Two New Windows 10 Views that You’ll Love

two new windows 10 views that you ll love

IT support services for businesses

If you’re still not convinced if you should upgrade your computers to Windows 10, check out two of its new view features to sway your opinion.

Revamped Start Menu

Microsoft’s been indecisive about the Start Menu, relying it for many years, then making it go away with Windows 8, and then bringing it back in Windows 8.1. The latest version of this useful tool combines what the manufacturer’s learned from customer complaints and suggestions. The Start menu appears as an icon in its expected place, on the lower left of the screen. Click it, and you’ll discover a list of your most frequently used apps on the left as well as the live tiles of Windows 8 on the right. Frustratingly, you can’t control what appears on the left but you can drag and drop apps to appear as tiles on the right.

Task View

You probably set up your desktop one way when writing reports, such as by putting a Word document on the right, a browser on the left to confirm facts, and perhaps a thesaurus somewhere on the screen to look up synonyms. When you do accounting, a spreadsheet may appear on the right, a calculator on the left bottom, and a banking website on the left top. Different work tasks demand different apps and screen arrangements.

Task View avoids all this laborious opening and rearranging of applications and files. Just arrange your screen once, click the “Task View” button on the Task bar, and Windows 10 memorizes that virtual desktop. You can set up as many different screens as you want. When you want one on the main screen, click the “Task View” button again and all your virtual desktops display as smaller icons. Choose one and it becomes your main desktop.

To find out more about Windows 10 has to offer you or if you need help with IT support services for businesses, please contact us.

IT Support Celebrates The Return of the Start Menu

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Although Windows 8 boasted several improvements to the operating system, its much-loved Start menu disappeared. After much clamoring by users, Microsoft decided to bring back the Start menu for the upcoming Windows 10. (There is no Windows 9.) As your IT support experts, we wanted to let you know of several enhancements that have been added.

  • The left-side of the menu still shows traditional applications and folders. But the right side can include the tiles introduced in Windows 8. You can resize the tiles, add or remove each one, or remove all the ties if all you want is the traditional view on the left.
  • The size of the Start menu is under you control. Move your mouse to the top edge and move it to the top of your screen for the biggest layout possible. You can also move the mouse down to shrink the menu.
  • Bored with the way the Start menu looks and behaves? Right-click any empty space in the menu and choose “Personalize” from the pop-up menu and you can define the background color. Choose “Properties” and you can define everything from the number of displayed items to the way icons and menus look and work.
  • If you want to uninstall a program, there’s no need to do it from the Control Panel. Right-click on the application name in the Start menu and choose “Uninstall” from the pop-up.

Windows 10 is currently being tested so some of these features may differ in the final version. The new operating system is due out in late 2015. If you want more information about Windows 10, need help in preparing your business for the upgrade or have any other IT support questions, please contact us, your IT support experts.

What Does the End of the Ballmer Era Mean for Microsoft Exchange?

what does the end of the ballmer era mean for microsoft exchange
steve-ballmer

Love him, hate him, or fear him, there is no denying that Microsoft co-founder and CEO Steve Ballmer is one of the industry’s true larger-than-life personalities. Reactions to the news that Ballmer is to retire within the next year have varied greatly, from “worst CEO ever” to reflections on his “classy exit.” The one certainty of the situation, however, is that Microsoft is due for drastic changes. What impact will the departure have on Microsoft Exchange and enterprise email?

Office 365 is an important part of Microsoft’s future strategies. The platform faces competition from many other providers with enterprise productivity capabilities – one of the most important of which is email. What we will see in Microsoft’s future will undoubtedly be an acceleration of its transition to cloud services and move away from the Window’s bound mindset. The argument has been made that Ballmer’s reign was marked by the unwillingness to accept that the company needed to move beyond Windows.

However, Microsoft must cover a lot of ground if it is get past the “lock in” of its once ubiquitous operating system. Office 365 reflects this fact: despite being cloud-based, its roots in the proprietary license software model show very clearly. Most of its applications need a major retrofit for the cloud-based environment in which access from any device and data interoperability rule.

Rather than waiting for Microsoft to catch up, organizations have more Exchange alternatives than ever for their 21st century email needs. Platforms such as the open-source Zafara were built with web-access and platform independence in mind. Contact us to learn more about systems with all of the capabilities of exchange that also happen to be way ahead of the curve in giving businesses the agility that they need in the modern age.