Windows 10 – Anniversary upgrade

Another year has gone by and Windows 10 has already had its first birthday. The time has come for the Anniversary upgrade, [an upgrade also known as Redstone 2] is now beginning to be downloaded across the world. Windows 10 was known as Redstone 1 during development.

Here in NZ we should see the Anniversary upgrade on our machines shortly, that is of course if you already have the Windows 10 operating system installed on your PC. Should you still be on Windows 7 or 8 then sadly it is officially too late to get the free upgrade to 10 which ended on July 29*.

The first thing to notice in the upgrade is that the Edge Browser gets a raft of improvements, power usage has increased efficiency, plus reduced usage as well as improved battery life on your laptop, and lower usage of memory.

Add-ons for the browser that are easy to use will be available from the Windows Store, e.g. LastPass and AdBlock Plus.

A new addition is ‘Ink’ that if you have a touch screen Windows10 device allows you to take a note, draw sketches or annotate a document by writing on the screen.

Important applications like Windows Office, Edge and Maps have new ‘Ink’ specific features, and in the latter you can for example ink in a route plus add notes on top of the map and then share the result with a friend.

Microsoft’s P/A Cortana [your personal assistant] still awaited here will, when available, be able to now save and recall important information like where you parked your car or your airline membership number, and you can attach images to these reminders.

If you have had difficulty finding the apps you wanted on the start menu a new immediately visible list in alphabetical order is provided which also displays most used apps and recently added ones.

If you are into Xbox then a new update is also on the way and an Xbox Play Anywhere update is on course for a September 2016 release.

As mentioned at the start if you already have Windows 10 then this update is not earthshattering but very nice to have, if you don’t have W10 yet then the extra cost of this upgrade will not justify the cost on top of the cost of Windows 10 itself.

*If you missed out on the free upgrade to Windows 10, perhaps you were away, ill or simply couldn’t get around to it, but would like to upgrade for free then try this: Go to the time icon on your desktop screen, usually right hand bottom corner, click to open settings for date and time, change the date of the computer to July 28 and close. Now try to click on the W10 icon at the foot of the screen, you may just find that you’ll be updated without any fuss and for free. Of course you should always ensure that your PC is up-to-date with updates and you have backed up your files before attempting the switch to Windows 10.