Customize Windows 8

Microsoft’s operating system isn’t even fully released yet, but we’ve already got plenty to go on with Windows 8 Release Preview (and, if you’re a developer, Windows 8 RTM) to have a good idea about the many ways the new OS can be dolled up. In fact, one of the standout revelations of RTM was the new “tattoos” that can add personalized flourishes to your Start screen background.

The new tattoos are only the latest additions to the many personalizations Windows 8 already boasted in previous pre-releases. In fact, the very first choice in Windows 8′s PC settings page is “Personalize,” where you can make the lock screen, your account picture, and start screen reflect your own style.

Windows 8 also inherits many of the customization options that were available in Windows 7—in the newer OS’s desktop mode. Not only can you choose a desktop background, screensaver, and system sounds, but you can also take advantage of downloadable Themes, including some that are dynamically updated throughout the day. And you can now sync your customizations among all Windows 8 PCs you sign into.

There are even already some third-party tools that offer Windows 8 customizations, but since there’s so much you can do with nothing but the OS’s built-in tools, this collection will concentrate on just those. If you haven’t already downloaded the Windows 8 Release Preview, you can do so and install it on any computer capable of running Windows 7.

1. Lock Screen Picture

The first thing you see when you power up your Windows 8 PC or tablet is the lock screen. This is a familiar concept for smartphone users, but it’s a new one for PCs. Let the first thing you see be something you love. Windows 8 RTM has six cool choices for this. The default is a Seattle scene showing the Space Needle a mountain, and a green hill. The other contrasting and appealing options include a honeycomb, a nautilus, a piano keyboard, train tracks in a city, and prisms of color. To get to this option, simply choose the Settings charm from the Start screen, Change PC settings, Personalize, and then Lock screen.

2. Lock Screen Apps

The lock screen isn’t just a static picture waiting for you to log in: In addition to indicating battery level and the date and time, it can display useful information such as the number of email messages awaiting you, the current weather, and calendar appointments and reminders. Not only built-in apps have the ability to display pithy information on the lock screen, but third-party apps like Twitter clients and messaging apps can, too. You can also specify an app that will display detailed status on the lock screen. The only default choices for this in RTM were Weather and Calendar.

3. Start Screen Color and Tattoos

From its first pre-release version, Windows 8 offered a few background and foreground color combinations for the Start screen, and this is the first choice you make on your first run of the OS after installation. With Release Preview, Windows 8 offers 25 different color combinations for your Start screen—enough for every taste. Note your color choice also affects the charms, your tattoo choice, and even the Windows logo itself, which has been redesigned to be color-agnostic.

Prior to the arrival of Windows 8 RTM, you could grace the background of your Start screen tiles with a few mild patterns, but with RTM, the choices for these “tattoos” exploded into phantasmagorias of design and color. The milder options are still available, but now you have 20 total tattoos to choose from, with some real doozies among them, some sporting flowers, planets, gears, guitars, or creatures. The selection could now truly be considered artistic. To get to this option, simply choose the Settings charm from the Start screen, Change PC settings, Personalize, and then Start screen.

4. Tile Sizes

One of the first things you’ll notice on the Windows 8 Start screen is that some of the app tiles are twice as wide as others. Don’t agree with the default sizes? No problem. Just right-click on a tile (or hold your finger on it and drag up or down if your using a touchscreen), to display the tile options. If the tile is the larger size, you’ll see a “Smaller” button, and vice versa for a large tile. Other choices here include unpinning the tile from the start menu, uninstalling the app, and turning off its live updates.

5. Group and Re-arrange Tiles

There are plenty of ways to arrange your Start screen tiles to taste: Simply click and drag a tile to change its position on the screen (or hold and drag on a touchscreen). For more global changes, you can pinch to zoom out (or Ctrl-mouse wheel), making your whole screen shrink, with all tiles on multiple screens visible. From this view, you can move and even name groups of tiles.

6. Account Picture

In Windows 8, your user picture is always starting up at you from your login screen and from the top-right of the start screen. Why not have a good one? From the PC Settings/Personalize page’s Account picture tab, you can either shoot a photo from the PC’s built-in webcam, or choose any image file in a folder on the PC.

