Master These Windows 10 Starter Apps As If They Are Your Only Apps

Master These Windows 10 Starter Apps As If They Are Your Only Apps

The best thing about Windows 10 is also the worst thing about Windows 10. The operating system is stuffed to overflowing with built-in features and apps, so many that the sheer volume can and does overwhelm most users, so many that most users will never find or use them. What a waste!

But as I discovered, they don’t have to go to waste. Instead of letting the bountiful Windows 10 Starter apps go unused, I decided to see if they were robust enough to keep users like me self-sufficient without the need to use third-party programs.

Could I forgo using Office apps or the other third-party apps I’ve come to rely on? Could we run our offices or personal tasks with just the Windows 10 Starter apps? So I took the self-imposed challenge for a one week trial. Read on to find out how it went.

More Than Just Getting By with Windows Starter Apps

Almost all the Starter apps in Windows 10 are easily found right on the Start menu, arranged in alphabetical order. A few others lay semi-hidden in sub-menus like Windows Accessories.

Selecting the Starter apps I would use required first assessing the non-Starter apps I currently use — and then matching their functionality to corresponding Starter apps. Once I had determined the Starter apps I pinned them to the Start menu tiles for quick launching.

Here are the apps I chose:

• Calculator
• Calendar
• Maps
• Snipping Tool
• Sticky Notes
• WordPad

I wanted to pick apps that mirror my most often-used functions: A numbers wrangling app, a way to manage my dates and to-dos, a map app, a way to take screengrabs, an information-capture tool, and a document composition tool.

While substituting Starter apps in lieu of the more powerful ones does allow us to be productive in a pinch, they obviously can’t completely replace the full-size, robust applications we have come to rely on. But my trial proved the Starters are still a welcomed inclusion in Windows. And one pro that applies to all the Starter apps mentioned here (and the many others included in Windows 10): They are all free.

Here are some of the productivity pros and limitation cons I found for each app.

WordPad Vs. Word

The app I used the most is Microsoft Word. To replace that for the trial I moved to WordPad, located in the Windows Accessories submenu of Start. It’s obviously less robust than Word but still efficient in producing basic documents. The files can be saved in numerous formats, interchangeable in Word and other word processing programs and the program comes with the Ribbon interface that’s familiar to any Word user.

Here’s the WordPad ribbon.

The Ribbon toolbar in WordPad is a comfortable feature for users familiar with the one in Microsoft Word. So while it could help me with most of the functions I have relied on in Word, what’s missing on that Ribbon is conspicuous by its absence when compared to the Word version. Most of the edit functions of Word remain in WordPad: your choice of Fonts, font size, color, and font styles like subscripts or Small Caps. For editing, drag and drop text from one doc location to another is thankfully included.

I missed having spell checking or style sheets. But I found that if I had a pre-existing style in a Word doc, WordPad recognized it when I opened that doc. And if I selected the Insert object icon on WordPad’s ribbon, I could easily add an Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation. So not having Word was not much of a sacrifice.

Calculator Vs. Excel

The one Office equivalent Starter app in Windows 10 that is conspicuously missing is an Excel-like spreadsheet. Windows 10 Calculator is as close as we can get as a numbers wrangler.

Although substituting the robust Calculator functions for a spreadsheet is like putting a Band-Aid on a heart-attack patient, Windows 10 Calculator is a much improved and more powerful calculator app than the one in Windows 7 and 8. In fact, I was impressed with its power to handle calculations previously confined to spreadsheets programmed with complicated, time-consuming formulas.

Here are some of the options for converting different units of measurement.

With the Calculator open you can press Alt+1, 2, and 3 to switch to its three modes, Standard Calculator, Scientific, and Programmer.  And the Calculator excels (pun intended) with a converter that handles conversions for the expected measurements such as area, volume, length, weight, and temperature. But it also with give converted values for currency, speed, time, and data, the latter dealing with familiar digital sizes from kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes on up to a zillion other astronomical bits and bytes.

Calendar: Keeping The Time of Our Lives

What’s ultra-convenient about Windows 10 Calendar is it will merge your Google, Yahoo, Apple iCloud, and Outlook calendars with entries made directly in the Windows 10 Calendar. For people who have an Outlook calendar associated with work and an entirely different calendar they’d set up before getting the current job (and its attendant calendar), this feature helps you see all your commitments in one place.

To sync the calendar with your other accounts, click or touch the three bars on the upper left and from the panel that opens click or touch the Settings gear icon at the bottom right of the panel. Select Manage Accounts to add/merge other calendars. Weather settings, also on this panel, will add a five-day forecast’s worth of icons on each day’s block no matter which view is opened (Day, Week, Month).

Toggling from different views is activated by clicking or touching the three dots on the upper right corner. The Day view can be further pinpointed to one or six days. Weeks can be divvied from seven days to five day work week.

Setting up a meeting? If the people you are setting for the meeting are in the Windows 10 People app, as you type their name they will pop up in automatically. Corresponding emails will be added or you can type out a full email instead to alert attendees of the meeting.

