Last week officially kicked off the Windows 10 era at Microsoft. And it's promising to be a very interesting time.
Microsoft is doing more exciting things than it's done in years. After years of scoffing, the tech press, Wall Street, and even Silicon Valley are paying attention again.
So what do we have to look forward to over the next couple years? Quite a lot...
OK, HoloLens was cool. So when can we buy one?
Microsoft wowed reporters with a demonstration of its augmented reality headset, HoloLens, last week. But the test device we tried was far from finished — it was two glass lenses, a bunch of straps, and a five-pound CPU we had to hang around our necks.
The demo units that Microsoft execs showed on stage look a little bit slicker, like big ski goggles. But it's going to be a challenge to pack all that hardware into such a small package, then manufacture it in volume at a price normal people can afford.
Right now, all Microsoft is saying is that HoloLens will be ready in the "Windows 10 time frame." That could mean around when Windows 10 is first released...or could mean at some point before Windows 11 (or whatever it's called) comes out, a few years down the road.
A Windows 10 release date.
Windows 10 looks like it'll solve a lot of the problems users had with Windows 8. But for all the features Microsoft showed last week, we didn't hear when it would actually come out.
Late 2015 is our best guess, but it could be staggered so enterprise customers get it first, before it shows up on new consumer PCs.
Microsoft's new smartphone plan.
Most of Microsoft's Windows 10 presentation focused on PC and tablet features, like a new web browser.
But we barely heard anything about Windows 10 on phones, and what we saw looked a lot like the same old Windows Phone we've been seeing for more than four years now.
Microsoft did show off a couple "Universal" apps, which look and work the same across the PC and phone, and learned about how Skype will integrate so you can start using it easily when you're in WiFi range. But we're not sure that's enough to revive Microsoft's fortunes in mobile.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider