There's no hesitation that Windows 7 is definitely the virtually all polished operating program Microsoft has released, but that does not mean there's no area for improvement. This collection of free resources great and small will give you tools to switch a significant amount of Glass windows 7'beds habit, from the glance of the Start switch to hulking out Glass windows Explorer with FTP influence. The standard Alt Tab display (above) and just simply one of the customizations you can generate to it applying the Alt Tabs Tuner electricity (below). Before we acquire to gritty fine-tuning apps, a few start out with some of the more-aesthetic ones. The above mentioned House windows 7 Start out Option Changer is a one-hit marvel. Calling it a "think about" may come to be a bit of a stretch, as well, but it does indeed allow to users to alter and back-up the Start button icon without having to dig through a lot of folders and data. You can install your private custom-made Start off press button icons, or premade kinds. DeviantArt is a good place to find icons that are free and ready to use. The iphone app itself is glitz-free and noninvasive, but it could benefit from shorter button names and clearer indications that the buttons are actually buttons. Small hangups aside, this is certainly a fairly easy approach to put a little extra of your personal design to your Windows 7 computer system. WindowsWhere address one of the trivial annoyances of Home windows, where method windows sometimes but not generally reopen in the same posture where you last closed down them. I've found this most useful when programs or pop-up windows open with the top of their frames hidden under my desktop taskbar, which is an occasional problem because I prefer to run my taskbar at the top of the monitor. This application will work on House windows Landscape and XP likewise. This little tool lets you customize your Begin key. The Windows Themes Installer might seem to be redundant to some, since Windows 7 comes with excellent theme support generally. However, this application allows better control of how your Windows 7 appears also. It helps by easily installing the necessary theme files into their correct locations, similar to the Start button changer, without having to memorize or write down long file location strings. Observe that there's no backup choice as in the Start off option changer, but there is normally a default motif restore option. Don't get scared to make a program restore before you commence mucking about with major Glass windows files. Some of the very best stuff about House windows 7 are the window-management tools under the Aero aegis. Aero Snap, Aero Tremble, and Aero A glass do nothing less than help to make Home windows 7 competitive with Apple's Snow Leopard on the windows management front. The Aero tools aesthetically crop up, they're fun to make use of, and most significantly, they're beneficial. But that would not imply you can't modify them, and for folks who want even more out of their Aero, there's AquaSnap. AquaSnap changes the Snap/Shake/Glass functionality with the entirely new Aqua feature set. You can also use AquaSnap to toggle at will between Aero and Aqua, or disable them all. AquaSnap provides quarter-screen sizes to its Aero version. There's as well a tailor made choice, and it's multimonitor appropriate. For some unusual purpose, the Bite features expected a reboot before they worked well, when the Get rid of and Peek ones don't. Changing your House windows theme can get a inconvenience, which is usually where this utility comes in. AquaShake alterations Aero Get rid of from lessening all various other glass windows to producing them clear. Users can toggle the transparency level and the tremble sensitivity. AquaGlass actually will not modify or improve on Aero Goblet. Instead, it would make windows transparent when you drag them around the screen. You can change the transparency in this article, also, but this is usually virtually all beneficial when you click and hold on a windows to quickly discover what's beneath it. A valuable but not really great feature. During my testing, I observed the quarter-screen resizing to end up being the most beneficial feature in AquaSnap. Conceivably the ideal element about the app can be that it functions on musical legacy Glass windows devices, consequently porting both the default Aero Bite and the improved Aqua variations to Vis and XP users. Alt Hook Tuner straddles the range between granular control over parts of your system and an visual tweaker. The app gives you customization power over Windows 7's Alt Tab preview and window-switching hot-key combo. That's fairly very much all it does, but it's an extraordinary depth of fine-tuning. Users can adapt the margins on the top rated, starting, or aspect of the global survey display; modify the number of columns and rows that those previews seem in; and change the amount of spacing between