Review: Windows 10 Creators Update is here and worth the download (with video)

The latest version of Microsoft'south operating arrangement improves the Start carte, lets you control updates, and makes some interesting improvements.

Contributing Editor, Computerworld |

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Windows 10 Creators Update, the outset major update to Microsoft's operating system since last summer's Windows 10 Anniversary Update, is finally hither.

Every bit ever, Microsoft volition brand much of its new version -- to the point that it's announced that impatient users can download the Creators Update today, a week earlier the official April 11th ringlet-out date. But is it equally big a bargain as Microsoft wants you to believe? Or is information technology much ado most nothing?

I've been using the Creators Update in its various builds for months, and have put the final version through its paces. Here's the lowdown.

Outset menu folders

I note earlier I begin: Ignore the proper name "Creators Update." This newest upgrade to Windows 10 has very piddling to practise with creating things autonomously from a few relatively minor features that I'll depict afterwards.

In fact, the only significant interface alter in the Creators Update has to do with the Start card -- and even then, information technology's not particularly noticeable at beginning glance. Simply if you lot're a fan of the Outset menu and you lot use it to run applications, yous'll detect this update extremely useful, because it helps make clean up some of the clutter.

With the Creators Update, you can now place multiple tiles into a binder on the Start menu. It's simple: You merely drag 1 tile onto some other. This automatically creates a folder with both tiles inside information technology. You can so drag any other tiles you want into the folder.

Folders look like tiles and brandish pocket-size thumbnail icons of all the apps they contain. Click a folder and it opens, with each app appearing as an private tile. You can and so click whatever tile to run the app. Click the folder once more and all the tiles slide back within.

Windows 10 Creators Update - folder closed Preston Gralla/IDG

You can now create folders in the Start carte du jour, each of which can contain tiles for multiple apps (encounter the third tile down in the "Play and explore" department).

Yous can resize the folder tile if you need to by right-clicking it and selecting Small, Medium, Wide or Large. Merely although this changes the size of the binder tile, the icon thumbnails inside don't change -- they stay small no thing how large you make the binder tile. You simply run across more than thumbnails.

How useful yous'll find these folders depends on how much you rely on the Start card to run applications and how many applications you run. In my case, I pin my most-used applications to the taskbar and run them from there; otherwise, I type the apps' names into Cortana and run them that way. Because I rarely rely on the Start menu to run applications, this characteristic is a nice-to-have rather than a must-have for me. Your mileage may vary.

I exercise accept a minor nit to selection with the way the feature is designed. Other tiles on the Offset menu have text labels underneath them -- Mail, Agenda, Microsoft Edge and so on. Just folders don't, which makes it difficult for you to identify the purpose of each folder and what'southward in it. You lot have to peer closely at its small thumbnails to figure out what'southward in each. It would have been much amend if Microsoft permit you label each binder.

More control over Windows updates

Many people have complained nigh the unyielding way that Windows updates itself -- you tin can't bypass an update, and you take to do it on a schedule set past Microsoft. In the Creators Update you get some control over the procedure, depending on which version of Windows you utilize. Windows Dwelling users go less flexibility than those with Windows Pro, Windows Enterprise or Windows Teaching editions.

Abode users will no longer be blindsided when Windows interrupts their work to practise an update. They'll be notified when an update is available, and given the option of either installing information technology immediately, scheduling information technology for a specific time or putting information technology off past clicking "Snooze."

Windows 10 Creator Update - update notification Preston Gralla/IDG

Users now get an alert when an update is available and take the choice of installing it immediately, choosing a specific fourth dimension or putting information technology off by clicking "Snooze."

Clicking "Choice a fourth dimension" brings up a dialog box that lets y'all schedule the precise day and time the update runs. Clicking Snooze puts off the update for iii days. 3 days later another notification appears with the same three options. If y'all want, you can click Snooze again. You can go along doing this to indefinitely put off the update.

Windows 10 Creators Update restart Preston Gralla/IDG

When you pick a fourth dimension to update, y'all tin can now choose a specific day and fourth dimension.

Users with Windows Pro, Windows Enterprise or Windows Education editions have much more command over how Windows updates. Before, users who wanted to filibuster their cumulative updates had to use a complicated workaround that required irresolute several settings and using either the Group Policy Editor or Registry Editor. They could delay "characteristic updates" (which add new features to Windows) by up to 180 days.

With the Creators Update, users can now automatically delay cumulative monthly updates for upwardly to 30 days, and can delay feature updates by upwards to 365 days.

A sharper Edge

The latest figures from NetMarketShare show the Microsoft Edge browser with a market share of nether vi%, far backside Chrome, which has more than 58%, and even Microsoft's legacy browser, Internet Explorer, which has nearly 19%. So with every Windows upgrade, Microsoft spends considerable time improving Edge in hopes of closing the gap with Chrome and weaning users off IE.

