Attention Procrastinators! One more day left to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. In honor of the one year anniversary of the release, I am re-posting my Windows 10 Survival Guide, Part 1, Part 2 and in a shoutout to all procrastinators (we know who we are), actually writing part 3! below is part 1.
Windows 10 Survival Guide: Part 1
So you found yourself in front of a Windows 10 computer and your first reaction is “Ok, now what”? To back track a bit, you should first ask yourself, “How did I get here”? Well, you either bought a new computer, or upgraded from a previous version. The exception is in a work environment, the IT department has taken care of the details and you will login to a pre-configured desktop. In the first two cases, you will find yourself at a login for your Microsoft Live login. If you had upgraded from a previous version and had to go through the reservation process, you would have had to create one. If the computer is new you will be given the opportunity to create one if you do not already have one. When you login, you will be presented with a number of screens and options as shown above.
When your desktop (yes, desktop) appears, it will be very blank as will be the taskbar. You can right click the desktop and select personalize, which will bring up the personalization screen. Here you will be able to select your background picture or color, accent colors and Lock Screen Image. Also on the lock screen settings, you can display additional apps that you can get the status of without logging in. Under Themes you should select Desktop Icon settings and check the boxes to display the icons. If you plan to use voice commands or dictation (more on this later) you can check your sound and microphone settings here as well. Finally there are some options for the Start Menu, you can just leave those at default for now. A click on the arrow at top left will bring you to the settings menu or a click of the X top right will close the menu. Back at the desktop you will see the items you checked off. At bottom left you will see a Start Button, right clicking will show the Power Users Menu (more later) and a left click opens the new Start Menu. The first thing you will see is the tiles for the default apps, you can right click any you may not use and unpin them, or turn the “live tiles” on or off. At this point (or later) you can go into apps you will use like weather and sports and set your location and favorite teams which will update the live tiles with information relevant to your preferences. On the left side of the Start Menu, you’ll see (from the top) most used apps, file explorer, settings, power and all apps. Select all apps and you’ll see a list of installed applications. If you already have Microsoft Office or other frequently used applications installed, right click the most used apps and select pin to taskbar. Those items now appear on the taskbar with the defaults like store and file explorer. On the right side of the taskbar, you’ll see the familiar date and time, sound and network icons and a new notification icon. A click of notifications will show the items you added to the lock screen as well as defaults. This menu is useful if you have a tablet computer and can allow you to quickly switch between desktop and tablet mode and access items without digging through menus. Just to the right of the Start button, you’ll find Cortana, the search and personal assistant. Initially it will ask what Cortana should call you. When it’s ready, simply type what you are looking for, typing paint will show you the the installed application (right click and select pin to start), store apps available and web search results. I’ll cover more about Cortana in Part 3, cool stuff.
Well, you should be able to survive your first try at Windows 10. Next post, Part 2 will cover some useful shortcuts and productivity items that will have you rolling along with Windows 10.
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