each preview thumbnail. Users can tweak the method icon site and size as well; the preview thumbnail size; the milliseconds the global preview home window can take to fade out; and the opacity of the previews' transparency. AquaSnap introduces an alternate-universe version of some of the Aero features. Star Apps: Chelsea Handler there. The user interface can be fixed like an equalizer, with slide settings, but each toggle allows users to type in by palm a exact setting up also. Because the utility uses such a familiar design, there's practically no learning curve except when trying to figure out which slider controls which aspect of the Alt Tab preview window. Since just about all Home windows 7 customization programs tend to ignore the Alt Bill scorching key element, Alt Loss Tuner is definitely a must if you're searching for precise control over Alt Hook behavior. You'll discover Maximum Home windows Tweaker to end up being a user-friendly optimizing toolbox. Snappily responsive and engineered to appear like it's part of the Control Plank, the UWT starts up with its central pane displaying your program details and its kept nav offering tweak categories. The seven categorizations involve: Personalization, User Bank account Control, Program Functionality, Protection, Network Changes, Internet Explorer, and More Adjustments. Except for the occasional slider, each tune is usually based mostly on a check box format for initiating choices, which users of all levels should find easy to manage and read. The range of choices looks solid, and there's something for everybody here, but it does tend to have more beginner's options than advanced ones. The basic principles will be covered by tweaks such as reinstating the last exposed files in Home windows Explorer or disabling Aero Move. Considerably more advanced choices consist of disabling laser printer spooling, allowing NTFS self-healing, or restricting bandwidth for the QoS scheduler. The control keys included with each option category for Create Checkpoint and Restore Foreclosures should quiet any end user anxieties about fixing any accidental damage completed. Where Top Glass windows Tweaker may toned ever-so-slightly toward less-confident users, 7plus should go simply just just a bit in the other route. It differentiates itself from opponents with a couple of feature surprises and Web links to a series of how-to videos. There happen to be significantly too many adjustments to file here, but suffice to declare that the drab program properties five tab of customizations: two for Windows Explorer, one for non-Explorer tweaks, and the ever-present Assorted tab. Oh, and the kicker: the FTP loss. Home windows Explorer to your FTP site at the feel of a popular primary, which is an uncommon but very welcome addition. Among its various features, 7plus offers FTP skills to House windows Explorer. You can established scorching tips for opening text message or image files in an editor of your choosing, opening files, creating latest files, replicate folder paths with file brands, and add data to the clipboard instead of upgrading what's currently generally there. Outside of Explorer, users obtain an mixture of mouse-button and hot-key features, incorporating one-click choices for keeping house windows on major, toggling picture, or "slide glass windows" for keeping home windows wide open but off-screen. There are various additional features in the power, not the least of which is normally one geared at XBox players who have a joystick or gamepad linked. Those peripherals works extremely well by them to control the mouse when not in full-screen mode. Ultimate Windows Tweaker. As well, the hot-key mixtures can not get separated from their associated functions, so you can't customise your personal preferred keys. Users should note that while many of the features will work on Glass windows XP, some will be limited to Windows vista and 7, and a few will job simply on 7 itself. Bonus offer app: If you're the kind of person who likes at-a-glance weather changes, WeatherBar shall put weather condition improvements to your House windows 7 taskbar. The icon displayed on your taskbar indicates the general weather conditions, while the progress meter indicates the relative humidity. The app's bounce list offers a full four-day prediction consisting of highs, lows, and a predictive icon. Do you contain a most loved Home windows 7 utility? Notify me about it in the feedback below.
