Can Windows platform offer you a one experience?

I have been a Windows platform user for many years and even with all the Apple products that I own, I still find myself primarily using my Windows PC to perform all the fundamental tasks that I need to do, whether it be that I have my outlook hooked up and perfectly organised , I can never get the same use on my Apple devices.  The one thing that keeps me on Apple’s ecosystem is the ability to have a sense of oneness when it comes to sharing my data between the devices.

Anyone who uses Apple products would have heard about iCloud storage, allowing you to share notes, contacts, photos etc but the seamless experience is not limited to Apple anymore.  Microsoft has created and refined their platform to allow Windows users to also have that one experience with all their devices, so whether you own a desktop combined with laptop or laptop/tablet combined with a mobile device, you will always be able to synchronise or share documents with all your devices.

This article or review if you want to call it that, is not to bash any brand, but to expose you to the possibilities that comes with the use of  Windows or Microsoft ecosystem also.  It ranges from sharing your internet from your mobile device (tethering) in a meaningful way that it isn’t just about sharing it, but also monitoring the usage and more to storing files on a cloud driven system for easy access across your devices.  Thanks to OneDrive, which is also now unlimited if you are subscribed to office 365 package, you can share your documents (Word, Powerpoint, Excel etc) between your devices, take off from where you left off when using Internet Explorer, so if you also saved your bookmarks and password or searches, they can be synchronised, thereby creating a one experience across all you devices.

For this article, I have been using the Surface Pro 3 and the Lumia 930, although I was given the Lumia 830 to try out this experience, I decided to stick to the device I had already setup with my emails and other things.  After over a month of usage, I found some interesting things you can do that makes the platform a joyous experience to use:

Pinning 

Pinning is a really unique feature to Windows Phone / Windows 8.1. It allows you to easily pin contacts, playlists, websites and much more to your desktop or home screen.  On the Surface Pro 3, it is as simple as finding the application you would like to pin, right click the application or content and pin to start or even task bar for easy access to the application.  It is a very useful feature that allows quick access to frequently used applications.  On the Lumia devices, you can also press and hold an application and pin it to the start screen.  The interactive side of pinning subjects to the home screen goes further into when you’re pinning contacts for example, your Tile will be updated with your friends and family social networks in real-time so you will never miss a thing.  Unlike other OS, you are not just accessing rows of icons, important information are right at your finger tips about everything that matters to you most.  If someone sends you a website with perhaps instructions, you even pin that to start, to make it easily accessible for when you need it again.

Tethering

The Surface Pro 3 has no built in 3G/4G of its own, but used in conjunction with the Lumia 930, you can tether your data and use the Surface on the back of the Lumia’s 3G/4G signal.  With so many people and variety of data plan available in different countries, there is also an app for monitoring your data use.  Using Data Sense to manage your data usage, you can see how much download you have done, you can set data limit so you don’t go over your allowance and with and easy chart, you can quickly see how much data you are consuming, even on WiFi.  You can use it to restrict data especially when roaming when data is more expensive and thanks to the pinning feature, you can pin it to start for quick access to your data usage or quick glance.  To further manage your data, you also have access to list of apps and how they are using your data, which can be very useful to see what you are doing with your data.  If you run out of data allowance, it also assists you with finding the nearest Wifi hot-spots around you.

Setting up tethering is very straight forward.  On your Lumia device, select the “internet sharing” option to turn on tethering and set up a password, under settings menu.  Once it’s switched on and you have a secure password setup, connect to the wireless network on your Surface as you normally would in Windows systems using the password you entered on your Lumia 930.  For easy access to switching on/off internet sharing, you can change the “Notifications+actions” options under settings on the 930 to ensure that “internet sharing” is one of your quick actions.

IE Syncing

Internet Explorer is bigger and better with a cleaner interface and all the room to browse the web.  Where the one experience kicks in here is when you want to access all the websites you have been browsing on one device on another.  To make this clearer, if you were browsing various sites on your Surface Pro, you can pick up where you left off on your Lumia 930.  This also includes bookmarks and passwords saved and it makes life so much easier having everything you need at your finger tips without having to have all your devices with you. Reading view helps read any difficult websites on IE; it changes the layout of a website you are reading to article format, taking away all the distracting elements like adverts and unnecessary links.  To activate this you can either use your keyboard on the Surface Pro with CTRL+SHIFT+R or there will be a reading view icon in the address bar at any time.

Synced Office capabilities

Across both devices (Surface Pro and Lumia 930), applications like One Note and other Office applications can be synchronised across both devices, so if I were typing a long document on the move using my Lumia 930 (this article was half written on my Lumia 930), I can pick up from where I left off on my Surface device, making me more productive than having to either email the document to myself, using third party applications or even using USB sticks if it were the other way round.

Overall, the One Experience here is clear and it works seamlessly, it’s reliable and most importantly enhanced my productivity.  After this experience, I will be exploring more ways to integrate Windows OS into my workflow going forward.  I am not able to recommend a good alternative to what Apple are currently providing.  With a multi-platform one experience, I can relax about what device I have with me at anytime or place.