New Windows 10 Features

New features:

- Voice as text entry for any text input, across the OS. (Surprised this has taken so long; the speech recognition libraries have been in .NET since 2014.)

- Ecobee, Honeywell, Nest integration with Cortana.

-Timeline... Tracks your "stuff" (files? online activity? It's unclear) across all Windows devices. It has 30 days of history. I'm interested in knowing how much of my file and URL history is being sent to MS.

- Focus Assist is a notification cache. It will pend notifications during focus time, and give you them all at once when focus time is over.

- Edge browser has a few:

-- When a tab is playing audio, clicking on the speaker icon will mute the tab. (Just what we need, yet another mute button to miss.)

-- Autofill for payment info.

-- Full screen mode for PDFs, books, and reader mode.

-- Grammar Check.

My biggest problem with Windows is the automatic restarts. Under no circumstances should my computer restart without me telling it to.

There's a long-standing bug with power management which causes the computer to sleep at random intervals. It's something to do with an interaction between power management and USB selective suspend, not sure exactly what triggers it but it's highly annoying. I'll be in a game, literally holding down one of the mouse buttons, and the computer will go to sleep.

I don't think Microsoft and I have the same idea about focus and distraction.

I just got a small Windows laptop for a couple of tasks I can't do well on Linux, and after it updated to the latest Windows stuff it had dozens of notifications enabled. All kinds of ridiculous crap popping up while I'm trying to do things. Like, a constant battery of interruptions, with noise and visual bubbles over in the notifications corner. Sure, they can be disabled, but I had to manually go through and turn them all off. That's not to say Linux or Android are immune, but this was just nuts.

Actually, to be fair, Android may be worse these days, I've had to start turning off all notifications for apps like Facebook, even though I'd like to get some (like timeline events that actually involve me), but they group things I don't care about (like events my friends are going to) with things I do, so it gets turned off completely. But, it's just gotten crazy how insistent everything is about getting my attention constantly. Our devices have become like needy children.

So, cool, I guess? But, I'm a bit mistrustful that anyone has an interest in fixing this problem, since for most companies it isn't a problem but a money-making tactic.

If you aren't at the computer and your computer isn't doing anything then Windows sets a usernotpresent flag. Fold@home or something, make your computer do shit.