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Digital music is definitely all very well and good, but who wants to type in artist and album information for every track? With TagScanner, you don't have to. This useful and effective label publisher let us you revise metadata immediately just as very well as by palm, both for specific files and document amounts. New in iTunes: The nitty-gritty here. The programmed tagging characteristic is normally virtually all amazing. Although it can strike up online listings such as FreeDB, Discogs, and Amazon like many other auto-tagging apps, it can as well generate tags from record and folder names--that's something many very similar applications can't carry out. It performs in the opposing way, also, generating file names from tags. The app facilitates Identity3sixth is v1, ID3v2, Vorbis comments, APEv2, WindowsMedia, and MP4/iTunes tags. TagScanner has got an arranged and tasteful interface, and allows you preview document labels before applying alterations. The just get is certainly that you'll will need to dedicate some time learning the program's record- and tag-naming language. Nevertheless, if you own hundreds of music trails shouting out for group, that's a small value to give. You know that viruses are bad for your system, but they are one type of malicious software just. Broadly speaking, malware is any software developed to disrupt your computer or device's normal functioning. Malware is often used to steal, to spy, or to destroy. It can target your personal information, corrupt your files, spam your contacts, use your computer for nefarious purposes, or render it useless even. There are currently over 375 million malicious programs out there, with another 390,000 recorded each day, according to AV-Test. In recent months, the true number of total malware threats has increased by 13 percent, and mobile malware is growing even faster, with the number of new incidences skyrocketing by 49 percent, according to McAfee (PDF link to report). Don't ignore the onslaught -- get to know your coded enemies and learn how to defeat them. Adware: Displays unwanted pop-up ads. Backdoor: Installed by Trojans or worms in order to enable continued access to your computer without your knowledge. Browser hijacker: Changes your homepage settings or adds a toolbar to gain personal information to sell to third parties. Rogue security software (aka rogue AV): Fools you into paying for a "clean-up" that is actually further infection. Keylogger: Surveillance software that records your every keystroke. Combined with spyware, keyloggers can send your keystrokes -- including passwords and personal facts -- to third parties without your knowledge. Ransomware: Criminals encrypt your hard drive data and demand payment to unlock the files. Rootkit: Stealthy software that modifies your system in order that you can't identify interference from malicious processes or programs, thus guaranteeing continued access to your system. Spam: Unsolicited mass-mailed advertisements that come via email, SMS, instant messenger, or Internet phone software. Spyware: Logs and stores your Internet activity and may also install Trojans. Trojan: Malware that tricks you into installing it so it can steal your data or damage your system. Virus: Infectious malware that installs itself in your other software, files, or hard drive and propagates itself. Worm: Infectious software that spreads most often via computer networks. How to avoid malware infection Sometimes malware enters your system uninvited, but other times you're welcoming it in. uTorrent for Mac ditches its training wheels. Download software from reliable sources only. A complete lot of mobile malware, for example, comes from outside Apple's App Store and Google Play. Read an app's End User License Agreement (EULA) before you download or update software, to ensure that no extra software is bundled with the application you want. Don't click links, attachments, or offers from untrusted sources. Some hackers are clever about spoofing email, phone, or social media accounts, so before you click, ask yourself whether your contact would send you that file or link. Keep your system and software up-to-date to get the good thing about recent fixes and patches for known vulnerabilities. How to remove malware Once malware is in your system, it is often hard to discover and remove. You may notice certain symptoms: slow performance, changes to your browser behaviors, browser instability, added toolbars, loss of application functionality, an increase in ads. If you suspect that you're a victim of malware, you have several options for removing it. Let's start with the built-in tools. Rudimentary software such as Microsoft Windows Defender and Mac's XProtect are available, but they're not terribly helpful -- they only warn you against running the most common, blacklisted malware but don't actually remove any of it. OS X users have Gatekeeper, which will permit software to launch only if they are (a) downloaded from the official Mac App Store, (b) created by reliable developers, or (c) signed by the developer. Your best bet is a good third-party antimalware program. For Windows and Android users, Malwarebytes (Windows, Android) is a steady favorite, or check out our list of nine programs for rescuing your PC from malware. For Mac users, Avast Free Mac Security 2015 is an outstanding choice. OS users should check out Trend Micro