Cortana Re-Imagined for Windows 10 on Desktop

Cortana has been announced for the Windows 10 PC, and will focus on work efficiency, and helping out in the work place. The new Cortana features similar features to its Windows Phone counterpart, however is now adapted for the PC market. In Windows 10, Cortana is able to control the whole operating system, and across the whole Windows 10 ecosystem Cortana is becoming even closer to your perfect assistant.

Cortana is now placed on the taskbar, to the right of the Start Button, for easy access at all times. Cortana can be asked to answer questions, carry out a process, or even find out the latest soccer results.

In the demo, Joe Belfiore showed off how conversational you can be with Cortana, by asking how much it would cost to attend the University of Washington, whether a coat would be needed today, and other everyday queries. Cortana was also used to select and play certain songs from Xbox Music, and when asked to “Please be quiet”, the music is paused. The way in which Cortana has been designed to be easy to interact with and fit in with your daily life style, is a main selling point, and is what puts Cortana above her counterparts on other operating systems and devices. Cortana can also increase work productivity, for instance, searching the file directory, finding files that mention certain phrases, or files created at a certain date. She can search from a range of locations, for example, a local drive, a network drive, or cloud storage.

When managing notifications, Cortana can answer messages, and emails on the fly, by answering messages within the toast notification. [with the option for Cortana to dictate your speech]

Microsoft also heavily emphasised the focus on privacy, and how the “Notebook” is viewable by the user, and what is tracked can be edited for more accurate results. The whole “Cortana” experience is designed to be personalised for you, and to fit your lifestyle. The way Cortana is shaping up across devices is becoming very promising, and will only continue to grow over the coming months.

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