With Windows 8 general availability less than three months away, the race is on for Microsoft to get more applications into its the Windows Store that is part of the new Windows 8 operating system.

I haven't seen an official tally from Microsoft, but Jose Fajarado, a Silverlight and XAML developer who blogs at http://advertboy.wordpress.com, said at latest count he believes there to be about 450 or so Metro-style apps in the Store. (Metro-style apps are those developed from scratch using Microsoft's WinRT programming interfaces. Nothing but Metro-style apps will work on ARM-based Windows RT … Read more

Windows has a set of programs that it will always use by default when you're opening certain file types. Movies, for example, open with the new Videos app in Windows 8. Most of the time this is fine, but you might prefer a different program to do the job, such as VLC Media Player.

To change the default program, right-click on the file you want to open and select Open with > Choose default program.

This will open a new dialogue in Windows 8, with this Metro-style interface (curiously, it opens within the traditional desktop), where you can select … Read more

Microsoft announced today that Windows 8 has been released to manufacturing (RTM'd). (The final build number is 9200.)

At the same time, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 10, Windows Server 2012 and Visual Studio 2012 also have reached the RTM milestone, given all of these products have been developed in lockstep with Windows 8. (I am not 100 percent sure if Windows RT also RTM'd simultaneously and do not believe Microsoft officials ever promised this would be the case.)

Microsoft officials said earlier this month to expect Windows 8 to RTM in the first week of August. (I modified … Read more

You've likely been using Windows Task Manager to monitor your PC's performance or to kill errant processes since it was first introduced in Windows 95. Sadly, this drab, gray feature has seen no love from Microsoft in the ensuing decades. That's all changed with Windows 8.

The Task Manager has been given a refreshing visual update, the data is better organized, and lots of features have been added. This is a guide to making the most of the new Windows 8 Task Manager.

Finding the Task Manager There are various ways to launch the Task Manager. Windows … Read more

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