Windows 8

Windows 8 is due to be released to consumers on October 26. Priced at just $39.99, the upgrade is surprisingly affordable. If you're thinking about upgrading to Microsoft's latest operating system, now might be a great time to start your preparations. Having an upgrade plan can help mitigate many of the risks involved with a major OS upgrade. Here are some suggestions to help your upgrade go as smoothly as possible:

Check your system for compatibility The first thing you'll want to do is to check your PC to see if it can run Windows 8 … Read more

Update, October 18, 2012: Early versions of Start8 required the user to choose a setting to enable automatic desktop. This post has been updated to reflect the changes to the latest version of Start8, which defaults to automatic desktop.

The start screen in Windows 8 has been a polarizing change from Windows 7, to put it mildly. If you click the desktop tile immediately after logging in, a free program by Stardock can save you some time. With Start8, you can automatically load the desktop immediately after logging in to Windows 8. Start8 will even add back the Windows Start button.… Read more

Microsoft is continuing to eke out the Windows 8 news.

The latest tidbit is Windows 8's exact availability date is going to be October 26. (The last we heard at the Microsoft Partner Conference a week ago is it would be in late October.)October 26 will be the date Windows 8 will be available preloaded on new PCs and also to those purchasing it through one of the upgrade programs Microsoft has announced recently.Microsoft officials shared the exact date on July 18 with the thousands of Microsoft salespeople attending the Microsoft Global Exchange Conference in Atlanta, according … Read more

Whenever you get a blue screen of death on your PC, the first port of call is always the trusty safe mode. Unfortunately, when I had to use it shortly after installing the latest Windows 8 Release Preview, I had no idea how to actually get to it as the old F8 shortcut has changed.

The good news is that you can still access safe mode through a shortcut, but it's now Shift+F8. The alternative solution is to create a second safe mode instance of your machine that you can boot from, although it's a little more … Read more

Today, Microsoft announced the latest version of its popular productivity suite, Office 2013. The Office suite has been reworked with Windows 8 and touch-screen tablets in mind. One more key feature is that it will rely heavily on the cloud.

If you're eager to get your hands on this new set of tools, you'll be glad to know you won't have to wait. Microsoft has posted a Customer Preview of Office 2013 here. You'll need to be running Windows 7 or the Release Preview of Windows 8 in order to install it. You will notice the … Read more

There's a rumor going around that, with Windows 8, Microsoft is doing away with the full version of Windows sold at retail.

If this pans out -- and so far, I have heard it from only one source (as I noted on the Windows Weekly podcast with my co-host Paul Thurrot this week) -- I doubt there will be anyone lining up in protest.

In Microsoft parlance, a full product typically means a non-upgrade, fully licensed version of Windows sold in a box via brick-and-mortar and/or online retailers. With Windows, full product tends to be quite expensive -- … Read more

Microsoft tends to move slowly. Apple, Google, Facebook, and others have been blazing the trail into the digital future, while the 37-year old Microsoft has been inhaling their fumes. Poor Microsoft? Not exactly. The company's software continues to dominate in the old world of Windows and Office, as well as with desktop PCs and game consoles via the Xbox.

For its last quarterly earnings, Microsoft reported revenue of $17.41 billion and operating income of $6.37 billion, up 12 percent from the same quarter last year. But longer-term growth is dependent on competing with Apple's iOS … Read more

Not surprisingly, Microsoft hasn't been the only company working on a tablet-laptop hybrid system. A U.S. patent application published late last month reveals that Lenovo has its own solution to the problem that the Microsoft Surface tries to address.

The patent application, which was actually filed way back on Christmas eve in 2010, is in some respects already outdated. For example, it describes a tablet with Android and an ARM processor that can be snapped into a base unit with a keyboard running Windows on Intel processors. A handful of related patent applications describe the way in which the two systems would work together, or as they say it in patent speak:… Read more

Windows 8 offers a new twist on security by letting you log in with a picture password as an alternative to a text password or PIN.

For this process to work, you'll need to copy at least one image to your Windows 8 Pictures folder. After selecting your picture, you draw circles, lines, or taps on any three areas to set up your security. To log in, simply recreate the same gestures in the same order.

A picture password seems better suited for touch-screen tablet users, but PC users can also tap into the feature and use a mouse … Read more