7. Customize Your Default Apps

Microsoft’s incipient operating system comes with several new-style apps, which you can modify to your own needs and interests. Four in particular lend themselves to customization—News, Finance, Sports, and Weather (of course). As with most new-style Windows 8 apps, you get to the customizations by right clicking on the program’s running screen, or, if you’re using a touchscreen, by swiping in from the top or up from the bottom of the display. With any of these apps, you can pin a particular set of content to the Start screen, rather than just the general app. For example, in the Sports app, you can pin a version just for your favorite team.

8. Notifications

Windows 8 features new “toast” notifications that appear temporarily at top-right when an app or the system has a message for you: For example, an app has successfully been installed, or you’ve received and instant message. From the Settings Charm, choose Change PC settings, then Notifications. From this settings page, you can turn on and off notifications from every app capable of sending them, or turn all off at once. You can also mute the notification sound if you prefer.

9. Desktop background

A fair portion of the desktop customizations that existed under Windows 7 remain in Windows 8′s desktop mode. You can change the background (aka “wallpaper”), color, sounds, and screensaver. There are still Themes, including some with live-updated RSS themes (the ones featuring the wonderful daily Bing photos are favorites). What’s new are that your theme choices here can be synced with any other Windows 8 PC you log into.

10. Taskbar Options

The Windows 8 desktop taskbar has been flattened—no more 3D translucent Aero look and feel—but you can still do a lot to customize it. Just right click on the taskbar, and choose Properties. Nearly all of the old reliable Windows 7 options are still available. You can change its position from the bottom to the top or either side, auto-hide it, change to small buttons, and uncombined a program’s windows. You can even add toolbars to the taskbar for addresses, links, the touch keyboard, or for Desktop. This last one will be of great interest to those who lament the loss of the dear departed Start Button—it gives access to not only any desktop icons, but also Libraries, My Computer, Control Panel, and more.

Picture and News Source Thinkdigit.

How to Run Android apps on Windows ?

Most Android-based smartphone users would agree that they would prefer testing an app before downloading it to their phone. The reason behind this is usually to avoid unnecessary space hogging apps. Some users might also wish to play some of the cool mobile games available for the Android platform on their PC i.e. on a larger display. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how can your favorite Android apps on your Windows-based PC using a simple and free software called BlueStacks.

BlueStacks is an app player for Windows, which can play Android apps faster than it can run on a phone and that too, on a full-screen. The app includes 10 pre-loaded apps and one can add up to 26 more apps of their choice. Favorite apps can be pushed directly from the phone onto the PC using an Android app via internet route. Download and install the software for Windows from the URL ‘www.bluestacks.com’. The software is nothing, but a simple virtual Android operating system, which simulates an Android phone or UI. It uses the desktop PC’s resources such as the processor, the internet connection, mouse, keyboard and the audio card. The installed folder located on the PC contains the necessary files for its use, namely the kernel, data, system, boot and storage (the SD card). The BlueStacks Android (Gingerbread) virtual machine creates a hardware environment with a limited amount of storage (around 363 MB) for installing apps and 262 MB of SD card storage space.

Once BlueStacks is installed, the application will be running the Android operating system in the background and you will see an icon in the system tray area and a widget will be running on your screen. A single click on the widget will reveal the Android system apps installed in it. Click on the apps and enjoy them on a large screen. Additional apps can be installed from the BlueStacks website by signing in using your Facebook account details. To get to this page, all you need to do is click on the BlueStacks widget, scroll to and click on the app icon/shortcut ‘Get more apps’. A website will open up where you can login using your Facebook details. Once logged in, simply click on the ‘Subscribe’ button for the available apps (in the Featured Apps section) and they shall automatically get installed on your system via the internet. The ‘Could Connect’ link on the same page will highlight a special 9-pin numerical code which needs to be entered on your Android phone running the BlueStacks Cloud Connect app (download it from the Android Market for free). Once done, you can push apps from your phone to your PC by simply selecting multiple apps and syncing it. That’s it! You can now enjoy all your favorite apps from your phone on your Windows desktop PC.

Note: There are a few (or many) apps that will not function on BlueStacks, due to reasons such as incompatible hardware (for example there is no wireless network available here and apps that need the wireless network will not function). Also a few apps cannot be installed under the free license of BlueStacks. The BlueStacks Pro version will be out soon and you can do a lot more on it. The free version has a maximum limit of 26 installable apps, while the pro version will have the possibility of installing unlimited apps. Do not attempt to troubleshoot, repair, or modify any device without understanding and following all of the relevant safety guidelines! Do also please keep in mind that repairing a product on your own while it is under warranty, will automatically nullify the warranty provided by the company.

