The Windows 10 Review: The Old & New Face of Windows
by Brett Howse on August 25, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Operating Systems
- Microsoft
- Windows 10
Digital Inking gets a Promotion
Microsoft launched the Surface Pro with a Wacom stylus, and the Surface Pro 3 switched that up to a N-Trig model. Microsoft ended up buying the N-Trig pen technology outright, and they now offer pen support in the smaller, less expensive Surface 3 model.
They have had a good response to the stylus input support, and some of their first-party apps like OneNote and Fresh Paint have great stylus support. Using the rest of the operating system with the stylus was more for easier selection of items, and navigation. That is of course still there, but the stylus has gotten a big promotion in Windows 10.
With this release, the system now supports pen input for any text field. Let me say this again. Any text field now supports pen input. Even desktop apps like Skype can be written to with the stylus now, and that is a big change over previous versions of Windows.
And, the text support is really good. I have, well let’s be honest here, I have atrocious handwriting. Windows 10 consistently had no issues knowing what I was writing and getting the right word added. It also offers a text correction box so you can tap on a word to correct it if it wasn’t right, much like a touch keyboard offers.
Some 3rd party tools have tried to emulate this, but it is really hard to compete with built in tools, and this addition to Windows 10 really moves the operating system forward for anyone who loves to use a stylus as an input tool. Before, you had to use in in combination with the touch keyboard, but now you can drastically increase text input by using a pen.
If you look ahead, you can see that this may also be a big feature of Windows 10 Mobile, coming to smaller tablets and phones in the near future. This should be a nice benefit to those devices, and the rumblings are that the new flagship Windows 10 Mobile devices from Microsoft are going to come with stylus support.
To a big chunk of users, adding pen support as a first-class citizen may not seem like a big deal, but going forward it may end up as one of the differentiators for the platform. For those that do have a device with pen support already, you are going to find it to be a big change that is very welcome.
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SlyNine - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link
Another agreement.imaheadcase - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
wrongMargalus - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
again, zero credibility when you keep posting the same fake photoshopped pictureSlyNine - Sunday, August 30, 2015 - link
Stop with the ad hominem. The argument is still valid.Notmyusualid - Tuesday, August 25, 2015 - link
I too believe in 'paid shills' also.I cannot imagine any sane, informed mind, would this data mining acceptable. Whatever the conveniences perceived.
theuglyman0war - Wednesday, August 26, 2015 - link
wouldn't mind if I was perhaps paid for this information and could care less if someone was spying on my latest sextapes ( if they think they can stomach my telephoto close-up pimply ass in all it's videotaped digitally edited glory ). I am not paranoid. But I would rather not have every app, browser and OS clogging my systems resources memory and performance with monitoring processes.yuhong - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
I agree that keylogging and reading arbitrary files and the like would not be acceptable, but does Win10 really do that? Cortana I think can be turned off.Zak - Thursday, August 27, 2015 - link
Yup, they ought to be MS shills because I can't imagine any self-respecting individual with IQ over 75 will think what MS is doing with Windows 10 is fine.yuhong - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
I agree that keylogging and reading arbitrary files and the like would not be acceptable, but does Win10 really do that? Cortana I think can be turned off.yuhong - Friday, August 28, 2015 - link
You know you can set the telemetry down to basic, right?