper, Microsoft Translator and Reddit Enhancement Suite. None of these is the extension I need the most: LastPass. 

I'm certain we'll see a lot more Extensions, and I will test them in the coming months.

Tiny changes

There were a bunch of other small, useful changes, like the ability to hide the Taskbar in tablet mode. This worked for me, but is a feature that only applies to users of PC/tablet "convertibles."

I really liked how you can now quickly filter searches in the Cortana bar by type thanks to a header of icons at the top of the search results. Microsoft, though, may want to do some more work refining these icons. There’s no text and the difference between “Folders” and “Documents” was not obvious.

Overall, I was extremely encouraged by my first experience with the features expected in Windows 10 Anniversary Update, even if it was only in an Insider Preview Build. Based on what I’ve seen, the next Windows may be a no-brainer update for most users.

BONUS: A tour of Windows 10

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Windows 10 is getting even better.

Now that Microsoft has successful undone the damage wrought by Windows 8 and delivered Windows 10 to at least 270 million systems, it’s time for the company to start ever-so-gingerly moving forward again.

Last month at Microsoft’s Build developers conference, the company unveiled the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Instead of a major overhaul, it’s the “tock” to Window 10’s “tick,” offering thousands of small updates — all designed to polish was is actually a very good operating system.

This week, Microsoft delivered a beta to Windows Insiders. These are brave folks like me who are willing to install preview builds on their PCs. The current one is officially called Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14328 and it took me an entire day to get it properly downloaded and installed on a Microsoft Surface Book.

But it was worth the effort.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update Preview Build 14328 highlights some of the best of Microsoft’s thousands of planned updates. At this early stage, though — the final OS won’t ship until the late summer — virtually all the features are subject to change. In addition, I fully expected (and encountered) bugs during my tests. It’s the reason Microsoft puts these builds out there: to get feedback from Windows Insiders and incorporate bug fixes and changes as necessary.

For example, the company unpinned File Explorer in this build, which means you have to find it through the Start Menu. This, in my opinion, is a bad idea that will generate swift and critical feedback for Microsoft. By the next build, that slightly redesigned File Explorer icon should be back on the Taskbar where it belongs.

Most of the changes I saw in this build, though, improve the Windows 10 experience.

Shuffling the pieces

Some changes are small, but very smart. Windows 10 marked the return of the Start Menu, which looked a little like the pre-Windows 8 menu, but also had a little Windows 8 flavor to it.

In Windows 10, you can scroll through a list of apps and watch key features like Settings, File Explorer, Users and Power slip out of sight. Windows 10 Insider Build 14328 essentially pins them to a spot in the Start Menu, just to the left of the scrolling App list. I love simple, clever changes like this. The app list itself is now a bit more of a throwback to old Windows. No more hiding the full app list unless you choose to select “All Apps.” The preview offers a full list that’s still front-loaded with “Most Used” and “Recently Added.” The alphabetical list follows.

All the way on the other side of the Windows 10 screen, Microsoft pulled the Action Center and Notifications icon out of its confusing spot in the middle of the Task Tray and moved it all the way to the right. This actually does help you eyeball changes in it — like the fact that you now have 16 waiting notifications and action items — a little more easily. I’m also glad Microsoft finally cleaned up the Notifications area so it no longer repeats the name of an app over and over again.

Speak

Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, is a critical part of Microsoft’s broader strategy for user engagement. It permeates all corners of Windows 10 and, naturally, got a bit of a promotion in this Insider Preview Build.

In the current version of Windows 10, Cortana asks you a lot of annoying questions before you can start using it. In the preview, you just start, whether that’s typing or speaking to it.

You can now start using Cortana even when the system is locked. I set this feature up and the PC reminded me that, as long as it was plugged in, it wouldn’t actually go to sleep. I also had the option of training it for my voice or letting anyone use it (I chose to train it by repeating a bunch of phrases). Before you start freaking out, the always-on Cortana won’t unlock the PC or give access to apps unless you unlock it. Still, I do question whether it should, in this locked state, give access to calendar info.

In addition to using it to check my schedule, I asked Cortana to check the weather and when my Mets were playing, though it stalled in this middle of this operation and I had to tap the keyboard before it would tell me who the Mets were playing in the afternoon.

The always-on-while-plugged-in thing didn’t always work in this build, and for every time Cortana heard me, there were a few times where I ended up shouting her name to no avail. Welcome to preview builds.

Checking out Microsoft’s Ink

The new Windows Ink Icon in the task tray — which will only appear on pen-enabled touchscreen models — is one of the biggest and smartest improvements. If you’ve never tried a Surface Pro or Surface Book with a Surface Pen, you are missing something.

There are five options under the Windows Ink icon. The three main ones are Sticky Notes, Sketchpad and Screen Sketch. In addition, you’ll find a list of recently used Ink-enabled apps and a list of Suggested Ink apps.

Of all these options, I’m most impressed with the Sketchpad and Screen Sketch. A tap on the latter grabs an image of your current desktop and then lets you annotate and share the final image. The drawing tools, which are the same for SketchPad and Screen Sketch, offer pencil, ink, highlighting and an eraser. These are, essentially, the same drawing tools, with the exception of the pencil, that existed in the inking function in Windows 10.

Microsoft has also added a pretty cool virtual ruler.

I was impressed with how the ruler looked and worked on screen. To use it, I placed two fingers on the virtual ruler and moved it around on the screen, while drawing perfectly straight lines along the top edge of it with the Surface Pen. It was intuitive and easy to use.

Neither the Sketchpad nor the Screen Sketch offers an explicit way to save your images. This seems like an odd omission. Yes, you can easily share to a variety of apps and social media, but I hunted in desperation for a way to simply save my sketches locally. All I could do was mail them to myself and then clear the screen and start anew. I suspect these Windows Ink features will get an update in future builds.

I don’t really get the Sticky Notes. They look like Post-It notes and you can create as many as you want, draw and write on them (only in ink) and move them around. But they do not seem to live outside the Sticky Note application. I want tiny thumbnail versions of them on my desktop that I can expand and view when I need to (or have them auto-expand on a schedule).

The Edge

The good news is that Microsoft Edge Web browser finally has extension support. I could see it in the Preview Build version of Edge; there's actually an "Extensions" option under the ellipses menu. It sits right above "Settings."

The bad news is that, as of this writing, there are exactly five available extensions to download: Pinterest Pin Button, Mouse Gestures, OneNote Clipper, Microsoft Translator and Reddit Enhancement Suite. None of these is the extension I need the most: LastPass. 

I'm certain we'll see a lot more Extensions, and I will test them in the coming months.

Tiny changes

There were a bunch of other small, useful changes, like the ability to hide the Taskbar in tablet mode. This worked for me, but is a feature that only applies to users of PC/tablet "convertibles."

I really liked how you can now quickly filter searches in the Cortana bar by type thanks to a header of icons at the top of the search results. Microsoft, though, may want to do some more work refining these icons. There’s no text and the difference between “Folders” and “Documents” was not obvious.

Overall, I was extremely encouraged by my first experience with the features expected in Windows 10 Anniversary Update, even if it was only in an Insider Preview Build. Based on what I’ve seen, the next Windows may be a no-brainer update for most users.

BONUS: A tour of Windows 10

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.