Source : Tech2

 

Nokia unveils its first Windows Phones

The first Nokia Windows Phones have finally arrived, as expected at Nokia World – the Lumia 800 and 710, fresh with Mango (WP7.5) onboard. The devices, sharing similar specs, are expected to hit stores in Europe starting November, followed by India, Hong Kong, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan before the end of the year; rolling out completely by early 2012.

For now, suggested prices are €270 (roughly Rs. 18,000) for the Lumia 710, and a comparatively steep €420 (roughly Rs. 28,000) for the Lumia 800, though the two Nokia Windows Phones share very similar specifications.

Common features include a single-core 1.4GHz Scorpion processor on the Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset with a 3D Graphics HW Accelerator, 512MB of RAM, a 3.7-inch display with 800×480 pixels resolution, 25GB of free Microsoft cloud storage, no expandable storage, stereo FM with RDS, 720p HD video recording, GPS with A-GPS, micro-SIM card slot, active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic, HSDPA 14.4Mbps and HSUPA 5.76Mbps, Wi-Fi 801.2 b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity with A2DP and EDR, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a microUSB port.

The two Nokia Windows Phones have distinctive form factors however, with the Lumia 800 sharing the unibody styling of the N9, and capacitive touch buttons, while the Lumia 710 has hardware buttons. Neither device has a front-facing camera. Differences include the storage space (8GB versus 16GB), the type of display (ClearBlack TFT instead of ClearBlack AMOLED), camera (5MP autofocus with LED flash versus 8MP Carl Zeiss f/2.2 with dual-LED flash), and battery (1300 mAh versus 1450 mAh).

The Lumia 710 comes in black or white, with interchangeable back panels in various colours – black, white, fuchsia, yellow, cyan. The Lumia 800 comes with a choice of cyan, magenta, and black.

Windows 8: The Top 4 Things You Should Know

Microsoft says it is “reinventing the OS” with Windows 8, the company’s next-generation operating system.

Microsoft fired off dozens of announcements and showed off countless features of the new OS at its Build conference in Anaheim, California. Features such as the Metro interface, support for touchscreens, improved performance and a Windows Store for apps are making headlines.

But which Windows 8 features are the most important ones?

• Windows 8 Works on Tablets, Laptops & Desktops

• Everything Is Faster on Windows 8

• Say Hello to the Windows App Store

• Metro & Touch Are the Future of Windows

To know more about this please click HERE.

Developer preview of Windows 8 is now available

For those who have been anxiously awaiting the release of the much-hyped Windows 8, there is good news. A developer preview of Windows 8 is now available.

Microsoft has created a new set of APIs for creating applications on Windows 8 called Windows Runtime or WinRT. This set of APIs are available in any language, C++, C#, Visual Basic or even JavaScript, and can be used for creating Metro style applications. Yes, JavaScript! As Microsoft mentioned before, HTML5 with CSS3 and JavaScript will be one of the routes to creating applications on Windows 8. WinRT APIs will even be accessible to applications developed using frameworks such as .NET.

Web developers can use HTML5 for the applications layout / interface along with CSS3 and use JavaScript for functionality. This will give web developers deep access to Windows APIs and features. Metro applications developed using C++ / C# / VB can use XAML for the user interface, games can be developed using C++ and DirectX 11.1 (or for casual games even the methods listed before)

The Windows Store will also be making its debut in the next version of Windows, so developers will have an official store from where they can purchase and install applications.

Unlike what Microsoft did with Windows 7, this release of Windows 8 is not a beta. It is a little less baked than that by Microsoft’s admission. It is a pre-beta version that is meant to showcase the development capabilities of Windows 8, and currently it does not even include all the features showcased by Microsoft during the conference. The Windows Store for example is absent.

For those wanting to try out Windows 8 in prerelease – the builds are available to all – you can find the downloads here. There are three versions available, the first is a 64-bit build and includes developer tools (Windows SDK, Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express, Microsoft Expression Blend 5), the other two versions just have the basic Windows install for 64-bit and 32-bit.

B8—>“Building Windows 8” Blog

Microsoft launched a new blog and Twitter account to chronicle and crowdsource the development of its next operating system, Windows 8.

