Microsoft unveiled the first details of its Windows 10 operating system Wednesday, which they say will span devices from PCs and game consoles to smartphones and tablets.
Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive vice president of the company's operating systems group, says the latest rendition of Windows focused on "more personal computing."
Myerson says Windows 10 targets three pillars: "mobility of the experience," trust and "the right interaction at the right time," hinting the platform can be controlled by mouse, touch or even gaze.



Among the new features is the introduction of a successor to the Internet Explorer Web browser, dubbed Project Spartan. The browser, which will work across multiple devices, includes a note-taking feature for annotating webpages, a reading mode and built-in support for PDF files.
The Start menu appears to be a hybrid of the classic Windows PC interface and the tile-based presentation of applications, allowing users to go full screen with the Start menu for more information.
Microsoft will also add Cortana, the personal digital assistant users communicate with through voice, to PCs running Windows 10. Users will be able to ask Cortana to pull up PowerPoint slides, send e-mails or search for photos and other information.
Microsoft will integrate Skype across all devices, and include Office programs Word, Excel and PowerPoint on all Windows 10 phones and tablets. It will also feature an Xbox app where users will find their games or follow the activity of friends.

"We want to move from people needing Windows, to choosing Windows, to loving Windows," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
While PCs and mobile devices dominated the event, Microsoft offered an incredible glimpse into the future with a jump into holographic computing. The company introduced the HoloLens, a virtual reality style headset that allows its users to view holograms in the real world. Demos showed users watching Netflix programs on a virtual screen, or manipulating three-dimensional images.
Windows 10 is the first significant upgrade to the platform since the arrival of Satya Nadella as CEO last year. During his tenure, Nadella has made a strong push toward mobile, enterprise and the cloud as well as thrown support toward the company's popular Xbox video game brand.
The introduction of Windows 10 is the first step in Microsoft realizing Nadella's vision, says FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives. "This is about Nadella leading Microsoft into its next stage of growth away from the PC and towards a cloud, virtualized world which can connect all devices on one platform."
UPDATE: Microsoft Has Announced That It Will Provide Free Upgrade to Windows 10 for PC's Running On Windows 7 & Windows 8.Now That;s a Big Reason To Upgrade To Windows 10.

After just a week with the Surface Pro 3, the Type Cover 3 and flexible kickstand had left us furious with Microsoft. But only because the changes they bring from the first and second generation Surface are so obvious that you wonder why they didn’t happen earlier (don't worry if you own an earlier Surface - we're sure Microsoft has a letter of apology in the post...).
In place of the two-stage kickstand debuted by the Surface 2, the support now bends almost all the way back, using a brand new hinge design.
The Type Cover keyboard, meanwhile, can now be latched at its upper edge magnetically to the bottom of the SP3's screen, creating a rigid platform in place of the wobbly board that haunted previous Surfaces.
Those two changes transform the Surface into a good laptop that will work almost everywhere. With the kickstand bent back to 120-130 degrees and the keyboard attached, it works as well as any conventional laptop if you spend your life with your legs crossed on the sofa.
Tilt the kickstand back further to 140-150 degrees, and it's a perfectly-angled writing surface for use on a desk if you’re taking notes. In fact, we couldn't find a scenario where the Surface Pro 3 borked: it now works, really well.
The kickstand, in particular, is a minor engineering marvel. It retains the first two stages from the Surface 2; pull it away from the body, and there are two distinct locking points.
But push gently beyond the second lock point, and it will bend back to almost 150 degrees. We’re not irresponsible enough to give any view on the hinge’s long-term durability, but we will say that it feels beautifully made, and operates with the same well-damped smoothness after a hard month of use as it did on the day of opening the box.
The Type Cover 3, meanwhile, is a dramatic improvement over the Type Cover 2. The keyboard’s now spacious enough for big, clumsy fingers, and at last the trackpad is of a size and sensitivity that make it a pleasure to use. One thing, though: the keys clack if you’re typing in anger - but even then, the cheap-ish clack doesn’t infer shoddy build.
The kickstand and keyboard aren't the only changes for the better. Many (including us) found text too small on the 1920 x 1080 10in screen of the Surface 2 or Pro 2. So the switch to a 12in display at a rather unusual 2160 x 1440 resolution for the SP3 is welcome, as is the shift to a 3:2 aspect ratio. Somehow, the Pro 3 just looks and feels the right size (whatever that is), while its predecessors were too small to be taken that seriously.
The SP3's now natural to use in portrait mode (a claim you could never make for the Surface 2), making it a great (albeit large) ebook reader (which was one of Microsoft's stated intents with the 3: make it feel as much as possible like a good paper notebook).