Mobile Security. Oyster, a digital book delivery service, began rolling out its iPhone application yesterday to selected subscribers with a buffet-style approach to books for $9.95 a full month. Taking its name from Shakespeare's famous line in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" -- "the world's mine oyster" -- the service targets the insatiable readers among us. Oyster managed to secure up to 100,000 titles and wrangled in publishers like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Workman, Smashworld, and even one of the "Big Six" -- HarperCollins. The idea is nothing revolutionary from what some libraries are already offering and what Amazon has made available to their Prime Users ($79.99/yr). Star Apps: Jann Klose here. Amazon Prime members can borrow digital books on PC and Kindle already. The main difference is that on Prime, users may only check out one book a month, but Oyster lets you read as many as you want. I can see that privacy setting being really useful. From our first glance, the service seems to offer some premium selections such as "Life of Pi," the works of Michael Crichton, Jack London, and a couple titles from the Tolkien collection. There is even a social aspect with a book recommendation function and the ability to keep tabs on what your friends are reading. Don't worry, there is a privacy feature in case you don't want persons to discover your obsession with a specific novel or genre. The application may or might not be a good buy for the everyday reader, based on their consumption, but for the literary die-hards it is a steal. Rather than otherwise spending $10-20 per title, you can access as many as you want for the whole month for one price. Of course the downside is that you won't actually own the book. Oyster is only available by special invitation and you can request yours here. Let us know what you think if you're already invited. GraphicConverter features long been one of our preferred picture converter and publishers because you get a lot of superb features at a extremely affordable price. SlimCleaner crowdsources power cleaning. With this important change, GraphicConverter 7.0 has a renewed Cocoa program now, a fresh display for batch conversion, stepless zooming of preview pictures in the browser, and substantially more. Also this week we possess the most recent release of RadioShift, an easy-to-use streaming-audio person with even more than 50,000 programs and stations. Our game this week is In Poculis Mahjong, the tile-matching video game with even loads and images of structure modifications. Don't neglect to check out our iPhone apps of the week! After a much longer run as a private beta than intended originally, the digital comic book store and comics reader called LongBox has finally opened its doors. The public beta is available for Windows and Mac, and although it's still quite rough in some spots, it represents a major breakthrough for the print-centric medium. The default main window of LongBox is a massive comic book information feed. When you open LongBox v0.5, you'll see a massive information overload. The layout uses boxes to keep the busy display from getting too chaotic, but the varying shades of blue don't keep things as separate as they could be. Just because this is comics doesn't mean you're going to come across a lot of primary colors or ziptones here, but some of that old-school feel may have helped here. In the upper left box, you'll see a horizontal scroll of featured titles. Below that is a newsfeed from the comic book news and reviews Web site Comic Book Resources. The Blackbox is a comic creator spotlight, with the debut concentrate on Steven Niles, perhaps best known as the writer of 30 Days of Night. It is not functioning currently. The column on the right is devoted to your LongBox stats on top and a scroll list of comic books being published for the current week. The stats counter wasn't working in the version I tested but should display your purchased comics, comics subscriptions, and comics loaded on your current device. That's a hint at what's to come for LongBox, which anticipates an iPad version, an Android tablet version, Xbox support, and support for other handheld devices. Comics downloaded through LongBox are shared to your account in addition to being stored locally, so you'll be able to read them on any LongBox-supported device without having to download them a second time. Sitting above all the noise is the LongBox navigation bar calmly. Next to the home button is the Library, where comics you've downloaded reside, followed by the Store, the Reader, and the Options button. The default view shows the comics as free-floating covers with the title and issue number above the image and a mouse-over link to the publisher facts below it. Mouse over a comic and two options appear. The "i" will open an information box that includes a synopsis, a link to a preview, a wishlist option, and a