Windows President Steven Sinofsky wrote the first post on the “Building Windows 8” blog (also know as “B8″), explaining the team’s intent with the blog:

“Blogging allows us to have a two-way dialog with you about design choices, real-world data and usage, and new opportunities that are part of Windows 8. Together, we will start the unique adventure of bringing a major product to market. We’re genuinely excited to talk about the development of Windows 8 and to engage thoughtfully with the community of passionate end-users, developers, and information professionals.”

Sinofsky and Windows Senior Vice President Jon DeVaan hosted Microsoft’s “Engineering Windows 7” blog (also known as “E7″) during the development of Windows 7.

“We started the Engineering Windows 7 blog in 2008 in recognition of the need to re-engage the community and rebuild trust relative to the engineering and design of Windows. While engineering Windows 7, we learned some great lessons and renewed our sense of responsibility to the community,” wrote Sinofsky.

Learning from their experiences with hosting the “E7″ blog, the development team plans to make the blog available to a larger pool of readers, offering “B8″ posts in “several other languages” within 48 hours of the English language posts. And instead of two admins, the blog will include posts from many members of the development team.

The @BuildWindows8 Twitter account will be updated with notifications about new blog posts.

“What we tried to do with Windows 8 was reimagine what we want to do with a PC,” Sinofsky said in his D9 demo of Windows 8. “We colored outside the lines.”

The Windows 8 product seems to be focused on drastically improving the user interface — an blog focused on dialogue may be just the formula for gaining actionable feedback from end-users.

Thanks Mashable.

Tips To Keep Your System Faster

Follow these tips and you will definitely have a much faster and more reliable PC!

  1. Wallpapers: They slow your whole system down, so if you’re willing to compromise, have a basic plain one instead!

 2. Drivers: Update your hardware drivers as frequently as possible.  New drivers tend to increase system speed especially in the case of graphics cards, their drivers are updated by the manufacturer very frequently!

 3. Minimizing: If you want to use several programs at the same time then minimize those you are not using.  This helps reduce the overload on RAM.

 4. Boot Faster: The ‘starting Windows 98/XP’ message on startup can delay your booting for a couple of seconds.  To get rid of this message go to c:\ and find the file Msdos.sys.  Remove the Read-Only option.  Next, open it in Notepad or any other text editor.  Finally, go to the text ‘Options’ within the file and make the following changes: Add BootDelay=0.  To make your booting even faster, set add Logo=0 to remove the Windows logo at startup.

 5. Restart only Windows: When restarting your PC, hold down Shift to only restart Windows rather than the whole system which will only take a fraction of the time.

6. Turn Off Animations:  Go to Display Settings from the Control Panel and switch to the Effects Tab. Now turn off Show Windows Content While Dragging and Smooth Edges on Screen Fonts.  This tip is also helpful with Windows XP because of the various fade/scroll effects.

 7. Faster Start-Menu Access: Go to the Start menu and select Run.  Now type Regedit and hit Enter.  The Registry Editor will appear on the screen.  Now, open the folder HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop.  You should see a MenuShowDelay value.  If you don’t then do the following: right click on a blank space in the right pane and select New\String.  Change the name in the new value to MenuShowDelay.  Now that we have the MenuShowDelay value, double click on it and enter 0 in the value data field.  This sets the start menu delay to 0 milliseconds.

 8. Resolutions: If you are willing to do anything for faster performance from your PC, then try lowering your display resolution.  The lower it is, the faster your PC.

 9. Turn off Active Desktop:  Go to your Display Properties and switch to the Web tab.  Uncheck View My Active Desktop As a Web Page.  Since the Active Desktop option under Windows 98 uses a lot of system resources, this option can have a dramatic effect on the speed of the whole system.

 10. Defragment Often:  Windows 98′s Defrag tool uses Application Acceleration from Intel which means that when you defragment your drive, data is physically arranged on the drive so that applications will load faster.

11. Take your PC to Bed:  Using the Advanced Power Management feature under Windows 98 gives you the option to use the sleep command.  That way, you can send your PC to sleep instead of shutting it down and then restarting it.  It’s as simple as pressing a button and then pressing the same button to wake it up.  You can tell Windows after how many minutes/hours of inactivity to automatically sleep the machine in the Advanced Power Management section of the Control Panel.

 12. Faster Internet Access: If you use the internet for reference and the sites you visit are rarely  updated then try the following.  In IE (the same can be done in Netscape) go to Tools, Internet Options.  Next, click on Settings… in the Temporary Internet Files  section.  Finally, select Never for the first option and double the amount of storage space to use, click OK!

