1. Meet Windows 10

Microsoft certainly went out of its way to make that impossible the last two times. Windows 8 was definitely not just a simple enhancement of Windows 7; it was a radical change, and, if we can choose only one description from the many possibilities such as “a disaster,” “an affront,” “a half-baked mess designed by a committee,” let’s say it was “a difficult transition.” And now we have Windows 10, for which Microsoft has decided to jump ahead by two version numbers, just to put some extra distance between this version and its unfortunate predecessor.

Is Windows 10 just an incremental improvement over Windows 8? Happily, the answer is no. It’s much more than that. There is a lot of Windows 8 in it—you can certainly see the family resemblance—but it is so significantly overhauled and rethought that it really deserves to be evaluated for itself, and not what came before. In this respect, Microsoft is keeping true to form. Versions of Windows are like the old Star Trek movies: They alternate. The first one was terrible, the next one was good, then terrible, then good, and so on. Here we have a good one.

We’ll go through things in detail, of course, but if you are looking for the capsule summary, here it is: Windows 10 is a fast, effective operating system that works really well and looks great, on everything from high-end desktops to small tablets and phones. And this matters because the majority of users have more than one computing device now: a phone and a desktop or laptop and/or a tablet. Having one operating system for them all gives you not only visual and functional continuity across all of them, but also an effortless ubiquity: Your documents, photos, music, apps, even your sign-in and password are all there, in the same place and the same format, on whatever device you happen to pick up.

Internally, Windows 10 has all the accumulated improvements in speed and reliability that Microsoft developed as it built Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. You’ll notice this right away when you start it up. Startup and shutdown times have been significantly improved, device drivers are ever more reliable thanks to the automatic crash report data that Microsoft has been collecting for years now, tools such as File Explorer (renamed from Windows Explorer starting in Windows 8) have been revamped and extended, there’s built-in support for Internet connections through cellular data providers, and so on.

On the surface, there is a new look. The familiar Start button, Start menu, and desktop are back (having taken an unfortunate forced vacation for the three years of the Windows 8 era), and all graphic elements have been simplified, as shown in Figure 1.1. Window borders are rectangular, and their colors are plain and uniform. Icon graphics are simpler. The Start menu is a toned-down version of the Windows 8 screen, with tile icons for each program. It’s easily customizable so that the stuff you use most is the easiest to find.

Windows 10 runs two types of application programs: Modern and Desktop, which are illustrated in Figure 1.2. Desktop applications are the familiar Windows programs of the last three decades, with a menu bar that runs across the top—either the traditional pull-down menu or a ribbon interface like the one that first appeared in Microsoft Office 2007. You install them by downloading or purchasing setup programs on disc.

Modern apps, on the other hand, tend to fill their entire window with content and have controls that remain hidden until you open them up using the “hamburger” icon shown in the Calculator app in Figure 1.2. (Depending on your sensibilities, you could also call this the “tofu sandwich” icon. But I digress.) In Modern apps, this symbol always opens a menu of some sort, just as a gear-shaped icon lets you change settings. We talk more about the term Modern in the accompanying Note.

The idea of the Modern design is that you can look through the computer screen at pictures and text and movies, and not so much at the screen with its buttons and sliders and text entry fields and dialog boxes and window title bars and so on. Modern apps are found and installed through the Windows Store app.

In Windows 10, both of these styles coexist nicely: On desktop PCs they can both be on the screen at the same time, you can rearrange them, and so on. (The incredibly irritating flipping back and forth that made Windows 8 so reviled is gone.) On a tablet’s smaller screen, it’s usually more convenient to have just one app on the screen at a time, but again, you can control this.

Windows 10 has a deep relationship with the Internet and online cloud services. Now that most computers have an Internet connection virtually all the time, Windows 10 can provide some really great features:

One sign-in name and password identifies you to multiple computers and a host of online services.

Your preferences—screen backgrounds, application settings, bookmarked websites, memorized passwords for other systems, Wi-Fi network keys, and so on—can follow you to any computer you use.

You can have access to your documents, photographs, and other media on any computer you use.

