Microsoft has completed development of a new build

Oct 10, 2014 21:27 GMT  ·  By

Work on Windows 10 continues and Microsoft has recently completed development of a new testing build that has reportedly been spotted online, most likely as the company shipped it to partners and private testers.

Windows 10 build 9860, which is still part of the preview development stage, appears to be available in more languages than its predecessors, including Korean and Arabic. Other changes are yet to be disclosed, as this version is available only to a very limited group of testers.

Microsoft however is expected to update the existing testing builds of all users with new improvements in the coming weeks, and even though the company hasn't yet provided us with a release schedule, people close to the matter tell us that it intends to update the Windows 10 preview at least once or twice per month.

For those interested in keeping track of full build strings, the new release is shipped as 9860.0.141008-1904.winmain_CLIENTENTERPRISE_VOL_x86fre_en-gb, obviously with some changes at the end of the file name depending on the language version you choose.

New updates could launch “in a couple of weeks”

Even though the company hasn't made any public promise regarding the frequency of updates for Windows 10 preview installations, a source from within the company tells us that new improvements for the original build of the operating system could be released “in a couple of weeks.”

While such a hint is pretty vague, one would expect to get new updates for Windows 10 next week during the company's Patch Tuesday rollout when security fixes and other performance improvements are actually released for a wider array of products, including Internet Explorer.

Nothing is confirmed so far, but future updates for Windows 10 preview could come with improvements in terms of performance and usability. As far as features are concerned, only minor changes are likely to be released this month.

Full focus on Cortana

Evidence of a PC version of Cortana has already been found in the existing builds of Windows 10, but we hear that Microsoft is working on the development process of this particular feature at full speed.

The company wants Cortana for the desktop to be ready by year-end and thus give users a chance to try it out right in their testing builds of the operating system. The plan is to make the personal assistant ready in time for the full release scheduled for spring 2015.

This could obviously change overnight, as Microsoft is also planning to keep some of its features secret until Windows 10 comes out as a full product, so take all these details with a pinch of salt until they are confirmed by the software giant itself.