News - Windows 9 Threshold expected to come with a Cortana desktop app

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With development the assistant should be even more powerful than on your mobile.

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Read more.

Dear windows users, remember clippit. Grandfather of annoying assistants.

One of my exes got a job my asking clippit how to do something. He may have been annoying, but he obviously knew his stuff... ;)

Not entirely sure how I feel about this: I guess it's an option for those who'll find it useful. Hopefully MS will allow it to integrate with third party services like Google: one of my most common tasks on my computer is opening a new tab in Chrome and typing a query into the address bar - if I could just ask Cortana a question and have "her" search Google for me that'd be kind of useful....

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Like the image on the left, not the right

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Shame - be nice to have something that didn't look like a Hal9000 homage.

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Cortana will become available to desktop users along with the next Windows release and will exist in an 'IM style' window on the desktop.

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http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Cli...6d_2084596.jpg
Clippy's back!

Voice based searchy / assistanty things are useful on phones as they save typing. On a desktop - no. As dumb bas putting a touchscreen interface on there.

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Originally Posted by wasabi

Voice based searchy / assistanty things are useful on phones as they save typing. On a desktop - no.

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I dunno actually, depends how quickly it can be called up. If I'm reading a web page and it makes me think of something I want to look up, a voice-based search assistant would let me do that while continuing to read the article, instead of interrupting my reading of the article. Sometimes you can do it by highlighting something in the article, right click, search, but if the phrase you're after isn't there you have to open a new tab then type your query in, which takes time and distracts you from the reading at hand... It's an occasioanl use-acse rather than a frequent one, but I'd be interested to try it...

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Originally Posted by wasabi

Voice based searchy / assistanty things are useful on phones as they save typing. On a desktop - no. As dumb bas putting a touchscreen interface on there.

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Oh, I don't know ....

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Computer, this is Scotty, locate Captain Kirk and beam him direct to engineering. The warp coil is about to blow ....

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More seriously, I use voice recognition (Dragon) regularly and providing :-

- you have a decent headset, and
- have used it enough to get familiar with it, and trained it to you, and
- perhaps depending on what you use it for, and
- you aren't in an environment where talking to your computer will drive co-workers potty

.... it actually works pretty well.

I use it for dictation, not really for system commands, but while I don't use it for commands enough for doing it to be second nature, it does work pretty well. It feels weird, but it works. If I was using it all the time, for commands, including search, I think I could get used to it. I don't, but only because my efficiency payback for dictation is huge, but for commands, at least for me, not so much. Not enough for me to bother, anyway.

Of course, that's Dragon's own product I'm using, not Cortana. That, I've not used, so have no view on it's effectiveness, but at least in principle, I can see that it could be, or become, useful. In principle, at least.

Sometimes I wonder whether Microsoft have just completely lost their minds.

Can we please not diss Clippy ?

I installed Frontpage 2003, just to have Clippy back. I had to install Microsoft Agent as well to get it working on Windows 7 and I am over the moon!

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Originally Posted by scaryjim

Hopefully MS will allow it to integrate with third party services like Google:

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You are kidding right? Cortana on Windows Phone is extendible, hell I've done so myself, but given Google's we hate microsoft stance, there is one thing that isn't integrated, and that's Google! Hell you are never even sure if they will allow you to watch YouTube videos...

I'd prefer one like Holly from Red Dwarf.

I probably wouldn't rely on it much on a desktop or a laptop, but I'm sure it'll be handy on Windows convertibles/tablets.

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Originally Posted by malculator

I'd prefer one like Holly from Red Dwarf.

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"Holly defiantly has a 6 in here IQ but it isn't 6,000. Or 600. Or 60"

Let's just hope microsoft makes it slightly more intelligent than Holly!

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Originally Posted by wasabi

Voice based searchy / assistanty things are useful on phones as they save typing. On a desktop - no. As dumb bas putting a touchscreen interface on there.

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Have to agree, as long as your sitting at your computer its just easier to do it yourself.

And yet I get the feeling that UK-ers will get shafted by getting a localised actress rather than the actress who voiced Cortana.

At least on the PC I guess it'll be easier to mod it back to the correct voice.

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Originally Posted by anselhelm

And yet I get the feeling that UK-ers will get shafted by getting a localised actress rather than the actress who voiced Cortana.

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As long as it's not a scouser. :p

I hope that disabling that will be a option. It's not something I want or need.