purchase button. The " " will add the comic to your shopping cart. There's also a list view, which contains a dedicated preview window and a more text-centric approach. Accessing the store will require registration, a free process. Because the comics are free for the brief moment, no credit card information needs to be revealed at this right time. Through the Options menu, users can want to log in when LongBox starts, or to enter their information manually. Here you can switch skins and change your start screen from the primary window to the reader, store, shopping cart, or last viewed screen when you start LongBox. The shopping cart lives on the right edge of the top navigation bar, along with your wishlist, featured LongBox specials, and the Help button which opens a PDF. There's a search bar that anchors the two sets of buttons that becomes a recently read list in Reader mode. It appears to work fine from all screens except the default window. The LongBox library contains comics you've purchased through LongBox. The Reader mode opens to a blank screen. You can click on the Reader button to open up the default system file browser again, although the Reader does support drag-and-drop for non-LongBox formatted CBZ and CBR comics. In the Library window, however, you'll see an interface that looks like the LongBox Store but with page navigation controls at the bottom. Mouse over a comic and click on the icon that appears to open it. Comics that you haven't read before will open smoothly, but types in the middle of being read are more sluggish. More often than not I had to mouse over the navigation buttons to get the comic to appear. Several times I had to click on a nav button, or in the black space where the comic should have been, to get it to appear. In Reader mode, the shopping help and cart buttons are replaced by supplementary navigation buttons. There's a bookmarks button, known to be not working at the right time of writing, and a "double" button that opens pages two at a time. This is a well-designed and essential tool for comics, which often use a two-page spread to highlight story moments that call for emphasized action. There's a Manga button, which can be utilised for Japanese and Hebrew comics that are published in a right-to-left reading order, and a Zoom button that offers three kinds of viewing. Panel zoom focuses in on the comic at panel width, while page zoom is more of a mid-length zoom, but still bigger than the default viewpoint. Free zoom works like a magnifying glass, large enough in order that you can see an entire panel in the frame. The scroll wheel can help you move the page under page zoom, and clicking on the magnifying glass zoom icon will toggle between the most recently selected zoom mode and the default view. Lastly, there's a currently nonfunctional Audio button. There's a long history of comics and music crossing over, and the CEO of LongBox, Rantz Hoseley, won an Eisner Award for editing an anthology, "Comic Book Tattoo," a collection of comics inspired by Tori Amos' songs. If the button allowed publishers to associate recommended playlists with their comics, this could be a really cool feature, but there's no word as of yet as to what it can do. The navigation controls at the bottom look smart but need tweaking still. There are controls to move forward or backward by a single page, or flip to the beginning or end of the comic. When you mouse over the controls, a pop-up bar appears previewing the pages of the comic that looks and feels like mini and elongated version of iTunes' Cover View mode. However, the previews are all blank unless you've already viewed a page. This could be a clever way to avoid spoiling the whole story, or another bug. It's a lttle bit hard to tell at the moment. This "gray market" CBR-formatted comic book was put together from online previews published by DC Comics. LongBox supports the format, albeit with no metadata. The Reader mode is absolutely the guts of the scheduled program, and a comic read on a 19-inch monitor with occasional juicing from the zoom mode was enjoyable. Nobody really cares about the news features or even the store if you can't read the comic, and on that end LongBox succeeds. However, it's likely that users with drastically smaller or older screens will find it unbearable. Hoseley has stated that the beta will proceed in three stages. The current public beta, version 0.5.2, is practically identical to the private beta that I started testing toward the final end of 2009. The next stage shall introduce redemption codes for nonwatermarked comics. The final stage shall introduce full e-commerce functionality to the LongBox store, and add about 100 comics to the store. Besides the types mentioned above, there are a lot of known bugs in LongBox. Font utilization needs to be standardized, the Comic Book Resources feed requires tweaking, the default window doesn't pull titles from LongBox site correctly, and