Apps, music, movies, and other items you’ve purchased online can be automatically available on any computer you use, if the app’s license permits this.

“Any computer you use” can really be any computer: laptops, desktops, tablets, and phones, at your home, at your office, or in other people’s homes and offices.

Windows 10 really shines on a device whose screen is touch-sensitive. Finger-pointing is more than just a major preoccupation of politicians; it turns out to make a very intuitive and natural way of communicating your intentions to a computer. Pointing and poking and dragging with a fingertip come naturally and become second nature almost instantly; and once you experience this technique, it’s very hard to go back (as witnessed by all the fingerprints on my old computer’s standard monitor from the futile poking I give it). Windows 10 also works just fine with only a traditional mouse.

One major crime of Windows 8 was that many of the necessary menus and command buttons were hidden and exposed themselves only if you clicked or touched secret, invisible places or made odd gestures on the screen that you had to be shown and would never have guessed to try. Thankfully, Windows 10 has fixed this, and there are now visual cues for almost every control element, and right-clicking things exposes everything else you need.

If you’re getting a new computer, the answer is yes, by all means buy one with Windows 10 on it. And if you’re getting a laptop or desktop, it’s worth spending a little more to get one with a touchscreen.

If you used Windows 8 or 8.1 previously, you’ll find that Windows 10 is a big improvement. (Even if you weren’t frustrated with Windows 8 before, you will be after you’ve used Windows 10 for a few minutes.)

If you used Windows 7 before, Windows 10 will feel familiar enough, although, for setup and management, you’ll still need to learn several tricks. This book will get you up to speed.

If you already have Windows 8 or 8.1 now, you’ll want to install the Windows 10 update. Yesterday, if not sooner.

If you have a computer with Windows 7 on it now, and you’re wondering whether you should take advantage of Microsoft’s offer for a free upgrade to Windows 10 in the first year after its release, our advice is a conditional “yes.” First, you’ll want to be sure that all of your hardware and software will continue to work. It’s very likely that it all (except maybe third-party antivirus programs) will work, but you should check. We show you how in Chapter 2, “Installing or Upgrading to Windows 10.”

If you have a computer with Windows XP or Vista on it now, your computer is probably pretty old! If so, we recommend leaving it alone and getting a new computer. You could probably install Windows 10 on it, but you’d have to reinstall all of your application software, and not all of its hardware might work. The upgrade advisor discussed in Chapter 2 will tell you. (As a point of reference, I have a 2007 vintage Toshiba laptop that is working well with 32-bit Windows 10 Pro, although I did decide to add more RAM, at a cost of $30.) Windows XP or Vista users will have some catching up to do. We show you the ways that Windows 10 helps make routine tasks much easier than before.

Why would you want to upgrade to Windows 10 if you’re happy with your current version of Windows? Here are some reasons:

You get access to the Windows Store, a software marketplace that makes finding and adding new programs to your computer almost effortless. And most apps you install through the Store are yours to use on all of your devices, if the app’s developer permits this.

Startup and shutdown are really fast.

Windows 10 is where Microsoft is going to be focusing its efforts at improvements, bug fixes, and security fixes. Windows 8, 8.1, 7, or Vista? Not so much.

Updates will come more frequently and fluidly than for other versions of Windows. Microsoft’s stated intent is that this is the last version of Windows; it’ll just continue to improve Windows 10 indefinitely. (Let’s come back in five years and check on that, OK?)

Many of the apps that come with Windows 10 have been given much-needed makeovers, especially Mail, Calendar, and People. These are now decent, useful apps that are easy to sync with other Windows 10 devices.

Windows 10 is designed to run on all devices, from smartphones to tablets to notebooks to desktop PCs. The interface senses the device it’s running on and adapts automatically. For example, one of the nicest features is Continuum: If you’re using Windows 10 on a smartphone or tablet and you connect the device to a monitor, Windows changes to the desktop interface.

We think it adds up to a compelling argument for changing. Now, let’s go into a little more detail.

