Microsoft Windows 10 2016

Cortana Notebook, which is where you specify your interests so that you'll be notified about what matters to you, has added a few more categories, including On the Go, which pops up suggestions for when you arrive at work or home. Unlike Siri or Google Now, with Cortana, you specify exactly what the assistant knows about you—interests, important people, locations—and you choose whether to have her respond to your spoken "Hey Cortana," or whether you want to use the feature at all.

One improvement to Cortana Reminders is the removal of the Place, Person, or Time requirement: Sometimes you just want to be reminded of something without having to specify any of those. With the previous version, I sometimes tried to set a reminder but gave up because I didn't have a time or place in mind. This simple tweak makes the tool a whole lot more useful.

Cortana Reminders is now a share target; when you hit the share button in a Universal Windows App (UWA), you can set a reminder that's richer than before. For example, if you're in the Edge Web browser, you can hit the Share button, choose Cortana Reminders, and attach the site URL to the reminder. If you do this from the Photos app, the picture is included in the reminder.

Cortana in Windows 10 now interacts more tightly with Cortana apps on other devices, such as Android phones and iPhones. You can enable notifications from the phone, including things like low-battery warnings, to show up on Cortana on Windows. You also see messages from WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and SMS from the phone. With all of these improvements, Windows 10 is edging towards the tight integration between mobile and desktop that you find in Mac OS X, though it still doesn't let you reply, except to Skype messages.

The integration also works more fully with Android devices than with iOS devices, since the latter restrict access to some system capabilities. Of course, it works best with phones running Windows 10 Mobile, but while they're still available, even with new models like the Acer Liquid Jade Primo coming out, the platform has failed to make significant inroads into the smartphone market.

Windows Ink
Touch and pen input support is a major differentiator between Windows 10 and Apple's Mac OS X. Apple sticks with Steve Job's edict that touch screens don't make sense on laptops and desktops. But a touch screen is the most intuitive interface type possible. You see something you want to interact with, such as a button, you press it with your finger. In using a Surface Pro 4$999.99 at Walmart.com and an Asus Zen AiO Pro Z240IC$1,449.99 at Best Buyall-in-one PC (both of which have touch screens) for the past year or so, I've gotten to the point of trying to tap my old, work-issued ThinkPad's screen out of habit.

Windows' digital ink capabilities allow stylus input to work just like a pen or pencil, converting it to text. This is a technologically cool feature, but it will only be of interest to owners of tablets and convertibles like the Surface Pro 4, the Surface Book or the Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 700.$469.00 at Amazon The new Windows Ink Workspace offers sticky notes (with extra smarts), as well as Sketchpad and Screen Sketch options. It also shows recent apps you've penned in and suggests pen-friendly apps in the Store. You can turn off the feature's icon if you don't expect to use it.

This new Ink Workspace can be summoned by clicking a stylus button. You can also take advantage of some Cortana smarts in the new sticky notes. For example, if you write "Wednesday," the text is turned to a blue link, and clicking this gives you the option to set a Cortana reminder. I actually had better luck getting Cortana to notice flight information when I typed it in the note, rather than penning it, however. Info on flight status for such notes appears at the bottom of the sticky.

Sketchpad offers ballpoint pen, pencil, highlighter, eraser, ruler, and touch writing tools. Sketchpad resembles the whiteboard app on the Surface Hub. It also lets you crop the image, copy it, and share it to any Universal Windows app in the share sidebar. A ruler tool lets you draw perfectly straight lines, and even includes a compass. Double-clicking the pen button or choosing Screen Sketch from the Ink Workspace snaps a screenshot of your desktop and opens it in Sketchpad so you can annotate and draw on top of it with any of the aforementioned tools.

One of the coolest inking capabilities is the pen keyboard. You switch to this mode from the standard on-screen keyboard. Start writing on the line there, and text predictions show up. Hit enter, and your writing turns into text in whatever text area you're writing in. It does surprisingly well with even poor penmanship, and striking through your writing deletes it easily.

Edge Web Browser Gets More Capable
The Edge Web browser that comes with Windows 10 is fast and compatible, and it offers unique tools like Web Notes that let you mark up and share webpages, a clean (ad-free) Reading view, and built-in Cortana information. Until now, however, it has lacked a feature that power users insist on: Extensions.