January Build for Windows Insider features Cortana, new Start menu

oke efagene

January 26, 2015 9:50 AM

The company also announced that they will release the new preview build for Windows Insider in a week, and it appears the time has finally arrived.

Microsoft unveiled a new build for Windows 10 last week, which will come with several enticing features, and what's next for the operating system.

The company also announced that they will release the new preview build for Windows Insider in a week, and it appears the time has finally arrived.

Microsoft has released the Windows 10 January Build for Windows Insiders, and comes with a handful of features such as Cortana, a better Start Menu, Continuum feature, and a lot more.

The new build introduces Cortana, Microsoft's digital personal assistant, for the desktops, allowing users to perform a variety of tasks such as set up reminders, check news, search for files, and a lot more.

Cortana is available for U.S. and English only, but the company mentioned they will make improvements in the future builds, and introduce support for more languages as well.

The Start menu has also received some major makeover. Users can now expand it in a full screen mode, which can come in quite handy when you're using a 2-in-1 machine.

"You'll see some big changes to the Start menu in this build, including the ability to expand to a full-screen experience. This really shines on 2-in-1 PCs when switching into . You can also customize the colour of your Start screen. A big change that you won't see is that we actually rebuilt Start in XAML, which is one type of code developers can use to build apps for Windows 10. The work on Start isn't done yet, and we'll have more changes that will show up in future builds including more personalization (and transparency!), drag and drop, Jump Lists, and the ability to resize the Start menu," Microsoft explained.

Other notable features include a new Settings app, new photos and maps app, Windows Store (beta), and a lot more. The update will land via Windows Update, but you can manually check for it by going to PC Settings > Update and recovery > Preview builds and click the Check Now.

The company also unveiled its Micrsoft HoloLens which features multiple sensors, spatial sound, and multiple chips, including a Microsoft-crafted processor called a Holographic Processing Unit.

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