In parallel, the New Technology (NT) product line, written from scratch, without MS-DOS underneath it, spawned Windows NT Workstation and Windows 2000 Professional. NT was stable and much more secure than Windows 3 and 9x, although its improvements to its user interface always trailed behind the consumer versions by about three years. That was due mostly to the difficulty and expense of developing and maintaining two completely separate Windows. Still, it was revered in the business world, where reliability matters more than appearance.

Microsoft finally, thankfully, closed the book on the original Windows code when it released Windows XP, so ever since then, everyone’s been using some flavor of Windows NT. However, it kept the home/business split. We got Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional. They were really the same product, but Home Edition lacked a few features found in Professional. There was also Windows XP Media Center Edition, which was XP Professional sold to home users, with an additional application that let Windows record TV shows and drive a TV as its monitor. And, a Starter Edition with stripped-down features was sold in some countries.

Now, the Windows 10 family has the following breakdown, from the simplest to the most complex:

Windows 10 IoT Core is an ultra-miniature version of Windows for the Internet of Things, tiny microcomputers that control home appliances, vending machines, robots, and so on. These are called “embedded” applications where a computer and its software are built in to the fabric of some device. Windows 10 IoT Core runs on small, inexpensive devices, and it’s free to hobbyists. (You can read more about it at https://dev.windows.com/en-us/iot, if you’re curious.)

Windows 10 Mobile is for smartphones, tablets, and other devices with screens smaller than 8 inches diagonal. Versions are available for several different microprocessor families, including ARM and Intel-compatible CPUs. It’s sold only to equipment manufacturers for inclusion in their products. It replaces and merges the Windows Phone and Windows RT product lines.

Windows 10 Mobile Enterprise adds management support to phones and tablets so that they can safely and securely be connected to corporate networks and managed by corporate IT staff.

Windows 10 Home is available to consumers, either preinstalled or as a downloaded upgrade, or for purchase to be installed on home-built computers. This and the rest of the listed versions can be used on tablets with screens 8 inches diagonal or larger, or desktops, but in either case require an Intel-compatible 32-bit or 64-bit processor. Windows Updates are installed automatically, without consent, in this edition.

Windows 10 Pro has everything that Home has, and adds support for business use. It’s intended for devices that are to be connected to a business network that is managed by Windows Server, supports encryption of the files on its drives, and has some other advanced features, as listed in Table 1.1. It’s available for direct purchase or as an upgrade for comparable versions of Windows Vista, 7, or 8.

Windows 10 Enterprise adds additional corporate management features to Pro. The primary difference between Pro and Enterprise is how it’s licensed for use on desktops, in virtual machines, and on Terminal Services (remote desktop) servers. Network managers also have a great deal of control over how, when, and if Windows Update patches are delivered to computers running the Enterprise edition. It’s only available to business customers, through volume licensing agreements.

Windows 10 Education is essentially Windows 10 Enterprise with licensing arrangements attractive to schools and other educational institutions.

Besides these various editions, versions suffixed with the letters N, E, K, or KN are sold in specific markets. They are missing a few of the usual preinstalled multimedia and web browser applications, as a way of resolving antitrust troubles. (For example, Microsoft had to remove Windows Media Player and fork over $784 million to buy the letter N from the European Commission.) If you have one of these flavors, you need only download the missing application(s) from www.microsoft.com to get rid of the distinction.

Just to be clear, this book covers Windows 10 Home, Pro, Enterprise, and Education. If you have Windows 10 Mobile, most of our coverage is applicable to you, but we also talk about some features that your edition of Windows doesn’t have, and we don’t cover phone components. And we focus on the features that you can use and manage yourself as an end user. We don’t cover features that are controlled entirely by network managers from the Windows Server operating system, so we don’t cover the server side of management for Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Education.

There appear to be a lot of versions to choose from, but thankfully you can usually narrow down the choice to one or two. In a corporate setting, your IT department will select the Pro or Enterprise edition for you. In Europe or Korea, the N and KN flavors will be the only ones available. If you do have a choice to make, it will be between Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro. Now, if you’re interested enough in Windows versions to be reading this section, you’ve probably done plenty of research online already, so we’ll keep this brief. Table 1.1 lists the primary feature differences between the editions.

