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

Finally: Microsoft has pinned some real availability dates on Windows 8.

Tami Reller, corporate vice president of Windows, told partners attending Microsoft's worldwide partner conference in Toronto this morning that Windows 8 is on track to be released to manufacturing the first week of August, and to be generally available by late October 2012.

This also means that Windows Server 2012 will be released to manufacturing by the first week of August. But the server bits won't be available to customers until September, a July 9 post on the Windows Server blog confirms the RTM date.

Reller also … Read more

Microsoft has announced what vulnerabilities it plans to patch on Tuesday.

According to the company, its Tuesday update will include fixes for nine issues. Three of those issues are "critical" vulnerabilities, meaning that they can allow code execution without any user interaction. The remaining vulnerabilities are labeled as "important."

Although all three of of the Critical vulnerabilities center on Windows, one of them also includes Internet Explorer 9. Interestingly, the flaw does not extend to previous versions of the browser, so it appears it's something new. Beyond that, the nine patches address flaws in everything … Read more

Printing from a Windows 8 Metro app may throw you for a curve at first. But the process works fine once you get used to it.

For the Windows 8 Release Preview, Microsoft tweaked the way you print content, at least for Metro apps. Instead of choosing a print command from within the app itself, you print using the Charms bar. Selecting the Device charm provides access to your printer, among other devices. From there you can configure the various settings for your print job.

Here's how to print from a Metro app in Windows 8: