At this writing things may change either losing some of these features or gaining a few more with the Microsoft Windows 10 preview release. As always Microsoft will show you a batch of nice features which could be in the final release or if they are truly buggy they will get dropped.
Top features on Windows 10
1. The Desktop
Houston, you have a desktop! Yes, Microsoft finally understood the vital mistake they made by throwing out the desktop which is why people did not drop XP, Vista or Windows 7 to jump to Windows 8. Win10 will fix that by giving the desktop the top priority.
2. The Start menu
Windows 10 returns the Start menu to its rightful spot in the lower left-hand corner of the desktop. Windows 10 Start Menu mixes the Metro Start screen’s functionality, sprinkling Live Tiles of Windows 8-style apps next to shortcuts to more traditional PC software. You can turn off the Live Tile, unpin all the Metro apps or you can choose to have the Start menu expand to the full screen. Freedom of choice is back in action.
3. Metro apps
Windows 10 will launch a Metro app on your PC to a desktop window instead of a full screen which confused a lot of people. The windowed apps have a mouse-friendly toolbar of options across the top, and even alter their interface to best fit the size of the window.
4. Action Center notifications
Notifications with popups reminding you of all sorts of useful information.
5. Cortana
Siri may get jealous while Cortana makes the jump to PCs with Windows 10. Control of the operating system’s search functions, Cortana will attempt to gain access to everything you are doing on the workstation, it may be better suited to a phone or tablet but it will be a cool feature in the beginning until it becomes annoying such as the Microsoft Office 97 smart helpers were let loose. Cortana can help you call a friend, schedule a reminder, set an alarm, check your calendar, compare stocks, and more, all via natural language queries you ask using text or voice commands.
6. Continuum
The Continuum feature will allow the user that enjoyed the quicker touch mode for opening apps will be available so that depending on the device you can dynamically switch the interface between the desktop to a Windows 8 flavor. Depending on the device you are using one will default to either the tile or the desktop.
7. XBox
With Sony PS4 killing XBox ONE and Microsoft investing so much you knew that they wanted to get something for the public to begin thinking about the XBox again. The center point is your Activity Feed, which is populated by your Xbox Live Friends’ activities, such as unlocking an achievement or launching a Twitch stream. The right side of the app lists your friends; selecting one offers options to view their game clips, invite them to a party, send an IM, and more. You can also view your own achievements, manage your profile, and more all right within the app. Eventually, you’ll be able to stream your Xbox One games to a Windows 10 PC or tablet.
8. Settings
Finally they will have Settings coming from the Start Menu instead of moving between screens to get to the Control Panel. This was attempted to be fixed in Windows 8.1 which did solve alot of lost users and hopefully this will be back to normal from the Start Menu.
9. File Explorers Home folder
This feature will present you with a HOME folder that displays the recent used files and folders so you can quickly figure out what you were doing yesterday.
10. Boot to the desktop
Finally they came to their senses instead of the useless start screen which you most likely did not use but swiped to get to the apps screen.
11. Virtual desktops
This feature allows you to see exactly what is opened, their presentation and how fast you can get to it. Almost like Apple, oops did I say that ?
Overall, this is Microsoft getting back on to the best path for the Windows user. By giving it for free they openly say ‘we care about you!’