PERFORMANCE: A GOOD LAPTOP, A BRILLIANT TABLET

The Surface Pro 3 will be available with a choice of Intel i3, i5 and i7 chips, 4GB, 8GB or 12GB of RAM, and 64GB, 128GB, 256GB or 512GB of SSD storage.

Whatever combo you go for, you're buying a ridiculously powerful tablet, and a decently meaty mid-range laptop - and you can be confident that even the lowliest spec won’t be a slouch. Our Intel i5 / 4GB / 128GB model belted through just about every task we could hurl at it - Office, browsing, email, music and movies.
That said, let’s be clear on one thing - the SP3’s no gaming rig. It will happily chomp through the lighter games you'll find in the Windows Store. But with only an Intel 4400 HD graphics chip on hand to push the pixels, it'll stammer to a halt if you fire up Crysis at max settings (at which point, you’ll also discover how hot the top right hand edge of the unit can get).
Avoid giving it that kind of abuse, and the SP3 will run quiet and cool. We did find that the top right of the tablet (or top left, if you're holding it in portrait mode) is always slightly warm (we'll assume that's where the i5 is housed), but it’s barely enough to register in normal use.
So which spec should you go for? After a month with the 128GB i5, we wished we'd chosen 8GB of RAM and the 256GB SSD.
While 4GB of RAM will keep Windows 8.1 running happily enough, the OS is happier with 6-8GB under the hood (and since the memory is soldered to the SP3's motherboard, you can't upgrade at a later date).
As for wishing that we’d gone for the 256GB hard drive, the Pro 3 has convinced us that it’s more than a toy - it's easily flexible enough to be used day in, day out, with the result that we’ve half filled the 128GB with our usual digital detritus.
There’s a well-hidden microSD slot tucked into the back of the Surface’s casing, enabling you to add up to 128GB of extra storage.
That’s all very well, but as of now, you cannot install Windows Store games to an external drive - and with some of those games weighing in at over 1GB (Halo: Spartan Assault is 1.6GB, for example), we’d still spend the extra for the comfort of 256GB of onboard space.

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Tech Specs

The Pro 3's screen is stunning. Although it has fewer pixels per inch than the iPad Air (216ppi vs 264ppi), you'd need comically good eyesight to find flaws with the 2160 x 1440 display. Everything's pin sharp.
The 12in screen is also commendably natural in the way it renders colours: its neither neutral to the point of being washed out, nor vivid in a way that'll give you a headache after an hour. It's just right.
And Microsoft has chosen a display that will go bright enough to ensure that your Surface will stay usable even in pretty bright daylight (just as well - the screen has a glossy coating that’s quite reflective).
Be aware that the driver for the Surface screen will only allow two resolutions - the native 2150 x1440, and a laughably old school 1024 x 768. Couple that with Windows 8.1’s, er, ‘interesting’ approach to DPI scaling, and be prepared to tweak before everything’s to your liking.
You should also know that quirks in that same DPI scaling can make life with an external monitor more arduous that it should be.
Our SP3 hooks up every day to the HDMI input of a 23in Philips 1080p desktop monitor, via the Pro 3’s mini display port. As regular as clockwork, we lose five minutes every morning to signing out and then in again once the Philips is connected, simply to re-scale the icons on the desktop. Annoying, and surely not that difficult for Microsoft to fix?

THE PEN AND ONENOTE: THE PARTNERSHIP THAT MAKES THE PRODUCT?