 13. Benchmarking: Benchmarking can be very useful when run frequently.  It can tell you how your PC’s components are performing and then compare them to other machines like yours.  For example, when you overclock your PC, you want to know how much more speed you have and whether it is stable.  All this and more can be discovered using benchmarking.  An excellent piece of software for doing this job is SiSoft Sandra which can be found in the Downloads File Archive!

 14. Refresh the Taskbar without restarting: If you in some way change the taskbar, either in Regedit or elsewhere, you can refresh the task bar without restarting.  Hold down Ctrl Alt Del, and double click on Explorer.  Say Yes to close Explorer, but no to closing Windows.  This will refresh the Taskbar and system tray.

 15. Quick CD Eject: Instead of pushing the button on your drive, right-click your CD drive letter in My Computer and click on Eject.  This will also remove any icons that have become associated with the CD drive.

16. Start Up Programs:  Windows can be slowed down when programs run on start up.  To eliminate this, check your Start up folder.  You can access it from the start menu: Start, Programs, Start Up.  Another way to eliminate programs from loading even before Windows actually starts is by doing the following: Click on Start, then Run.  Type msconfig.  It will take quite a long time for this program to load, but when you finally see it on your screen, explore the different tabs.  They all have to do with how quickly your PC boots, so select what you want, and uncheck what you don’t want!

 17. Fonts: When Windows starts, it loads every single font in the Fonts folder.  Therefore, the more fonts you have, the slower the booting process.  To get rid of unwanted fonts, simply go to the Fonts folder under c:\windows and remove whatever you don’t want.  Fonts that have a red letter ‘A’ as their icon are system fonts, so don’t delete them.

 18. Stretching Wallpapers:  Don’t “stretch” your wallpaper in Windows 98 since it actually slows Windows down when you drag icons around on the desktop.

 19. RAM Matters: If you have less than 32MB then you should seriously think of upgrading it to at least 64MB.  Windows runs much more smoothly with 64MB or higher and tends to use less hard disk space for virtual memory.

 20. Partitioning: A very nice little thing you can do to boost system performance.  By partitioning your hard drive, splitting one physical drive into several logical ones, you can gain several advantages.  1. If you get a virus or you accidentally format a drive, not all will be lost.  2. By placing the swap file (Win386.swp) on a separate drive, The swap file will be less fragmented and thus, faster. 3. Place Windows on a separate drive and whenever you need to reinstall it, you rest assured that your data is safe on a separate drive.  Partitioning can be done using a few programs such as FDisk which comes with DOS.  However, FDisk formats everything on the hard disk before partitioning. Alternatively, you can use Partition Magic from Power Quest to partition your hard disk without losing your data.

Source : http://pctips.50webs.org

Windows 8

Windows 8 is the tentative name for the upcoming version of the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems, for use on personal computers.It is expected to be released in 2012. 

At the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced that it would be including support for system-on-a-chip (SoC) and mobile ARM processors in its next version of the Windows operating system,which is expected to be called Windows 8. It is anticipated that Windows 8 will be released in 2012 or later.

Windows 8 includes a new “Hybrid Boot” option that uses “advanced hibernation functionality” on shutdown to allow faster startup times.Another new feature is the ability to create a Portable Workspace, an installation of Windows 8 on a USB storage device.

Milestone 1 (build 7850, with a build date of September 22, 2010) was leaked to BetaArchive, an online beta community, which was soon leaked to P2P/torrent sharing networks on April 12, 2011. Milestone 1 includes a ribbon interface for Windows Explorer, a PDF reader called Modern Reader, an updated task manager called Modern Task Manager, and native ISO mounting. Build 7955 (with a build date of February 22, 2011) was leaked on April 25, 2011. A Milestone 3 build, build 7971, was released to close partners of Microsoft on March 29, 2011but was kept under heavy security. However, a few screenshots were leaked. The Windows 7 Basic theme has been replaced with a new theme, where the boxes that encase the “close, maximize, and minimize” buttons have been removed, leaving just the signs. Milestone 3 includes a new Welcome screen, a new packaged application model called AppX that is based on Silverlight,and a setting for automatically adjusting the window color to fit the wallpaper. It also includes a stripped down “Immersive” version of Internet Explorer, similar to the mobile version of Internet Explorer, but using the desktop Trident rendering engine.