Microsoft Says Windows 10 Now on More Than 500 Million Devices

[engine]

Microsoft has said more than 500 million devices are using Windows 10 on a monthly basis. That's a reasonable milestone, but it's clear it won't reach its original target of 1 billion devices by June 2018 [webmasterworld.com] primarily because of the Windows Phone market in effect being extremely low.

Another stat that came out was the uptake of Cortana, Microsoft's digital assistant. It seems the figures are 141 million per month. That doesn't appear to be a high figure, based upon the 500 million devices.

Microsoft had other numbers to share that were a bit rosier: 100 million people per month are using Office 365’s commercial subscription services, and 90 percent of all Fortune 500 companies are using some portion of the Microsoft cloud. Microsoft Says Windows 10 Now on More Than 500 Million Devices [pcworld.com]

[mack]

I think one of the reasons the uptake of Cortana is so low is because of how it is introduced within the OS. It is confusing, and not very well explained. It's almost like a sales pitch that the user can easily brush aside.

Mack.

[engine]

With Cortana there was far too much tracking, imho. Cortana was one of the first things I chose to disable.

[keyplyr]

500 Million + 1 I just installed 10 on my neighbors bare bones desktop yesterday.

With Cortana there was far too much tracking, imho. Cortana was one of the first things I chose to disable.

Ditto. I removed it from my desktop, don't have a mic anyway.

I left it on my Surface Pro 4 in case I ever wish to start using it. Never know, it may come in useful down the road (literally since my Surface is mobile.)

[tangor]

Cortana can be disabled or ignored, but it cannot be removed as it is integrated into the search functions and the cloud.

[keyplyr]

it cannot be removed as it is integrated into the search functions and the cloud

Well nothing with "cortana" can be found searching the files on my machine. That's good enough for me.

[tangor]

That's not where cortana lives. :)

check Task manager and processes. Should be about 39mb

You can make the search box disappear, in the latest version of Win10 you can opt out of the data mining and other privacy issues (which returns Cortana to ordinary Windows Search)

You cannot delete Cortana. You can only make it invisible, stop p[rivacy invasion, ignore your web and cloud activity, ink, speech and any other p4rsonalization aspects found in Win10

As for search files, hare you changed what is viewable? ie, See all Hidden And System files? Meanwhile, a search via RegEdit for Cortana will turn up a few things. :)

Cortana is here to stay. It is Windows Search. Without it, or at least part of it, you can't find files on your own machine, much less the web or cloud. Worse, if you are non-US, you have the bulk of Cortana running, but can only do text search, no voice, an very little else.

[keyplyr]

check Task manager and processes.

Yes, no cortana.

[tangor]

Do you see searchui.exe in either system, hidden, tasks, or processes?