Windows 8

Do you want to launch any executable file by the press of a few keys on your keyboard, without having to use the mouse? Do you want to do this without installing any third party tools in Windows? There a few ways you can make this work, even if you don’t have a keyboard with programmable keys, by using default Windows functionality. This tutorial shows two ways you can do this in Windows.

One of the biggest changes in Windows 8 is the fact that the Start Menu has been replaced by the Start Screen and now you have a very different way of launching applications. While the Start Screen is great for making instant searches and launching applications with a few keystrokes, it is not that friendly to users who love using the mouse instead of the keyboard. Therefore, I decided to make a quick analysis and see how the new Start Screen compares to the old Start Menu. Does it help in getting faster access to all the shortcuts installed by your applications? Let’s find out!

Do you have a laptop or netbook with average or poor battery lifetime? If that’s the case, you might want to use an Internet browser that’s able to take advantage of the power saving features included with Windows 7 or Windows 8. We tested all the major browsers and had some very surprising results. Read on to learn which browser is best at squeezing more time out of your laptop’s battery. Is it Google Chrome? Is it Internet Explorer? Or is it Firefox?

Let’s settle this from the start: this is not rocket science, it’s not even a complicated thing to do. However, it is a question you may have to answer. If you handled computers before, the answer is a couple of clicks away. On the other hand, if you’re like my mother, you call your child/friend at 7 a.m. and ask him/her how to do it. This tutorial is, mainly, for everyone who wants to save the cost of a call and do it on their own.

I’ve noticed a growing complaint with Windows 8: the fact that, on the Desktop there is no visible shortcut to take you to the Start screen. Something like "Show Start", just like we had Show Desktop in Windows XP. For a novice user, there is no clue shown on how to get back to the Start screen. That’s why I decided to investigate and found a hack that gets this apparently simple job done.

Do you want to use the Windows 8 logo as an icon on your computer? Are you interested in using other Metro-style icons found in Windows 8? We extracted, converted and packaged together some of the Windows 8 specific icons, in a way that works on all versions of Windows and other non-Microsoft operating systems. Check them out!

It can happen that you quickly need open more than one window of the same application. It can be any application: a Windows application such as Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer, or a third-party application like Mozilla Firefox. Opening multiple windows is the same as running multiple instances of the same application. Let’s see how this is done.