metadata editing needs work. The LongBox public beta showcases a massive amount of potential, but unlike the latest Web browser beta from whichever browser publisher is your favorite, this is a rough work and is still very much in progress definitely. It faces massive challenges beyond getting the software to work correctly. Unlike music and MP3s, there's currently no single approved file format for comics. CBRs and CBZ are little more than image archive containers. There's also the issue of adoption. Except for the rise of graphic novels, comics have been dependent on the direct market niche comic book stores. Will readers flock to digital versions of them? And will those readers jump from stores to digital, or will LongBox bring in new readership? Overall, though, LongBox represents a good-faith effort to shove the medium out of its print-based nest. Best Windows software for a hard-hit economy. It's just too soon to tell whether it can fly. The ongoing problems with Flash freezing in Firefox 3 after two seconds of playback resemble nothing less than a game of hot potato. Adobe has updated the Flash 10 beta for Windows and Mac just, and with it comes the resurgence of the bug that installing the earlier beta fixed. There doesn't seem to be to be a given reason as to why the old beta is no longer viable, but it does work. Install this latest version of Flash 10 beta the same way as before to resolve the nagging problem. Download the install file, close Firefox, uninstall the old version of Flash, install the new one, and then restart your browser. Some users we talked to yesterday in our Ask the Editors about Chrome reported seeing the problem in Google's browser, too. This solution should work there, too. Interestingly, some of the full cases where the old Flash 10 beta would fail to fix the problem--like CNN--now work. Grooveshark leaves a bite for the music consumer. Nevertheless, nothing would be more preferable than a permanent solution, but as Rafe adroitly points out, the culture clash between Mozilla's open-source and Adobe's closed doors is as likely to be a part of the challenge as the code SNAFU itself. Try as we may, we can't anticipate every question about Windows 10, which. So you were asked by us, and you have delivered. We've answered as many as we can, though some things we just don't know yet. Keep sending your questions, and we'll post more answers. Our review of the operating system may also provide some answers. Recording TV with Windows Media Center"I have an HDHomeRun digital cable TV tuner. Windows 10 will not have the Media Center, and upgrading from Windows 7 will remove it. And unfortunately, there is no replacement for Windows Media Center, which was the only Windows platform authorized to make recordings of encrypted cable transmissions. On the bright side, Microsoft has committed to providing security updates to Windows 7 until 2020. So you can stick with Windows 7 for and wait for a replacement to arrive now, or you can try dual-booting Windows 7 and Windows 10. Postponing the upgrade to Windows 10"I do not want to consider Windows 10 for several months, until its kinks are worked out and I can decide if I want it truly. The upgrade to Windows 10 won't be automatic. The upgrade notification icon shall just stay in your system tray to remind you that your upgrade is available. Adjusting from Windows 7"I'm confused how Windows 10 can be an upgrade for both Windows 7 and 8.1. Windows 8.1 I can understand, although for whatever reason, there is no Windows 9. At least it's a short leap from 8.1 to 10. However, with Windows 7 it's a large leap to 10, skipping over Windows 8 and 8.1. Does Windows 10 include both 8.0 and 8.1, so Windows 7 isn't overwhelmed by the giant leap?" --Cris C. Having used various versions of Windows 10 over the last several months, we can say that it should feel familiar to people who never upgraded to Windows 8 or 8.1. Microsoft brought back the Start menu, and you'll only see the screen full of tiles if you're running a device with a touch-based interface, like a tablet or a Windows phone. For the rest of us, Windows 10 is designed to boot straight to the desktop mode that we're familiar with. The Task Manager uses Windows 8's style, but it's arguably an improvement, or at least a more informative one. The Control Panel (now accessed from the Settings button on the Start menu) uses a different layout, but you can still use the search function there to find what you're looking for. Cloud storage in Windows 10"I have very slow Internet speeds. Does Windows 10 use the cloud for most programs?" --Neal R. Windows 10 will encourage you to use the pre-installed OneDrive service (formerly called SkyDrive) to store your documents, photos, and other files in Microsoft's cloud, but it's not required. The Windows 10 Start menu uses "live tiles" that are updated over the Internet with news, weather, and stock info, but you can disable them by selecting