Prod the pen's purple top button once, and your Pro 3 will launch a full-screen note, regardless of whether the machine's asleep or awake. It's intended to allow you to get sudden ideas down quickly, and that's precisely what it does. Double-tap the same purple button, and it will give you the option to lasso a section of the screen for storing away into OneNote. Smart, and genuinely useful.
Live with the SP3 for a bit, and the combination of the pen and OneNote feel as much a part of the everyday experience as the keyboard and kickstand. And you begin to appreciate that OneNote 2013 isn't that shoddy an application. It's great for taking and organising just about anything you throw at it, and the keyword search works a treat.
OneNote's only hitch, in our humble opinion, is its tight integration with Outlook 2013 for task management. If Microsoft really wants to own the productivity game (and it does), it needs a task manager that can sync to the cloud and every other mobile platform.
If you're still a desktop Outlook addict (there are some still out there… right?), you'll adore OneNote. But if you spend your days in one of the thousands of Android or iOS task managers, you'll find OneNote a bind. There are Microsoft-made OneNote apps for Android and iOS, sure, but they're no match for their Evernote equivalents.
Out of the box, your Surface Pro 3 will come with a small pen holder that's meant to attach to the Type Cover. Bluntly, it doesn't work.
After three or four days, we almost lost the pen after the tab holder detached itself without our noticing; the sticky part just isn't sticky enough to stay attached to the Type Cover, and a normal knock will send it flying.
We've taken to carrying the Surface pen around in a laptop case or shirt pocket. That guarantees that it will eventually go missing. Given how important the pen is to life with an SP3, Microsoft needs to come up with a more permanent, attractive solution - and fast
We’d also advise that you find a reliable local stockist of AAAA batteries before you invest in an SP3; the Surface pen is powered by a single AAAA, and we chewed through the power of the battery that came in the box in about four weeks (so let’s make that 12 batteries a year).

BATTERY LIFE: GREAT - AS LONG AS YOU’RE US…

Budget laptops are forgiven if they suffer from poor battery life. You know that you’re compromising by spending the bare minimum, and most cheap 15in lappies aren’t really built for an entire day away from a charging point.
The Surface Pro 3 has no such excuses. Its entire appeal rests on its flexibility - one minute hammering through a PhotoShop file at your desk, the next reading a Nook book on the morning commute. For the whole concept to stack up, you mustn’t feel nervous when taking it out for a day on the road.
Microsoft claims up to nine hours from the Pro 3’s lithium-ion battery ‘while browsing the web’, with careful warnings that your mileage may vary depending on your habits (and it's fair for Microsoft to hedge its bets here: a device as powerful as the Surface can indulge in some heavyweight, juice-sapping work).
Our i5, 128GB model is good for a working day, although we confess that we’ve yet to deliberately run it to red line.
In one day last week, it was unplugged from charge at 7am, then pounded at a conference from 9.30am to 4pm, before taking care of email and transcription duties on the 30-minute train ride home. By the time we re-attached it to a charger at 5.30pm, it was showing 30%. We’d call that good, by any standards.
But then, we’ve read enough forum posts from users suffering from disappointing SP3 battery life to feel blessed. What a forum post can’t tell you, of course, is what use the poster is putting the Surface to. What we can say is that heavy use - particularly video streaming - has a very visible effect on the SP3’s battery drain.
By the way, brownie points go to Microsoft for the design of the power supply. Too many 11-13in laptops come with leads and blocks that weigh more than the thing they power - the Pro 3’s is compact and light, and even includes a USB charging port in the power block.

