Microsoft has just wrapped up its Windows 10 Event making a slew of announcements, with the most intriguing being the HoloLens augmented reality headset.

Here's a round-up of what else was announced:

• Windows 7 and 8.1 users will be able to upgrade to Windows 10 for free over its first year after launch.
  
• Windows 10 will feature a return to the desktop as its main interface, borrowing the best of its Windows 8 Metro experiments to provide a good touchscreen experience as well.
  
• Refreshed icons. Finally.
  
• Microsoft's personal assistant software Cortana will be part of the new OS.
  
• Windows Phone is dead. As a brand, anyway. As part of their plans to unify Windows as wee know it across phones, tablets and PCs they've decided to drop the 'Phone' brand from their mobile experience.
  
• A really, really big Surface called Surface Hub.
  
• New browser Project Spartan was unveiled, set to become Internet Explorer's successor. It will use a new engine, have a new UI and will let you annotate the web, if you want to.
  
  There was some Xbox news, too:
  
• Xbox One streaming to any device running Windows 10.
  
• Windows 10 will feature an Xbox app for browsing your game collection, chatting to friends on Live and a Game DVR feature for recording PC game footage using the Win+G shortcut, including the previous 30 seconds.
  

And here's the crazy headset they announced along with Windows Holographic.


Source: YouTube


Certainly seems intriguing - apparently it will be priced with both enterprise and consumer in mind and will be released during Windows 10's lifecycle.

Good show Microsoft!

The Windows 10 Preview is now available!

(This post was last modified: 27/01/2015 01:01 PM by S7*.)

Glad to see cross platform multiplayer becoming a thing! It'll be interesting if wee end up with top gamers playing against each other on different platforms fairly.

Thanks for the heads up Kuu - updated main post with link to official Preview download page!

(26/01/2015 09:51 AM)Jem Wrote:  Out of interest, is anyone here willing to upgrade to Windows 10 once it's released?

I am

I'll be buying it to go with a build I'm planning for later in the year.

It'll be very interesting to watch the adoption rate as a free upgrade... prehaps Windows 8 users willbe rushing to upgrade, just to escape the full-on Metro.

(This post was last modified: 25/01/2015 04:46 PM by S7*.)

the streaming service goes the wrong way.

(26/01/2015 10:15 AM)S7* Wrote:  It'll be very interesting to watch the adoption rate as a free upgrade... prehaps Windows 8 users willbe rushing to upgrade, just to escape the full-on Metro.

Lasts one year only though.
I wonder if Windows is going subscription based...