Snipping Tool: Capture Pix from Your PC Screen

Windows has always had the ability to capture computer screens with the Print Screen button on the keyboard or Alt+Print Screen to print the capture. The combo of WinKey and Print Screen will save the capture to a file to the Screenshots folder in your Pictures Library. This is all well and good, but these captures are always of a full screen.

Here’s how you can edit a screengrab.

The Snipping Tool which launches as a floating toolbar is more versatile since it lets you capture portions of a screen and edit them via the Tools-Options menu in the editing window. The editing window pops up after a capture is made. Even after editing, if you want to plop the capture imaged directly into a graphics program, word processing doc or email, go to where you want to place the image and paste it in with Ctrl+V.

So Can You Live on Only Windows 10 Starter Apps?

While I found that I really could live with just WordPad and get by without Word, I would miss Excel and for that matter, PowerPoint. I found I actually prefer Win 10 Calendar, especially since it could integrate third-party calendars. I produced this article’s images in Snipping Tool. Sticky Notes ended up cluttering my desktop so — paper note to self — stick to paper sticky notes. As for Maps, it takes a village to describe its power. So…

Maps: Find Your Way Around the World

With Maps in Windows 10 you have the whole world in your hands. Because it is so feature rich it will take an entire posting by itself to point out its many features, both obvious and hidden. Stay tuned for the Map tips and tricks I learned, in an upcoming feature in Windows Secrets.

All About Cortana in the Windows 10 April 2018 Update

In looking at the April 2018 update for Windows 10, we’ve explored Continue on PC, Storage Sense and Focus Assist. Our next stop on the tour is Cortana. As many of you know, Cortana is Microsoft’s personal digital assistant and has been part of Windows 10 since the initial release almost three years ago.

Each feature update to Windows 10 has introduced changes, enhancements and new capabilities for Cortana including a few that were added for the April 2018 update.

Let’s look at those additions.

Cortana Talks to More Devices

The biggest growth area for Cortana in the April 2018 Update was the number of smart home devices she can now connect to. Cortana can access devices from ecobee3, Honeywell Lyric (now called Honeywell Home), Honeywell Total Connect Comfort, Nest Learning Thermostat, Nest Thermostat E, Hue, Insteon, LIFX, Lutron, SmartThings/Samsung Connect, TP-Link Kasa and Wink.

Use Cortana’s Notebook to confirm that any smart home device you have now works with Cortana, then easily connect with your existing devices. Provide Cortana the account credentials to those connected home service providers. The best approach is to set up those devices on their own sites to connect everything and then introduce them to Cortana through her notebook.

Once you have completed the set-up process with those accounts and Cortana, you can control those items using Cortana on any platform she is available.

Cortana Communicates With Your Preferred Streaming Music Service

In addition to smart home control improvements, Cortana also got a major upgrade when it comes to playing music on your PC. Since the demise of the Groove Music Pass late last year, her options to control other music services have not grown like the smart home options we have already discussed.

As of right now, only the Spotify, iHeart and TuneIn music services are compatible with Cortana. In the Music Connection in Cortana’s notebook, you can designate one of these providers as your preferred provider. That means when you ask Cortana to play music, etc. you do not have to say the services name – just the command.

For example:

• Hey Cortana, play Holiday Music
• Hey Cortana, play <Artist/Track/Title/Genre/Mood>
• Hey Cortana, play my <Playlist Name>

Once music is playing you can ask:

• Hey Cortana, what song is playing?

If you want the music to come from one of the other services just add on iHeartRadio or on TuneIn to the voice command.

Note: If for some reason Cortana cannot locate the content you are asking for on your preferred music provider, she will try on the other two to see if something similar is available.

Explore The If This Then That (IFTTT) Integration

IFTTT is a service that uses programming vernacular so one event (“if this”) originating in one web-based or cloud service or smart device triggers another event in the same or a different service or device (“then that”). For example, you could write an IFTTT action that allows all attachments sent to your Gmail account to be saved to a Microsoft OneDrive account.

In the April 2018 Update, Cortana can now use IFTTT recipes to activate and use your Smart Home connected devices. There are currently 40 IFTTT recipes in the Cortana IFTTT library plus you can add your own customizations and unique phrases to trigger the IFTTT integration.

These commands can be used with Cortana across all platforms/devices.

But There’s Still No Alexa/Cortana Integration

One thing that did not come to fruition in the Windows 10 April 2018 Update was the long-discussed integration between Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa. We did see an early demo of this capability at Build 2018 but it was labelled early stages.

(When you compare the skills library between the two digital assistants this relationship benefits Cortana more than Alexa. That might explain the lag.)

As of today, the Cortana Skills website lists just 255 individual skills. Amazon does not make the numbers public, but based on an estimated annual growth a year ago that saw the service add 14,000 skills in the previous 12 months, the conservative estimate a year later would easily put Alexa around more than 30,000 skills.  I suspect that number is much higher.

The sooner Microsoft and Alexa get this partnership tested and rolled, the better that will be for the Cortana ecosystem.