How To Personalize Your PC

A PC doesn’t have to be a tool; it should feel like an extension of who you are.

- Mark Hachman

What makes your house your home? Is it the furniture? The art? A few favorite collectibles arranged on the shelves? Your PC doesn’t have to be any different. If you’re new to Windows 10, we’ll show you how to personalize your PC to make it feel, well, yours.

From the moment you first power on your PC, you’ll be asked to choose how to manage your privacy and security. But once you complete that short process, the fun begins: you’ll be able to select backgrounds, configure your Start menu, and select apps and shortcuts. Think of this story as a complement to our previous tutorial on how to set up your new PC efficiently and effectively (go.pcworld.com/ supc). This is the fun stuff.

THE WINDOWS 10 OOBE

Any time you buy a new PC, you’re almost certainly going to walk through what Microsoft calls the “Out of Box Experience,” or OOBE. While the OOBE is simply a series of setup screens narrated by the voice of Cortana, Jen Taylor, they may differ a bit from PC to PC, and be affected by your choices. Generally, you’ll be able to handle most questions without any handholding; you’ll be asked for your preferred language and keyboard layout, to connect to Wi-Fi, and so on.

Your major choices boil down to these: whether to enter or create a Microsoft password, whether to enable Cortana, and choosing your privacy settings. Entering (or creating) a Microsoft account allows your preferences to “follow” you from PC to PC, create a OneDrive cloud-storage account, and more. Creating an account is recommended, though you can use a local account and password instead.