Technical Smart tricks

7. Use New Keyboard Shortcuts Most of these involve the Windows key. New window-snapping options let you not only snap to fill half of the screen on a side, but also a screen quadrant. Of course, you can tap the Windows Key by itself to bring up the Start menu. If you hold the Windows Key down and then hit Right Arrow and then Up Arrow, your program window will move to the top-right quadrant of the screen.Windows Key-Tab now opens (and leaves open) a new task view showing all of your running programs and virtual desktops. To create a new virtual desktop, there's Windows Key-Ctrl-D. Windows Key-C gets Cortana listening for your voice input, and Windows Key-S opens her Daily Glance showing your weather, sports, and news. Command line users get a bunch of new selection shortcuts using Shift with the arrow keys.

4. Use Virtual Desktops I've always found switching among apps and applications snappier in Windows than in other desktop operating systems, but with Windows 10 comes yet another option—multiple virtual desktops. To work with these, simply hit the multi-screen icon next to the search box in the toolbar, and tap the Plus sign all the way at the right of the taskbar. After this, to switch between desktops, you can press the button again and choose the large thumbnail of the one you want.

2. Set Up Cortana Unlike Siri or Google Now, Cortana, Windows 10's voice-response digital assistant, lets you control what it knows about you, so that it can pop up relevant reminders and display info of interest. You do this by making selections in Cortana's Notebook, in your Contacts, and in the Maps app. The last two let you tell Cortana which contact is your spouse, and which places on the map are your home and workplace. That way, Cortana can pop up a reminder to call a spouse, or let you know how long a commute will take based on traffic. Like Google Now (and now Siri, to some extent) Cortana can listen for a key phrase, in this case "Hey Cortana!" and wake up to answer your requests. But before she can do any of this, you need to enable her the first time you click in the Windows 10 search box. This also involves granting permission to use your location, mic, contacts, email, messages, and browser history, though you can adjust these permissions to taste. Corta...

1. Customize the Start Menu Windows 10's reprise of the Start menu, which dates 20 years back to Windows 95, has been a much-applauded feature of Microsoft's next operating system. But it's not a simple return to the old Windows XP-style Start menu. Instead, Windows 10 combines the tiles of Windows 8's modern, touch-friendly user interface with the earlier metaphor. Maybe you want more tiles, maybe fewer or none. You can have the new Start menu your way: Simply click and hold the cursor on the edge of the Start box and drag it to the size you want. As with Windows 8, you can also pin any applications—including traditional desktop ones—to tiles. If you tap All Apps, you'll see a small tile for every single program on the computer, and you can pin any with a right-click option. There are even more settings for the Start menu, accessible from the Settings > Personalization > Start page of the modern control panel. From here, you can even re-enable the full-screen...