Keep it simple; move from Windows 7 to Windows 10 in minutes

Posted April 27, 2015

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Windows 10 is on the way and there is more information available about it all the time. In addition to all the great features included in Windows 10, one of the most exciting aspects of it is how quick and easy it is to upgrade from previous versions of Windows.

In the video below, watch a walk-through of the few steps it takes to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Even on an older computer, it takes only a few minutes to download the update, launch the application, and start updating. Give it a look to see what you can expect.

Get your computers up to speed on Windows 10 by downloading the Windows 10 Technical Preview. With it, you can test your applications and hardware to prepare for the release of Windows 10.

Start here with Windows 10

Windows 10 Is The Productivity Software That Individuals And Corporations Have Been Asking For. It Has Been Built Collaboratively With Customers, And Embraces Its History While Learning From The Past To Create Something That’s Both Functional And Familiar. With This Combination, Windows 10 Is The Operating System That Takes Us From The Modern Day Into The Future.

The different facets of Windows 10 fall into three categories: what’s back, what’s familiar, and what’s new.

What’s back?

The Start menu is back—and it features some of the coolest, most useful improvements. Rather than just bringing the Start menu back, we revisited the idea and also made it more functional.

• Search is back in the Start menu. It performs just the way you want and expect. It can search installed apps, the Store, Programs, files, and the web. It’s a powerful tool, made even more powerful by its integration with Bing search.
• The Start menu changes size and shape to accommodate the apps and Smart Tiles you add to it. This allows you to control the amount of screen real estate that the Start menu takes up and also the functionality it offers you.

What’s familiar?

Almost everything about the Windows 10 interface is familiar, but we think there is a handful of special features you will truly come to love.

• Apps open in their own window, so you can control the space the window uses, and don’t need to worry about finding your way back to the desktop from a full-screen app. Click “Minimize” and the window retreats to the taskbar.
• Apps can be quickly pinned to the task bar or dragged to the Start menu. And remember, the Start menu grows to accommodate whichever apps are added to it.
• Live Tiles can now live in the Start menu. The tiles appear when you open the Start menu and present up-to-date information without their needing to actually open the tiles app. With them, you can easily see what the weather is like, the time and date, or anything else you care about most.
• The power button is back in the Start menu. So putting the computer to sleep, restarting, or powering down is where you expect and is easier than ever.
• Jump lists work like they did before. Via the Start menu, you can click on a folder and get a list of apps or programs to choose from.
• On-the-fly account switching allows you to quickly toggle between different user accounts as needed without having to search for the user menu.

What’s new?

Windows 10 introduces some new elements to make it even more useful than ever and is the perfect version to move Windows into the future.

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• All apps, whether they’re Win32 apps or modern Universal apps, are available from the Start menu. Previously, the different types of apps lived in different places, but now you can find all of them in the same place, without needing to switch desktops.
• Windows 10 powers a variety of devices, from a Windows Phone to an Xbox console to Microsoft Surface to a desktop. It even powers completely new device categories like Surface Hub and HoloLens. It provides a nearly universal experience, no matter where you are or what you need to do.
• Possibly most exciting, Cortana is integrated with Windows 10 and the new “Spartan” browser. With Cortana, you have your own voice-activated personal assistant that can search the Internet, send email, find files, set reminders, and much more.

All of these improvements, changes, and additions make Windows 10 the perfect platform for increased productivity in the office while working remotely or while traveling. Anyone familiar with previous editions of Windows will find all the functionality they want, plus a number of new elements that will quickly become favorites.

Introducing Project Spartan: The New Browser Built for Windows 10

Today I’m excited to share more details about “Project Spartan,” the new browser we are introducing in Windows 10. Project Spartan will be available across the Windows 10 device family. It is fast, compatible, and built for the modern Web. Project Spartan is designed to work the way you do, with features enabling you to do cool things like write or type on a webpage. It’s a browser that is made for easy sharing, reading, discovery and getting things done online.

We first shared details about Project Spartan on January 21, and it’s been really gratifying to see so much interest and excitement for our new browser. Today, we’re excited to announce that Project Spartan is available for the first time for Windows Insiders to try out as part of the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview build for PCs. You can read more about the new Windows 10 Technical Preview build here, or check it out by joining the Windows Insider Program.