Windows Media Center, a television digital video recorder application, has been eliminated from all Windows 10 versions and is not available as an add-on as it was with Windows 8.

Windows 10 comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. This is a significant decision to make, because you can’t change back and forth between 32-bit and 64-bit versions; you’ll be stuck with the choice and will have to do a complete, clean install to change. If you’re not sure which to choose, here are some pointers:

Some ultra-portable notebook PCs have 32-bit CPUs, so you can’t install the 64-bit version on them.

The 32-bit versions can use only up to 3GB of RAM (program memory) in your computer, even if you have more installed. This can seriously slow you down if you edit video or use huge image-editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop. The 64-bit versions can take advantage of as much RAM as you can stuff in.

The 32-bit versions can run antique MS-DOS and 16-bit Windows 3.1 applications directly. The 64-bit versions can’t. If you need to use applications that are that old on a computer that runs 64-bit Windows, you’ll have to run them in a virtual machine that runs a 16- or 32-bit version of Windows or MS-DOS. We discuss this in Appendix A, “Virtualization.”

The 64-bit versions of Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise include Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtual machine manager (VMM). If you don’t want to use Hyper-V, or if you want to run virtual machines on 32-bit Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise, or any variety of Windows 10 Home, you’ll have to install VMware, VirtualBox, or another VMM. Microsoft Virtual PC, the VM tool in earlier Windows versions, is not available for any edition of Windows 10.

You’ll need the 64-bit version if you want to run 64-bit versions of applications like Microsoft Office. The 64-bit versions of applications take advantage of the full 64-bit CPU capability and the additional memory, so they tend to run faster and better than their 32-bit counterparts.

If you have devices in or connected to your computer that were manufactured before 2008, you might not be able to find 64-bit device drivers for them. Most equipment made since then has both 32- and 64-bit support.

When Windows Vista was released in January 2007, 64-bit versions of Windows were still considered exotic, and device driver support lagged. Now, virtually all new computers ship with 64-bit Windows preinstalled.

For earlier versions of Windows, upgrading is a bit more complicated. You can upgrade an existing installation of Windows 7 to Windows 10, with applications, settings, and personal data (user accounts and files), subject to the restrictions listed in Table 1.2. The upgrade should be free before July 29, 2016. If you’re updating from Vista, you’ll have to reinstall all of your desktop applications. If you’re moving up from Windows XP (and if your old Windows XP computer is capable of running Windows 10), you can buy an upgrade Windows 10 license, but you’ll have to do a clean install. This means your files and documents will be available, but your settings will be lost and you’ll have to reinstall your application programs if you want to use them in Windows 10. It’s probably not worth doing; in the long run, it’s usually better to get a new computer. (A 10-year-old hard disk is not likely to last that much longer, anyway.)

Table 1.2 lists the upgrade paths that Microsoft supports.

Microsoft intends to permit the update of Windows Phone 8.1 devices to Windows 10 Mobile, but the update depends on cooperation from phone carriers.

There is no path to update Microsoft Surface tablets that run Windows RT to the full version of Windows 10, but, at the time this was written, a partial update called Windows 8.1 RT Update 3 is planned.

When you’re upgrading, although you can choose which edition of Windows you want to install, you can’t change between 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Doing so requires a clean install.

To learn more about upgrading, see “Upgrading to Windows 10,” p. 42.

To learn more about the Start menu and Modern apps, see “Taking a Tour of the Windows 10 Interface,” p. 105.

This isn’t to say that Windows 10 is difficult to use without a touchscreen. You can definitely get by quite well with just a keyboard and mouse. In fact, if you’re a good typist, you might actually prefer to keep your fingers on the keyboard most of the time. The trick here is that it’s not always immediately apparent just what you should do with the mouse and keyboard to get Windows 10 to do what you want. On Modern apps, the pull-down menu is gone, replaced in most cases with a just hamburger icon, which we show in Figure 1.2 and explain in Chapters 3 and 4. You’ll master them in no time.