PROBLEMS: YEP, THERE ARE SOME

Since its launch in the US in late June, users began reporting problems with their Pro 3s waking from sleep, staying awake and suddenly freezing. There have been several firmware releases aimed at squishing the bugs (one of which takes a nail-gnawing 15-20 minutes to install).
But we’ve experienced none of the sleep or wake issues (bar one freeze that forced a hard shutdown - an update shortly after appears to have fixed it).
However, we did fall foul of one of the other commonly reported issues: flaky wireless. The latest update (July 16) claims to have sorted it for good. That claim looks to be accurate: our SP3 will now happily tether to our HTC One M8 (impossible before the update), and connect to the 2.4GHz wireless in Stuff Towers without constantly dropping.
There’s one other SP3 problem that Microsoft cannot fix alone (although with Windows 8.1 Update 2 coming down the tracks, they could sure as hell help).
The high dpi screen demands that developers update their software so that it renders correctly - and as it stands today, some significant developers have yet to catch up.
Until very recently, even Google Chrome looked awful at hi-dpi (the latest Chrome beta solves most of the issues). Dashlane, a popular password manager, displays as a boil-washed version of itself. Evernote desktop is usable, but ruined by miniature icons and smaller-than-needs-be text.
Developers are getting there, but we understand the Catch 22 from their point of view - it takes time and effort to make the software work well with high dpi displays, but the market for high-end PCs with displays that go beyond Full HD is hardly thriving.

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Verdic

The Surface Pro 3 is excellent.
There, we said it. And with a straight face.
At last, Microsoft has delivered on the promise of the tablet-cum-laptop hybrid. It proves Microsoft's argument that there's space in the world for a design that's more productive than an iPad or Galaxy Note, but easier to hump around than a traditional laptop.
Would we buy one? Yes. We’d avoid the 64GB and 512GB models (you’ll either have no space left in a week, or regret paying the high price after a month). But put a 128GB or 256GB on the counter, and we'd tap in a PIN code without a moment's hesitation.
It would be daft not to point to the fact that the Windows Store still hasn’t reached the heights of the Play Store or iTunes, but that's an issue that's at least somewhat mitigated by the fast that Pro lets you install practically any piece of PC software on the desktop side of the two-faced OS.
Price still has to come into it. The i5 / 128GB SP3 £1000 asking price (with the Type Cover included) would buy an awful lot of Windows laptop, or a similarly-specced 13in Macbook Air with £100 change to spare.
But the Pro 3’s different enough to undermine absolutist comparisons: a chunk of that £1000 is going on ‘unusual’, and we think that for many it will justify itself on that basis. And if you insist on like-for-likes, the fact is that the Pro 3 is as quick and capable as either a Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 or a Macbook Air.
At last, there’s a Surface that’s right.

Microsoft and Nokia have delivered the best Windows Phone yet.

The build quality befits the phone’s high-end status. Nokia has always enjoyed a reputation for solidly made gear and that’s certainly the case here: there’s nothing wobbly or creaky in evidence. Nor does the matte plastic back look or feel cheap – it’s a level or two above the plastic you’d find on the back of certain Korean-designed smartphones. The curved edges of the glass front panel also make for a lovely premium touch.
There are three hardware controls on the right-hand metal edge (the nano SIM tray and 3.5mm headphone socket are located on the top edge): a power button; a volume rocker; and a dedicated camera shutter button (more on that below). There’s a microUSB port on the bottom edge but, thanks to the wireless charging plate included in the Lumia 930’s box, you’ll rarely need to make use of that.
The Day-Glo orange finish of our review sample is certainly… eye-catching, and some might feel happier with one of the two more sober colour options: white or black. Oh, and orange isn’t the only wacky colour available: there’s fluorescent green too, if you're feeling particularly brave.

Dream screen

The 5in, 1920 x 1080 OLED screen is one of the Lumia 930’s best features, just as it was on the Lumia Icon. A 1080p resolution may not match the sheer pixel count of a 2K display such as that of the LG G3, but it’s still extremely sharp: the pixel density of 441ppi is still above that offered by leading phones such as the Apple iPhone 5s (326ppi), Samsung Galaxy S5 (432ppi) or Sony Xperia Z2 (424ppi).
It’s not just showing detail at which the Lumia 930’s screen excels: it’s also rich and vibrant when it comes to colour and contrast, bright enough to view outdoors on sunny days (albeit fairly shiny and reflective) and its wide viewing angles mean it stays vivid even when you’re viewing off-centre.
It’s a great all-purpose screen, although its 16:9 ratio makes it particularly suited to displaying video. The one slight issue we found is the presence of some smearing when scrolling through web pages and the like – but it’s hardly a deal-breaker.