What to expect

In this preview, you will see a bold new design for Project Spartan – one that is streamlined and puts the focus on the page, not the browser. This is part of our vision for a browser that doesn’t visually interfere with your life on the Web, but supports it.  You will also see some of the features that we demo’ed back in January and we hope you’ll love them.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what’s in this build—though keep in mind all these features are still in an early, incomplete state:

• Cortana is built-in and ready to assist: Cortana in Project Spartan is a personal assistant that helps make Web browsing easier for you, with whatever you’re trying to get done. Cortana offers help at just the right moment, based on what she knows about the Web, about you and what you might be trying to do. She remains in the background but provides additional information when you need it, making browsing easier and more efficient. Cortana in Spartan will be available in the US versions of this build, and available more broadly later.
• Inking and sharing so you can capture and communicate your thoughts: Everyone uses the Web routinely to share questions, thoughts, info and comments with friends and colleagues. Now with new inking capabilities, Project Spartan enables you to write or type directly on the page, comment on what’s interesting or clip what you want – then easily share this “Web Note” via mail, or a social network. Researching and collecting information from the Web is just as easy, as you can save your notes directly to OneNote.
• Distraction-free reading with Reading List and Reading View: Keeping up with information overload on the Web is one of the challenges that we all have to manage.  Project Spartan helps with a beautiful new Reading List to collect everything you want to read, including the ability to save any webpage or PDF for convenient access later, and an integrated, distraction-free Reading View that keeps you focused on the content.
• A new engine for the modern Web: Project Spartan’s new rendering engine is built around the idea that the Web “just works,” while being fast, more secure and more reliable. As we shared in our recent developer workshop, we made some changes to the rendering engine that you will see in this build.

It’s important to note we’ll have more features and many improvements coming to Project Spartan before we make it broadly available. This preview is NOT a polished, ready-for-everyone release. For Windows Insiders, we’re excited to make Project Spartan available for your feedback, only a short time after we made it available for use internally at Microsoft.

Why “Project Spartan”

As we started building Project Spartan, we took a hard look at everything we were doing with the browser – from the way we engineered it, to the way we designed the user experience, to the way we approached compatibility and interoperability, to the way we interacted with our customers and Web developers, to the way we released it.

This led us to believe we needed to step forward into a new era of browsing at Microsoft. To build a browser that is designed for the modern Web – a browser for people that have grown up with the Web; who have integrated the Web into their lives in incredible and unexpected ways; who are no longer just exploring a new frontier, but are using the Web to get things done. After all, the world we live in is evolving, the Web is evolving, and our needs are evolving.

This led us to embrace the following design tenets, which you will see come to life in the product, both now and in the months ahead:

• First, be an amazing browser – Browsers have been part of our computing experience long enough that core ideas about what a browser does and doesn’t do are fairly well-defined. Project Spartan has to deliver on what you expect from a browser – fast, more secure, reliable, power efficient – in the ways that you expect it (tabs, address bar, and so on).
• Be bold and forward-looking –we recently talked about how we reexamined our assumptions about compatibility and interoperability, and how we made the decision to build a new rendering engine designed for the modern Web. You will see this tenet come to life in many ways in Project Spartan.
• Ship fast, try new things, learn and always get better – Along with the rest of Windows 10, Project Spartan will be regularly updated, and the team is engaging with customers and partners closely to tune and update plans.

At the same time, we recognize that for some of our enterprise customers, it’s important they have the support they need and can continue to use Internet Explorer when and where they need it. This is why we will continue to make it easy for our enterprise customers to make Internet Explorer 11 the default browser via group policy. Internet Explorer 11 is supported on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10 for all customers, also providing a consistent platform that’s great for enterprise Web apps.

Just as we’ve seen this emergence of a more personal computing era reshape the way we think about computing, we’re seeing that extend to the concept of browsing and what it means in this modern world. Today’s a new day, and we’re proud to be part of this shift in thinking, where you will ultimately define the browsing experience—as it becomes more personal, more natural, more intuitive and more interactive.

Keep the Feedback Coming

This is just the beginning for Project Spartan. We can’t wait to get more and more of you trying it out and to get your feedback. This is a journey we’re on together and we look forward to working with you to shape the future of browsing. You’ll find us particularly easy to reach. Right on the Project Spartan toolbar is a smiley face you can use to send us feedback quickly and easily. You can also use the Windows Feedback tool right on the Start Menu to see and vote on feedback that others have submitted (as well as submit your own comments).

You can also find us on the new Project Spartan uservoice forum for desktop.

Thanks for reading and checking out Project Spartan!