Then there are Modern apps, which you can obtain only by visiting the Windows Store (which is itself an app).*

* This is true for home users anyway. In a corporate environment, system managers can install locally developed Modern apps—so-called Line of Business apps—on managed and employee-owned computers.

Modern apps use a very simplified user interface. These apps emphasize “content over chrome,” meaning the apps show users what they want to see, not a bunch of graphical gimmickry. The new look is simple and clean, with large type, not many words, and plain interface objects that don’t try to look like real-world materials. Refer to Figure 1.2 for an example. The days of the etched 3D dialog box pushbutton that looks like brushed stainless steel are numbered.

To learn more about using Modern apps, see “Working with Running Apps,” p. 111.

In fact, if your computer has a microphone, and if you want to, you can leave Cortana turned on all the time, and all you have to do is say “Hey, Cortana” to have the software respond to your spoken commands. This is cool and creepy at the same time.

If you elect to use your Microsoft account on Windows 10, Windows will automatically sync your Windows preferences over the Internet. Your chosen background screens, colors and pictures, account password and passwords you use to connect to shared network and Internet resources, Ease of Access and language settings, apps and app settings, Wi-Fi network keys, preferences you set in File Explorer (discussed in the next section) and some other tools, and so on will all be stored on Microsoft’s servers and will follow you to any Windows 10 computer you sign in on, provided it has an Internet connection.

(By the way, if it bothers you that your Wi-Fi network keys get uploaded to Microsoft’s servers, where, say, the National Security Agency might gain access to them, consider these two points: First, you can tell Windows not to sync passwords and keys. Second, if it wanted to, the NSA could easily break into your Wi-Fi network without bothering to squeeze the key out of Microsoft. So, personally, I’m happy to use the syncing feature. It’s very convenient to have all of your devices “just work” on a given Wi-Fi network after having set up just one.)

To learn more about creating a Microsoft account, see “Setting Up User Accounts,” p. 73.

In Windows 10, PC Settings has been rechristened Settings and has been greatly expanded to assume more configuration responsibilities. It’s now very much a worthwhile app to get to know. Control Panel is still around and still has lots of useful features, so now power users need to know both programs. Knowing which program to use for which configuration task? That is now a big problem and remains one of the few areas where Windows 10 falls down on the job. We hope our coverage of both tools throughout this book will help.

In place of a menu, you have a graphical toolbar whose contents change depending on what you’ve selected below it. It takes some getting used to. Gone are the days when you could just look through all of a program’s menus to see what’s possible. Microsoft says its research shows that people actually do “discover” more functions and features with a ribbon interface than with a traditional menu system. I’m not so sure. There are probably things in there that nobody will ever discover, because they appear only if you select three different files in three different folders, on a Saturday afternoon, around teatime.

To learn more about the new File Explorer, see “Navigating Folder Windows,” p. 156.

Angry Birds was an early arrival, and although Games is clearly going to be one of the biggest sections of the Store, we expect that the range and quantity of apps will eventually match those of the iPhone/iPad world. These apps can be used on the purchaser’s desktop computers as well as on tablets and phones, thus adding to their appeal (and market base).

To learn more about the Windows Store, see “Store,” p. 148.

Chapter 3 takes you on a quick tour of the new Windows 10 management tools. We cover the new and old-style management tools in detail throughout the book. If a particular topic interests you, the index should lead you straight to it.

Windows 8 did one thing that Windows 10 doesn’t do: The first time you signed in, you were taken on a quick tour of the Windows 8 user interface, including touch gestures if your computer had a touchscreen. This was necessary because Windows 8 was essentially unusable unless you’d been shown the secret touching and clicking gestures. This isn’t the case with Windows 10; its interface is fairly “discoverable” just by poking around at it. Still, a guided tour would be very helpful, which is why we wrote Chapter 3.

To learn more about installing Windows 10, see “Windows 10 System Requirements,” p. 31.

You can have Storage Spaces present the entire combined storage space of your disks, or you can dedicate some space to storing redundant information to help recover from a physical disk failure. If you want, you can choose to use added disks the old way, separately.

