Windows 10 (reviewed) was released on 29 July 2015 and was followed by the free Anniversary Update on 2 August 2016. The next big Windows 10 update is the Creators update, scheduled to arrive in Spring 2017. Here’s your complete guide to Windows 10.
Also see: Surface Pro 5 | Surface 4 | Surface PC | Surface Book 2 | Surface Phone
Update 18 January : Coming soon to Windows is the ability to buy and read ebooks. It appears that Microsoft will add ebooks alongside apps, games, music, movies and TV sections within a unified Windows Store.
Insider Preview Build 15002 adds dozens of new features one of which is an interesting app throttling control. It’s not available to all users yet but it gives priority to the apps in focus, and deprioritises background apps so they use up too many of your computer’s resources.
A rumoured update is ‘Game Mode’ which appears to do a similar thing: prioritise the game that’s running and devote as much processing time, RAM and other resources to making it run as fast as it can. This could be a boon only if you have an older PC, but since Microsoft is yet to reveal the full details of the updates, we’ll have to wait and see. (Image courtesy of our sister site PCWorld.com )
Also new is the ability to pause updates not just until you’re not using your PC or laptop, but for up to 35 days (but still not in the Home version).
Microsoft has been working on the next big update to Windows 10 for some time and it was revealed in October 2016. The latest information comes from MSpoweruser which says the update has been slightly delayed until April 2017 and that its version number will be 1704. This is actually a date: the fourth month of 2017.
It could still change, but the update is scheduled to be ‘finished’ by mid- to late January and then tested and bugs fixed before its public release.
At the 26 October event, Microsoft announced a whole load of new features for the update, which is codenamed Redstone 2. Here’s a selection of the main ones to look forward to.
The Creators Update is codenamed Redstone 2, but already there are rumours of the next big Windows 10 update: Redstone 3. Part of this will be some graphical changes, and these have their own codename: Project NEON. As MSpoweruser reports , the changes won’t be major, but will introduce blurring (called “Acrylic”) and animations that make things simpler and more consistent. Ultimately, it’s a lot like the Aero interface introduced in Windows Vista, and the blurring and animations you see in iOS, such as when you scroll up and emails or text run behind a title bar, and when the title bar shinks and even disappears when you scroll down a web page.
The updates will change the look and feel of some of Windows 10’s native apps, such as Groove, but will later be opened up to developers.
