After nine months of public beta testing, Windows 10 is finally here.

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You can now upgrade to Windows 10 free of charge if you have Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 on your existing PC. So what’s the swanky new system all about? Here’s their promise to upgrade your world:

The Start Menu Returns

If you’re upgrading to Windows 10 on a desktop or laptop PC, then prepare to be delightfully surprised: the Start menu you know and love is back. It feels slightly odd to celebrate its return, as it should never have gone away. But Microsoft hasn’t simply just reinstated the old version from Windows 7. Instead, it’s completely redesigned it in a way that combines the best aspects of the last two versions of Windows.

Cortana Is The Smarter and Sassier Siri

Cortana’s visual interface is a lot more useful and intuitive compared to Siri. It’s an overview of your day mixed with the weather, news, local restaurants, and other interests you’ve selected. Cortana keeps everything it knows about you in a virtual notebook, which you can edit to trim out information you don’t want it to remember. It’s also cloud powered, meaning you can download Cortana for Android (or iOS in the future) and get the same features there, all synced up with your laptop.

Enter Edge, Bye Bye Internet Explorer 

Windows 10 also includes a new browser, called Edge. It still has the same flat, minimalist look you saw at the start of the year, as well as a new tab page that shows both other websites as well as handy info like weather, and Microsoft is now making it easier for developers to port extensions from other browsers (such as Chrome). You can draw all over webpages and send a copy to friends so it’s useful if you want to quickly share a screenshot of a site with some annotations.

Google Calendar Is Now Supported

What I can’t live without is my Google Calendar so I’m really excited about this feature! Google Calendar is now supported so you can easily add your Gmail account and have it work just fine across email and calendar. It is very easy to configure the accounts now. In the initial launch itself, the App will ask you about how many accounts are to be configured along with the default Microsoft account before opening completely. You’ll also need to add your Google accounts here to get the Cortana integration across Windows 10 to work, it won’t just fetch information over the web.

Windows 10 is hugely exciting and if you’ve been waiting by the edge of your seat, get yours here now.

Visit the Helios Media Design page to find out more about Lydia's work.

_{This post was originally published on Helios Media Design and has been reposted on Executive Lifestyle with the permission of the author. Photo by Gina Romero / Lumia 930 Gold.}

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