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Your ultimate guide to Windows 8.1
Everything you need to get more from your PC!
100
MAY 2015
windows 8.1
TIPS, TRICKS & TWEAKS Get the best out of Windows today! beginners' Guide
Set up Family Safety and keep your kids secure online
st 20 bea d r o b y ke tcuts shor e using
Plus how to
● Make a great presentation ● Easily add a second display ● Get more from File Explorer
Save tim C! your P
Windows tutorials
● Discover the handy Power Menu New things to do
Buying advice
Help & support
100% jargon free
Welcome With Windows 10 scheduled for a “summer” release, and no charge for upgrading from Windows 8.1, we expect you’re all getting ready to update. Of course, the timing of the release could be as late as August this year, so Windows 8.1 is going to be your friend until then. With this in mind, we’ve given you 100 of the best tips, tricks and tweaks we can lay our hands on for Windows 8.1. You’ll find plenty to keep your system going strong until you’re ready to upgrade.
Also this issue we’ve got the latest hardware reviews, a round-up of TV boxes, which offer ways of streaming videos and photos to your TV from your PC, and a look at all the technology that’s coming up for the rest of the year. With so much exciting tech on the way there’s never been a better time to be a PC owner, and we’ll be here to make sure you always get the most from your PC. Until next time!
Graham Barlow Editor-in-Chief www.facebook.com/windowsmag SUBSCRIBE TO THE MAG TODAY AND SAVE - JUST TURN TO PAGE 32! We pride ourselves in being the only magazine on the shelves to show you exactly how to get the best from the Windows operating system, whether it’s Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. Windows Help & Advice also comes with a disc, on which you can find some of the great apps covered in the magazine. If you get a chance, take a look at how you can even read the magazine on your laptop, phone or tablet.
Don’t miss our Next issue, when we show you how to…
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Use keyboard shortcuts in Windows 8.1 Apply vintage effects to photos Protect your PC from malicious programs Fix your friends’ PC problems
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Features 12 100 Windows 8.1 tips
Work quicker and smarter with our selection of tips, tricks and tweaks
64 Windows 8.1 shortcuts
A selection of shortcuts to save time and make your Windows life even easier!
72 Set up family safety
Keep younger family members safe from harmful content online
Regulars 6 Discover A look at Windows Phone, meet HTC Vive and find a festival online 32 Subscriptions Save up to 44% on print and digital issues 37 Back issues Don’t miss out! Order past issues while stocks last
98 Next month Discover what’s coming up in the next issue
Support
76 Four pages of essential expert help for all your tricky technical queries 4
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Explore The best PC tutorials Your guide Graham Barlow says…
“Each month we include as wide a range of tutorials as possible, to help you use your computer more efficiently and inspire you to try new things” 24 Give your PC desktop an instant makeover with Themes
44 Take control of File Explorer on your PC to manage your folders
28 Always open your files in the correct program
48 Make an eShop for your small business with Website Builder
30 Add album art to MP3s on your PC with Creetivity
50 Keep your PC data safe and protected with partitions
34 Become a Power User on your Windows 8.1 PC
54 Create your own animated GIFs with Gifted Motion
38 Configure a second display in Windows to extend your desktop
56 Organise your schedule with Remember the Milk
40 Create a professional-looking presentation with Google Slides
60 10 great way to share and transfer big files and folders
Subscription bundle offer
Print and digital bundle – only £35.49 for six months Find out more on page 32
On the cover
windows 8.1 Tips, tricks & tweaks 12 Work quicker and smarter on your Windows 8.1 PC
On the cover
WINDOWS 8.1 SHORTCUTS 64 Save time on your PC
Upgrade 80 Our expert reviews 82 TV boxes 84 Lenova Yoga Tablet 2 86 HP Envy 7640 e-All-in-One printer 87 Vivitek Qumi Q5-RD 88 Dell XPS 13 90 Final Fantasy XIII-2 92 Sunless Sea 94 Resident Evil HD Remaster
On the cover
SET UP FAMILY SAFETY
Follow us on… www.twitter.com/windowsmag
72 Control online browsing for kids
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NEW things to do
amazing websites
Sounds of the summer Smaller music festivals often have a cooler vibe than the bigger events – they're definitey worth checking out
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fascinating facts
Discover Get out more…
Ou t for the s u mm er
How to make the most of the summer
The Knowledge… reality BITES HTC is now turning its hand to VR
From sporting events to food festivals, we show you the best ways to find out about summer events
S
ummer is almost upon us, and it’s a great time of year to get out and about and make the most of the weather while enjoying events, from small local music festivals to big-scale international sports tournaments. Here, we’ll show you where to find such events, and the best places online to catch up with them. London always has plenty to offer – the city’s parks and streets really come to life on warm days. www.visitlondon. com includes a guide to all this summer’s activities. We also recommend visiting the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London, which is still a thriving sports arena. This year it’ll be host to rugby, hockey and basketball matches, and its velodrome is fantastic for cycling events. A full guide can be found at www.queenelizabetholympicpark.co.uk. Elsewhere in London all the usual sporting staples will be taking place this year: the tennis at Wimbledon
(29 June to 12 July), The Ashes at Lord’s (16-20 July), and the FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium (30 May). If you can’t make it to the events you can watch the tennis and football via BBC’s iPlayer (www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ categories/sport/highlights), but you’ll need a Sky Sports subscription to watch the cricket. Handily, Sky includes a pub finder (pubfinder.sky.com) so you can track down local boozers showing sports. Of course, if you’re not a fan of sports there are plenty of other events happening in the UK this summer. www.efestivals.co.uk is a good place to start, listing all the major UK music festivals, with something for everyone, from the intense heavy metal of Download to the colourful international vibes of the WOMAD Festival at Charlton Park in Wiltshire. It includes full line-ups, and you’ll also find a map showing events near you.