To learn more about growing your hard disk storage, see “Working with Storage Spaces,” p. 575.

Microsoft Edge (formerly known as Project Spartan) is a newly written browser that was designed to be extremely fast and responsive. It includes new features that, for example, let you annotate (write on) and share comments about websites. And it eliminates the ActiveX software plug-in system that let software developers add features to the browser and let hackers take over hundreds of millions of computers. Plug-ins in Microsoft Edge can contain only HTML markup and JavaScript programming, so it should be much more secure than Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer 11 is shipped as well because some sites and some web applications in particular require IE’s particular quirks and capabilities and/or special plug-ins to operate correctly.

To learn more about IE 11, see Chapter 15, “Web Browsing with Windows 10.”

Data about available public, unsecured networks comes from Microsoft partners and other Windows Phone and Windows 10 users who have connected to them. In hot spots such as airports or cafes where a Terms of Usage Agreement is presented before access is granted, Wi-Fi Sense might even be able to bypass that by automatically agreeing to the terms on your behalf. In addition, Windows can let you use secured networks shared by Windows 10 and Windows Phone users when you are both in each others’ Contacts list.

A connection made through Wi-Fi Sense, by the way, gets Internet access only and no access to the Wi-Fi network’s other computers (and thus its shared files, folders, or printers) because Windows 10 (or Windows Phone 8.1) manages this as a special type of connection. Windows will also not reveal the network’s password to anyone who’s using a connection acquired through Wi-Fi Sense.

To see how to take advantage of Wi-Fi Sense, see “Connecting with Wi-Fi Sense,” p. 843.

To share networks you know about with your friends, see “Sharing Wi-Fi Network Settings with Friends,” p. 397.

Microsoft has tuned up the techniques it used to speed up Windows’ boot time. It keeps a list of which operating files get read in during startup, in which order, and uses at least one core of a multicore CPU to read those files into memory as quickly as possible, so they’re loaded even before they’re needed. And it defers the loading of nonessential services and subsystems until after the sign-in screen is up so that you can start signing in while Windows is still putting itself together.

Windows 7 did this, too, but Windows 10 and 8 have another trick up their sleeves: kernel hibernation. As you may know, hibernation is a way of putting the computer to sleep by writing the contents of memory to disk before shutting off the power entirely. When you power it back up, the computer reads the stored data back into memory and takes up where it left off. When you do a normal, power-off shutdown, Windows 10 ignores all the memory used by applications but hibernates the Windows kernel—just a few hundred megabytes, so this takes almost no time at all. When you power on the next time, the kernel is restored intact, saving the time it would take to load and configure it from scratch. The sign-in screen follows in short order, and then the rest of Windows loads in the normal manner. This shaves several seconds off the startup time. It’s remarkably helpful.

One consequence of this is that the loaded copy of the Windows kernel can stick around for a long time—months perhaps. It’s stable enough to do that, but if you use the Start Menu power icon’s Restart option, Windows does a true restart, discarding everything in memory and reloading everything from scratch.

When Windows 10 is installed on a computer that has a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) BIOS on its motherboard, you (or your organization’s IT department or your computer’s manufacturer) can lock down the system so that only an authorized, unmodified, digitally signed operating system can boot.

In fact, to earn a Windows 10–family logo sticker, computer vendors are required to ship computers with Secure Boot enabled. To install an alternative operating system such as a version of Linux, you might need to disable Secure Boot in the computer’s BIOS settings. Alternatively, your OS vendor might be able to supply a digitally signed copy that is recognized by the BIOS in your computer.

In addition, Windows can help meter your Internet usage through a mobile broadband connection so that you don’t exceed your data plan’s cap.

The Start menu is back. ’Nuff said.

Modern and Desktop apps live together. There is no more flipping back and forth, which, if you ask me, is flippin’ wonderful.