What a performance

With a quad-core Snapdragon 800 and 2GB of RAM, the Lumia 930 is a powerful phone, and its AnTuTu Benchmark score reflects that. It racked up a total of 25,051, which puts it the same ballpark as phones such as the LG G2, Samsung Galaxy S4 and Sony Xperia Z1 and a little behind current top-tier models such as the LG G3, Samsung Galaxy S5 and Sony Xperia Z2. That said, it seemed totally at ease with whatever apps and games we chucked at it, and it’s the beefiest Windows Phone currently on sale (bar the equally-specced Lumia 1520, which is more of a phablet thanks to its 6in screen).

Nokia has been making Lumia phones compatible with wireless charging for a while now, but customers have been required to pay extra for a charging plate. That’s no longer the case, and the 930 comes with one in the box. A nice touch, and one that’ll ensure buyers make the most of the phone’s fuss-free charging capabilities.
The 2420mAh battery feels just about adequate for purpose. If you're watching a lot of video, surfing the web often or taking loads of photos, you'll find it may not last an entire day – but less intensive use should see it stretch into a second one.

READ MORE: Nokia Lumia 1520 review

Yes we cam

The 20MP sensor on the rear PureView camera is able to take either 19MP 4:3 ratio photos or 16MP 16:9 photos, and automatically makes a 5MP version of all shots taken for faster uploading and sharing.
The camera has a wide f/2.4 aperture, dual LED flash and Carl Zeiss optics – and it feels like all these combine well to make it one of the finest smartphone snappers around. Both video and stills have superb clarity and colour, it’s more than adequate in low light, and Nokia’s “Living Images” feature is a nice touch: it plays a second or two of video before displaying stills, giving you an impression of a moment in time being captured. The large sensor and wide aperture also enable you to achieve a narrow depth of field in certain instances – and that can always make for lovely looking photos.
The only issue we have is the lack of HDR in the default camera. As you can see in our shot from the hilltop, this can lead to washed-out areas (in this case, the sky) where there's high contrast in a scene.
The default camera app, Nokia Camera, allows you to manually tweak a number of settings (white balance, exposure compensation, shutter speed, flash, ISO and focus) and this, coupled with the hardware shutter button (which you can half-press to focus) makes the Lumia 930 very photographer friendly.
Video, meanwhile, can be captured at 1080p quality in 30fps, 25fps or 24fps, and looks lovely when played back. There are four microphones, allowing you to record in surround sound, and Nokia has included a bass filter that lets you cut out low-frequency audio that could distort voices and other higher frequency sounds.

Windows Phone gets better

 The Lumia Icon came with Windows Phone 8, but the Lumia 930 offers the 8.1 edition of Microsoft’s OS. A .1 update might seem small, but there are a number of useful tweaks stuffed in: the Start screen is more fluid and customisable; there is now a proper notification pane (!) that can be accessed by swiping down on the Start screen; and there’s of course the Cortana personal assistant, Microsoft’s voice-activated answer to Siri and Google Now.
Cortana isn’t officially available yet on UK Windows Phones except in beta, so we can’t say for certain quite how well it (she?) works – but the feeling we get from using the 930 is that, slowly but surely, Windows Phone is improving to a level where it can now look Android and iOS in the eye. Except when it comes to apps.
The fact is, if you buy a Windows Phone handset you don’t have access to anything like as many apps as you would on an Android or iOS device. There are plenty available, including some of the big names such as Instagram, Vine and Spotify – but Windows Phone remains, and probably will remain for some time, the poor cousin of Android and iOS in this regard.

READ MORE: Windows Phone 8.1 review

Nokia Lumia 930 verdict

We liked the Lumia Icon a lot, and we like the Lumia 930 even more. It doesn’t make any drastic improvements to key elements – the screen, camera, performance are all the same – but the inclusion of a wireless charger and Windows Phone 8.1 out of the box make it a better buy. It doesn’t have as much raw power as top iOS and Android phones, nor access to their wealth of apps, but it’s the best Windows Phone yet.