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16 August 2015 | beautystorebusiness.com Gokhan Erkavun, managing partner of Beauty Bridge (beautybridge.com), agrees. "We think it is a good idea to get back [those] features that made Windows a more productive [system]. Windows 8 is too minimal in design. Minimalism should not kill the usability." Officially unveiled with great fanfare by Microsoft earlier this year, Windows 10 is a naked apology to its users, who were relegated to after-thought status when Microsoft rolled out Windows 8 a few years ago. Back then, Microsoft bet big it could abandon traditional Windows computing. Its plan: To literally strong-arm Windows users into adapting a completely reconfig- ured user interface driven by touch-screen controls. The company lost big on that bet, with users rejecting Windows 8 in droves. Chastened, the company has responded with a completely reconfig- ured operating system which brings back many of the cherished features of earlier versions while incorporating some tasty new additions. What's New With Windows 10 1 Hooray! The Windows start menu is back. Apparently arising from Microsoft's "Department-of-If-It-Ain't Broke-Don't-Fix-It," the Windows Start menu has returned to the left side of the PC screen. Users can call-up an order list of programs on their desktops that they can click on and open instantly. Sure, three quarters of your desktop to the right still offers the touch-screen tile access to your programs that Micro- soft so desperately wanted everyone to embrace with Windows 8, but you can simply ignore them or slowly integrate those tiles into your work-style. 2 Your PC boots straight to the desk- top. Perhaps most infuriating about Windows 8 was Microsoft's insistence that your PC boot directly to a touch- screen tile interface that initially no one understood. Essentially with Win- dows 8, you turned on your PC, watched your PC glow to life in a completely unrecognizable environment and began your bewildered journey into total confu- sion. No longer with Windows 10. Once again, your PC now starts with the familiar desktop interface made popular in previous versions of the operating system. "The most common complaint by Windows 8 users was the confu- sion caused by not going directly to the desktop," says Jay Correia of DreamCo Design (dreamcodesign.com), a Web design firm. "By eliminating that gap, Microsoft is tackling perhaps the most common customer service issue users have voiced out on." 3 Your tablet auto-senses your prefer- ence for traditional or touch-screen controls. With Windows 10, users will find their tablets auto-programmed to sense when a keyboard is plugged into it and automatically switch to desktop mode—the mode that's optimized for use with a keyboard-and-mouse. If you dis- connect your keyboard, Windows 10 will politely ask you if you'd like to switch to touch-screen control. "For someone who's a mobile task-worker, it works like a tablet while you're out and about, and then it works exactly like a PC when you bring it back and dock it," to a keyboard-and- mouse, says Joe Belfiore, vice president of operating systems group for Microsoft. 4 Many users get to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. Microsoft is offering the new operating system as a free upgrade for the first year—for the most part—for users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. There's one exception: Windows Enterprise users of 7 and 8.1 will still have to pay to upgrade to Windows 10. With this grand gesture, it's almost as if Microsoft is saying, "We know, we know. We messed up royally with Windows 8 and we'd really appreciate your forgiveness." 5 Besides bringing back most of the features that made earlier Win- dows incarnations so popular, Microsoft is also sprinkling in some cool new additions that could make Windows 10 an even bigger hit. For example, it comes with a search-engine-powered, new voice assistant, Cortana. Already available on Windows phone, Cortana will sit atop the Windows 10 interface and answer your queries with the help of the Bing! search engine. You can ask Cortana—using natural language or your keyboard—what the weather will be like tomorrow, where that elusive document file you lost is stored, how many days it is to your next vacation and similar queries. As with many computer features these days, Cortana is also turbo-charged with advanced analytics. So theoretically, Cortana will get to know you better over time as it chews over questions you've already asked, and provides you with ever-more accurate answers the more you consult with it. Another cool Cortana feature: You'll be able to dictate emails or texts to it and have it send those communications to the person(s) of your choice. 6 Windows 10 will also come equipped with a lean-and-mean browser— code-named Spartan—that is modeled after leaner browsers such as Firefox. The- oretically, this browser will run faster than Internet Explorer, which will also come with Windows 10. Windows 10 will also include Internet Explorer. Another bonus with Spartan is that it comes equipped with a clipping tool that enables you to clip- and-save portions of websites to OneNote (onenote.com), a free, third-party, content- archiving program. Plus, you'll also be able to use Spartan to save Web content that you can read offline at your leisure. 7 Windows is being built on the promise that all Microsoft-friendly products will share the same common Windows 10 operating system—desktops, laptops, tablets, phones and even Xbox. Again, theoretically, this will make it easier for you to make simultaneous changes that will pop up on all devices. Update a contact in Outlook, for example, and that contact will be updated on all your Windows 10 devices. Upload music to the Microsoft cloud service OneDrive, for example, and that music will play on all your Windows devices—even though, of course, you would never dream of listening to music at work. 8 Equally ground-shifting with Win- dows 10 is Microsoft's decision to repackage the operating system as a "ser- vice" as opposed to a static product. Instead of releasing Windows updates every few years, Microsoft plans to continually update Windows with enhancements that will continually auto-download from the Web "We think it is a good idea to get back old features. These were what made Windows a more productive OS," says Gokhan Erkavun, managing partner, Beauty Bridge. The new Windows comes equipped with a search-engine-powered, new voice assistant, Cortana. Top photo courtesy of Gokhan Erkavun, bottom image courtesy of Joe Dysart