The charms are gone, and there are no more secret gestures. There are now visual indicators of where to click and navigate, and they remain visible all the time. The gestures you used in Windows 8 are mostly still available; for example, you can still swipe in from the right side of the screen. This now displays the Notifications panel and Action Center, a truly wonderful new tool. You can still right-click the bottom-left corner of the screen to get the Power User’s menu (actually, you can right-click anywhere on the Start button). But you don’t have to use these tricks. They’re just there to use if they feel natural.

You can close, move, and resize Modern apps. They act more like familiar Desktop applications than they did in Windows 8 and 8.1.

The default location to save files from apps is Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage solution. Having a default location makes it very easy to save things in a way that makes them available on all of your devices. (This change occurred in Windows 8.1, but we wanted to remind you.)

Most of the preinstalled Modern apps such as Mail and Maps have been improved. Improvements are something that you can expect on an ongoing basis. Microsoft says that it will continue to adjust and improve Windows 10 apps.

On Windows 10 Home, updates will be delivered and installed automatically and can’t be turned off. On Windows 10 Pro, you can defer but not permanently ignore updates. This change is a bit heavy-handed, but it should significantly improve security and reduce virus infections.

More Control Panel settings have been moved to the Modern Settings app, which you can reach from the Settings link on the Start menu. Some of the changes are annoying and confusing. (We show you how to deal with them throughout the book.)

On a corporate domain network, the Workplace Join feature lets you connect your personal tablet or computer to the corporate network without actually becoming a domain member. This strikes a balance, leaving you in control of your device but giving network managers control over what resources you can use. There are also improvements in ways to connect to network printers. Virtual private networking features include more built-in support for more VPN vendors and an autoconnect feature that lets an app initiate a VPN connection when necessary.

And the Windows Update mechanism, which in previous versions of Windows gave you control over which individual update were installed and when, and could be even be turned off entirely, is no longer so flexible. On Windows 10 Home, it can’t even be turned off, and you can’t control which updates are installed. From the standpoint of security, this is probably very good thing, as out-of-date operating systems and applications are fodder for hackers and criminals. On Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise, you can delay, but not prevent updates from being installed.

So, change is in your future, like it or not. It should be at least some comfort that Microsoft has promised that changes will be rolled out in small groups of users with careful monitoring and gathering of feedback, so that if a future change causes problems, it can be pulled back and corrected before it causes widespread difficulties. (This may be of small consolation if you happen to be randomly placed in the first group of guinea pigs).

And there will be widespread testing before changes are sent out to the public at large. If you’re hot to see the latest and greatest Microsoft has to offer, you can sign up to be a Windows Insider at insider.windows.com, and ask to participate in testing new features, choosing to be in the “fast ring” which gets changes right away, or the “slow ring” which gets changes a few months later. You can evaluate, vote on, and give feedback about the changes, and your input will help determine what other Windows 10 users will eventually see—all one billion of them, if Microsoft succeeds in their intention to make Windows 10 the universal Windows platform worldwide.

And that leads us to a final comment about a way to look at your interactions with Windows 10: Let it work for you rather than the other way around. If you find yourself struggling to remember how to get to some setting or activate some feature, remember that Windows 10 is all about searching and prioritizing.

You might find that you miss the hierarchy of programs in the Start menu, which lets you dig down through sensible categories to find what you were looking for. (Well, they start out as sensible categories. After a few years when your Start menu had 50 or 100 items in it, they weren’t so sensible.)

But you don’t need to dig any more. Instead, search for what you want by typing the first few letters of a word or title into the search box that appears in the taskbar, the Settings app, or the Control Panel. Don’t try to navigate the Control Panel; instead, search it. This takes just a fraction of a second. It’s much quicker than poking around with the mouse.

Then you prioritize the Start menu by moving tiles for your most-used apps to the top of the first page. This way, you can start up a favorite application with just one poke of your finger or one click.

The same holds for the desktop. Easily pin your favorite programs to the taskbar so that you don’t need to locate them more than once. This is so easy, once you remember to do it.

Also remember that there are keyboard and mouse shortcuts for almost everything important. Searching, File Explorer, Cortana, and almost all Windows management tools are always just two keystrokes or one mouse click away, if you know the right keys to press or the right place to click. This book will help you learn them quickly.