and right-clicking Unpin From Start Menu. The Siri-like Cortana assistant might transmit information over the Internet, depending on what you ask it to do. But overall, the primary activities of the operating system that customarily operate offline do not require an Internet connection in Windows 10. Keeping multiple versions of Windows on your computer"My desktop PC is currently a dual-boot system running XP and Windows 7. I would like to keep my XP. Can I upgrade the Win 7 portion only and leave the XP portion intact?" --Rick W. Yes, as long as a partition is had by you on your storage device set aside for installing a second operating system. If that's the case, use the custom installation point and option it to the second partition. If you do not have a partition set aside, the process to create one can get a little complicated and would require a separate article to explain. Our CNET colleagues have an article about dual-booting Windows 7 and Windows 8 that should work for people who don't have a partition set up already. While you can install Windows 10 as an update to 7 or 8.1 in a partition, as far as we know you cannot use the free upgrade to create a brand-new installation of Windows 10 on a separate partition or other device. It can only be used to upgrade Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. If you want to install a full version of Windows 10 instead of an upgrade, you'll need to buy a copy of the operating system. Restoration partitions"Will the Windows 10 upgrade delete the manufacturer's restoration partition on a Windows 7 computer?" --Bill R. Yet another Firefox update there. This is a section of your computer's storage device that is created by the manufacturer (Dell, HP, Toshiba, and so on) to restore the operating system to the state it was in when the device was shipped. You can use this if your computer gets messed up and if less destructive fixes don't work. The Windows 10 installer won't mess with existing partitions unless you tell it to, so this restoration partition shall be unaffected. Keep in mind, though, that using the restoration partition will return you to the previous operating system that's stored there, not to Windows 10. Windows XP mode in Windows 10"We have two Windows 7 computers bought in the last two years, but we have an accounting program which will only run in Windows XP. I understand that there is a virtual XP which may be downloaded into Windows 7, but can it be downloaded into Windows 10?" --Eileen S. It doesn't look like Windows 10 will have support for Windows XP Mode. However, you can install Windows XP in a virtual machine. I wrote an article recently about installing Windows 10 in a virtual machine -- you can apply those same steps to creating one for Windows XP. Running a virtual machine requires more processing power than XP Mode, but since you recently bought your PC fairly, it should be to the task up. The Windows 10 update schedule"I've always have had Windows on my PCs, but since 1986, I've learned to wait for any product from Microsoft to be X.1 or X.2.0, because they haven't done very well with first releases of many of their products. Will Windows 10.1 be available before next July?" --Ronald R. If you're wondering whether a major revision of Windows 10 will be available before the upgrade offer expires on July 29, 2016...that's a pretty good question, actually. Windows 7 was released to retail in October 2009, and its service pack didn't arrive until February 2011. Windows 8.1 came out a little over a year after Windows 8.0. But with all the changes that the company has been evolving through since CEO Satya Nadella took over in February 2014, we don't know if Microsoft will be using the same game plan as before. There might not be a Windows 10.1 as a retail product, if the route is taken by them that Apple has with OS X. Whatever the case, we've found the Insider Preview version of Windows 10 to be quite stable. This is due in part to it sharing a lot of verified DNA with previous versions of Windows. It's not a major leap like Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, or 95 to XP. Keeping previously installed versions of Microsoft programs"What is this about Office 2016? I own 2013 and do not want to pay for the same software every year. If I download and install Windows 10, do I have to accept Office 16? Will it overwrite my 2013 Office?" --Ronald R. When you upgrade from Windows 7 or 8.1, you copy of Microsoft Office will remain unaffected. The Windows 10 upgrade does not include a copy of Office 2016. However, Windows 10 will install Microsoft Edge alongside Internet Explorer 11. Edge is intended to be the successor to IE 11, though the latter will operate as a fallback. Device compatibility with Windows 10"Years ago, when I upgraded to Windows 7, I consulted a Windows 7 compatibility webpage. It listed software that was and wasn't compatible. My webcam wasn't compatible with Win 7, and