London’s parks and streets really come to life on warm days
Foodie conventions Find a festival online If you like to sample the finer things in life, it's always worth visiting a food festival. They're family friendly and always have a laidback blissful atmosphere and come with plenty of delicious new things to try. They normally take place during the day, and you often get free food to try out. As its name suggests www.foodfestivalfinder. co.uk lists all the UK’s biggest events for foodies.
Find food If necessary increase your search distance to 50 or 100 miles
Location Allow Food Festival Finder to access your location, or enter it in the search field
Map to the pies Click on entries on the map to find out more about that particular festival
HTC Vive That’s a funny-looking phone. HTC makes more than just phones, you know! It also makes tablets. And now, with the HTC Vive, it’s set to make a dive into the world of virtual reality. It makes sense for the company as its latest smartphone – the HTC One (M9) has been met with lacklustre reviews, and tablet sales have been plummeting. So what is the Vive? It’s a headset which, like the Oculus Rift, uses a complex system of trackers, motion sensors and software to make it feel as if you’re in a virtual environment, such as a 3D computer game. How does it compare to Oculus Rift? It’s very, very similar, but a big difference here is the screens. While the prototype builds of the Oculus have used a single display, usually taken from a tablet, the Vive uses a pair of bespoke screens. With one for each eye, users should enjoy a clearer and more immersive VR experience, and it comes with a pair of trackers so you can move around the room while you use it – something the Oculus sorely lacked. What about software? HTC has partnered with colossal gaming company Valve to create the Vive. It’s already been promised to work with some of its most well-known games, such as Half-Life 2 and Portal, and it ties in nicely with Valve’s upcoming Linux-powered Steam Machines. When can I get one? A version built for developers to play around with will launch in spring, but we recommend holding off until a proper retail unit is launched later this year. There’s no word on pricing, but you will need a fairly up-to-date gaming PC to make the most of it.
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R INCHESTE HENRY W ERT TECH EXP
Minimode Apps There are some really useful bits and bobs in Windows’ oft-ignored marketplace, and recently we’ve put them to good use by running them in a smaller window to the side of the screen. It’s easy to do – simply fire up the app of your choice, then right-click on the icon in the top-left corner and choose 'Split Left'. Now drag the three-dotted icon left until it fills about a quarter of the screen – don’t drag it any further or it will close the app. Now press the [Windows] key and [D] to bring up your desktop. You can even use this method to bring up another app window to the right of the screen, so you can keep an eye on the weather and the traffic while you get on with work.
Search from Windows Explorer Although they were designed for Windows servers, Search Connectors also work with Windows 7. They’re handy little additions that allow you to search the internet from within Windows Explorer, so you can switch quickly from looking at files to looking at results from Wikipedia or Bing. You’ll find a complete list of Search Connectors at http://bit.ly/1MQP1Ap. Once you’ve found a useful Search Connector download it, then open it and it’ll automatically appear in Windows Explorer. Type queries into the box in the upper right and they’ll be listed in the main Windows Explorer windows.
Dictate to Wordpad From Windows Vista onwards Microsoft has included voice controls as an accessibility feature, which can also be used to recognise words you’re saying and stick them in a Wordpad document. You’ll need is a microphone (built into most modern laptops). To turn speech recognition on click the Start button, followed by 'All Programs', 'Accessories', 'Ease of Access', and then 'Windows Speech Recognition'. Windows will now calibrate steps. Next, open Wordpad and it’ll pick up your voice and turn it into the written word. If it doesn’t pick up a word, say 'Correct that' and try again.
Struggling to get something to work? Need a tip?
Then email us your woes (to windowsmagazine@futurenet.com with the subject line ‘Windows Insider’) and we’ll share your perfect Windows tweaks in a future issue.
