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To the shock of no one, Windows 10 users who upgrade to the Anniversary Update (scheduled for release next week), will not be able to disable Cortana using the settings.
If you compare the start menu settings of Cortana of the current version of Windows (version 1511) with those of the Anniversary Update (version 1607) you will notice that Cortana's off switch is no longer available (thanks Ian Paul @PC World for spotting that)
Cortana, the digital assistant that Microsoft touts as one of the major features of Windows 10 supports interaction via touch, typing, ink and voice.
Microsoft integrated Cortana deeply with the native search functionality of Windows 10. While linked to search, Windows 10 users may turn off Cortana currently to use search without it. While you might have to turn off web searches on Windows 10 as well, doing so ensured that you got search functionality that matched those of previous versions of Windows.
Windows users who turned off Cortana had two main reasons for it: either they did not need Cortana functionality, or they did not want it because of privacy implications.
[...] It is still possible to turn off Cortana, but not by using the preferences. The policy to disable Cortana is still available and you may use it to turn off Cortana on the device.
Please note that the Group Policy Editor is only available in professional versions of Windows 10. Most notably, it is not available in Windows 10 Home.
The linked article goes into detail on how to disable Cortana using the Registry in Windows 10 Home, and Group Policy Editor in Windows 10 Pro. However, Microsoft no longer makes disabling Cortana anywhere near as easy as it was.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @02:10AM
I turned it off because it frankly works like shit.
Each version of windows search gets progressively worse.
Want to know the secret to make vista RTM run acceptably? Turn off the search indexer and the prefetcher. It will run as good as win7. That was 4 weeks of diagnosis to find those two little gems. They sorta fixed it in their services packs. Then really fixed it in win7 (you know vista sp2).
The search index for my win10 install? Nearly 8 gig. Type in built in names for things in windows? Does not find them *AT ALL*. I turned cortana off because it kept dumping internet shit into my local searches. If I want internet searches I open a browser. Turned off the mic on all of my laptops? Because cortana was always trying to figure out what was going on (steady 2-3% cpu usage). Now 0% with the mic off. Just incase I *might* say the words 'hey cortana'.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Thursday July 28 2016, @06:04AM
Android's "Hey Google" probably uses just as much, if not more, resources. It's ironic, because I know MS bought a low-impact text recognition company, that is only about good enough to listen forever for if someone says "Hi Cortana" (Or whatever the phrase is.)
The biggest thing that happened with Vista was the killing of all programs writing to the Program Files directory/assuming they had admin access. Once programs started updating, it got a lot easier (or at least safer) to use.