Microsoft held its Windows 10 event today, and it announced a plethora of new features and products. One new item is the updated build of Windows 10, which we were able to spend a little bit of time with.
Microsoft is showing off build 9924, but an employee told us the next Insider Release will be 9926. This build has Cortana, Contiuum, the updated Action Center and new UI polish as well; Spartan was not in this build and will not be shipped in the next public release.
We had only a little amount of time with the build, but it feels more refined than 9879 and the new UI elements make the OS feel more cohesive and less like a series of features bolted together.
Cortana worked well, as expected, and was able to answer complex searches like "What is the tuition for Washington University" and of course grab the weather for the day too. Dictation worked exceptionally well when writing a short email using the digital assistant and her impersonations are as tacky as expected.
Contiuum does make using the device in tablet mode much easier but is not perfect. Our machine required you to manually tell the device you wanted to be in the tablet mode when removing the keyboard which isn"t a perfect solution but it does solve the issue of knowing when to be in tablet or desktop mode.
A gallery of the new OS can be seen below.
Microsoft will be releasing its next public iteration of Windows 10 next week, and everyone will get to try out these new features at that time. If you have any questions about the build or Windows 10, let us know and we will see if we can get them answered.