Windows 10 is the beginning of a new era, says Microsoft boss Satya Nadella

Windows 10 will be officially released in a few hours and on the occasion, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella spoke to BBC about the importance of the operating system not only for the company but for the technology industry in general."Windows 10 is a huge milestone, for us as a company and quite frankly for the industry. It is not just another release of Windows. It's the beginning of a new era," he told BBC. With the tepid response that Windows 8 had got after it launched, it is certainly a huge OS launch for the Redmond giant.(Also Read: Windows 10: Microsoft’s got everyone excited, but what’s the real deal?)Nadella was quite bullish on the prospect of Cortana on desktop. According to him Cortana is as important as the PC operating system. "If you think about our history in technology, we've had concepts that have changed the way how people have interacted with their computing resources. One of them was the graphical user interface, second was the browser and the web. I think of Cortana as the third platform," he said.On the prospect of user privacy, considering Cortana uses your personal data to get better, Nadella said that Cortana gives you the option to let it know what you want to be known. "Cortana comes with a Notebook, where everything it knows about you, is known to you. So you can control it," he said.(Also Read: Cortana for Windows 10)Microsoft has also been releasing apps for other platforms such as iOS and Android for a while now. When asked if this was Plan B for Microsoft to increase the adoption of the Windows mobile as it is just on around 3% of mobile devices, Nadella said that it was in fact Plan A since the company aims to empower every individual and organisation on the planet using its OS. According to Nadella, the main aim is to ensure that Microsofts value is showing up on multiple platforms via these apps.Here is a checklist of things you need to be aware of before you install Windows 10 on your PC or laptop.