The Creators Update is no different. For a starting time, Wink is now disabled in Edge by default, although you lot're given the option of allowing it on a site-by-site basis, either on a one-time ground or permanently. (In the previous version of Edge, but non-essential Flash content, similar advertising, was blocked.) Microsoft is disabling Flash to improve security, functioning and battery life. When a website also uses HTML5 to deliver ads or other multimedia content, Border uses HTML5 instead of Flash.

Windows 10 Creators Update - block flash Preston Gralla/IDG

Microsoft Edge now blocks Flash content, although yous have the option to run it when you want, on a site-by-site basis.

Perhaps more of import than blocking Wink is the improver of some very useful tab-treatment features. If you've ever been frustrated past not existence able to quickly locate the tab you want to switch to, you lot'll appreciate this.

You tin can run across a thumbnail of every open tab by clicking a downwardly arrow to the right of the Add Tab button at the top of the screen. That lets you quickly scan all the currently open sites. Click the thumbnail of the tab you want to switch to, and you lot get sent immediately to that tab. I frequently continue many tabs open, and I found this characteristic a great help in getting me fast to the tab I wanted to detect. Over the course of a day of browsing, I institute information technology a tremendous time-saver.

Windows 10 Creators Update - edge tabs Preston Gralla/IDG

Microsoft Edge's most useful new feature is the ability to see thumbnails of all open tabs.

Should you decide to close all your open tabs, but think you might want to revisit them afterwards, click a push to their left to put them aside as a grouping. When yous want to open the group once again, click a button to the left of that 1, and they all open. Y'all tin remember the tab group even afterward you've closed Edge -- in fact, fifty-fifty after you've logged out of Windows.

What makes this characteristic even more useful is that you can do this to multiple groups of tabs. For example, over the course of several hours I visited several museum websites, news sites, and sites with medical information. I grouped and closed each session, and was able to hands revisit them later.

However, while this is a useful characteristic, information technology does feel like a starting time step. It would be much more than useful if you could label each group -- for example, Museums, News and Medical -- and add and remove tabs once a grouping was created.

Windows 10 Creators Update - tab groups Preston Gralla/IDG

With the new Edge, you lot can reopen groups of tabs you've previously visited.

Also new in Edge is that you tin can read books and other content in ePub and PDF formats. Edge will too read their text aloud. This includes the usual e-reading features, such as the ability to go along reading where you lot had previously left off, change text size and so on.

Y'all tin detect books to read in the Microsoft Shop. Merely given the Kindle'southward dominance as an e-reader, information technology's unlikely this feature will run across much use, particularly because Microsoft has no defended e-reader device. I can't see myself lugging my laptop to the beach and pulling it out to read a volume on Border. (Of course, those with a Surface or other Windows x convertible may appreciate it more than.)

There are a variety of other improvements to Edge, including the ability to play Netflix at 4K resolution, under-the-hood security improvements, and existence able to import favorites from other browsers. However, one of Edge'southward biggest drawbacks -- a serious lack of extensions -- hasn't been stock-still. Only 25 are available, compared to the tens of thousands available for Chrome.

Microsoft says that information technology has released more extension APIs for developers and is working with developers to get more extensions congenital. But it'south been about eight months since Edge was given the ability to use extensions, and Microsoft has simply managed to become 25 of them written. It looks unlikely that Edge will ever come remotely close to competing with Chrome in this arena.

The upshot? Despite some improvements, Border is yet not a especially compelling browser, and this latest iteration is non likely to convince many people to switch from Chrome or whatsoever other browser.

A step into 3D

Microsoft is betting big on virtual reality and 3D. In fact, 3D and virtual reality are likely the reasons Microsoft calls this version Creators Update.

With the update, Windows 10 can run HoloLens virtual reality and mixed reality apps for the showtime time. Additionally, Microsoft is highlighting a variety of hardware devices in concert with the Bone update.

Microsoft is also hoping that you'll be a creator -- not just a consumer -- of 3D content, so the update includes the Paint 3D app. (The original Paint is included as well.) The app includes a variety of tools for creating 3D drawings, including 3D objects, castor tools, text, furnishings and more. Even if you're not an artist or have no creative talent (like me), yous'll be able to easily create and edit 3D objects, by starting off with models and objects included in the app. Yous tin even doodle in 3D -- utilise a mouse or uniform pen to draw, and the program converts your putter into a 3D object.

Windows 10 Creators Update - paint 3d Preston Gralla/IDG

Paint 3D lets you create 3D objects.

Amend still, join Microsoft's Remix3D.com community, which has many 3D objects and models built by other Pigment 3D users. You can browse and import them from correct within Pigment 3D, and then customize them. Yous can upload your creations to the community likewise.