I needed to download a patch so that my printer would work with it. What about Windows 10? Will it be compatible with all software/hardware that works with Windows 7?" --Bill P. The Windows 10 upgrade notification icon (which will show up in your Windows system tray if you qualify for the upgrade) has a built-in tool to check for device compatibility. Our friends at ZDNet have a short article that walks you through how that ongoing works. As far as we know, Microsoft does not have a webpage this right time to check for compatibility with Windows 10. Re-installing Windows 10 later"Once I have installed Windows 10 on my computer, what happens if I have to change my hard drive at a later date? How do I re-install Windows 10? Ideally you're creating backups of your Windows 10 drive or partition on a regular basis, so you can restore from that if something happens to your main drive. If you need to reinstall Windows 10, the free offer is merely for an upgrade from Windows 7 or 8.1, so you'd need to install one of those older operating systems first before upgrading them to Windows 10. We've been able to to do a full OS installation using an upgrade installer in the past, but it's not clear if that will be possible with Windows 10. And it would be a violation of the license agreement anyway. Should you get Windows 10? By now most of the people have heard the rags to riches stories of the iPhone iphone app developers who learned a valuable secret: Make a "lite" version. It seems reasonable that while there are a lot of folks willing to pay for apps, many want to really know what they're getting before spending their hard-earned cash. One of our iPhone applications this week has benefited immensely from creating a lite version and I have to admit, I probably wouldn't have tried it myself if they hadn't. The lite version has now made it to the top of iTunes' most popular list, which must bode well for the paid version once people try it out. Let's hope more developers release Lite versions so everyone gets a chance to try more iPhone applications before they buy. This week's apps include a free recipe iphone app for cooking ideas and a lite version of a racing game that may be the best in its genre. Choose your dish type, ingredients, and cooking time before searching for recipes. Let's get real about RealPlayer 10 on this page. Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner (free) is a fun way to decide what you will make for dinner utilizing a unique spinner to find recipes. Simply start up the Dinner Spinner and you're greeted with three spinnable wheels categorized as dish type, ingredients, and cooking time. To look for a recipe, you swipe your finger to choose a dish type (appetizer, main dish, dessert), an ingredient you have in the house (chicken, pasta, chocolate), and a cooking time. The cooking times are set up for how much time you have, such as more than an full hour, 20 minutes or less, or Slow Cooker. Once you make your selections you'll quickly find several recipes fitting your criteria. Allrecipies.com Dinner Spinner lets you save your selected recipes for easy access. You can also throw caution to the wind and hit the Dinner Spinner button, which shuffles the three wheels randomly. Just make sure you're at the grocery store so you can get all the ingredients. With controls and graphics this good, the Lite version may make it the best racing game in its genre. Fastlane Street Racing Lite (free) is a one track, one car taste of the full Fastlane Street Racing game. Tilt your iPhone or iPod Touch to steer and use onscreen controls for gas and braking. You race against three other computer-controlled cars on a lengthy course, dodging regular drivers and obstacles as you go. Having tried several games that use the accelerometer for movement, I was surprised with how well the controls work for this game pleasantly. Pair the smooth controls with excellent graphics, several tracks, and unlockable cars, and you'll find it hard not to buy the full game ($4.99). What's your current favorite iPhone App? Do you have an improved recipe app for me? What's your preferred iPhone racing game? Let me know in the comments! The common antivirus package Avira AntiVir No cost updated to release 10, but there's amazingly little different here. Users will obtain a faster, simpler assembly and a refreshed skin area, but feature-wise the latest from Avira merely holds its own rather than pushing ahead. That's certainly not to say that Avira isn't one of the better free of charge antivirus software out right now there, because it is usually. It remains to be easy to make use of, with a effective collection of set reads, and it continues to cost very well in effectiveness assessments. Don't take our word for it, though: view this First of all Appear training video and inform us what you think in the remarks below. Best Mac software of 2007. |
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