When in Chrome
Tip of the month
Take control of your media keys Music and movie playback keys not working? Google's Chrome browser could be the culprit… Most keyboards and laptops now come with media keys, shortcuts that allow you to quickly pause and play songs in Spotify, fast-forward films in VLC and rewind TV shows in Windows Media Player. However, if you’ve got Google’s Chrome browser installed you may find they suddenly don’t work. This is due to the browser hijacking the keys and only making them work with Google's Play Music
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service – but it’s really easy to fix. Fire up Chrome, click the three-barred menu icon to the upper right, and then choose 'More tools' followed by 'Extensions'. At the bottom of the page click 'Keyboard shortcuts' and change the settings under Google Play Music from 'Global' to 'In Chrome'. Your media keys will now work across all Windows programs, including ones that are minimised.
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Take a shortcut It's worth checking this menu for other Chrome extensions that may have hijacked specialist keys and shortcuts
Discover It’s good to talk
Phon ing it in
Download this…
Plans for Windows Phone
Will Windows 10 give Microsoft's mobiles the boost they need to compete with the big players?
W
indows Phone devices are dwindling in the competiton – according to IDC, Google’s Android is the biggest player, with 84 per cent of mobile devices running its free operating system. Apple’s iOS is present on 11.7 per cent of devices, but Windows Phone’s market share currently sits at just 2.9 per cent. It’s crucial, then, Microsoft gets its upcoming Windows 10 software for phones right. Fortunately, it’s moving in the right direction. First of all, it’s ditching the Windows for Phone branding, in favour of 'Windows 10'. This is indicative of Microsoft’s approach to the whole operating system – it’s hoped that it’ll tie in seamlessly with the full-blown version of Windows installed on desktops and laptops. To enable this, Microsoft is taking a different approach to the way the mobile version of Windows 10 is built from the ground up. Like Windows Phone 8 it will be built on an NT kernel instead of a CE-based architecture, which means its backbone is the same as that found in Windows 10 for computers, rather than a
stripped-back version specifically designed for mobile phones. It makes sense given how powerful and computerlike mobile phones have become.
It’s not appy…
Meanwhile, Windows Runtime, the architecture that ensures Windows Apps run properly, will be available on both platforms, which means that an app for the desktop will work on smartphones and vice-versa. Being able to play a game or edit a Word Document on both your desktop and your mobile is a dream that Microsoft promised with Windows 8, but never quite delivered. These improvements are what Microsoft needs to buoy its ailing mobile operating system, but there are bigger issues. The lack of apps has been the biggest shortcoming of previous Windows Phones – successful brands, such as YouTube and Snapchat still have no official presence on the handsets, sending consumers to iOS or Android. With a more united platform Microsoft obviously hopes that these apps will leak from desktop to mobile – which could save Windows Phone in the process.
Sortie en mer sortieenmer.com If you speak French you’ll understand that 'sortie en mer' translates to 'a trip out to sea' – which is exactly what this site’s about. It depicts a yacht trip from a first-person perspective, but it goes badly wrong and the protagonist finds himself struggling to keep his head above water. It’s here that the site becomes more interactive, inviting you to scroll your mouse’s wheel up to keep the poor chap from sinking, with terrifying glimpses of the vast emptiness just below the waterline. It’s an astounding example of how the web can be used to tell a story in a convincing way, and it feel so realistic that the faint of heart should probably stay away. As well as being the most tiring website you’ll ever come across it carries a very important message (which we won't spoil for you here).
Going swimmingly After playing this we'll never want to go near the sea again...
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uiz The 60-SecondmQ e sta rts no w! 1
What is drone specialist Tekever's new airborne robot controlled by? A) Brainwaves B) Head movements C) Dogs
2
What is the name of the new Pebble smartwatch? A) Watch B) Time C) Wrist
3
What is a Mad Catz Mojo?
A) A games console B) A wearable for pets C) A new smartphone
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This year sees the 21st E3 convention. What does E3 stand for?
A) Electrical Energy Exhibition B) Eastern Email Exchange C) Electronic Entertainment Expo
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Name the spyware recently found on Lenovo laptops A) Megahippo B) Ultradog C) Superfish
6
Google paid $25 million for a top-level web domain – but what was it? A) .com B) .app C) .goo
Answers 1A. 2B. 3A. 4C. 5C. 6B.
Pe ns at th e rea d y, yo u r ti
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Henry Winchester reveals a host of fascinating digital facts
Would you use your phone to pay for things? While contactless payments using credit and debit cards have become commonplace, in the US using your mobile phone to pay for things in a similar manner has become part of the shopping experience. The problem in this country is the software and infrastructure isn’t quite ready yet. Despite that, Visa is predicting that one million transactions per month in Europe will take place with people’s mobile phones.
The distance from which Elliptic Labs’ Ultra-Far Ultra-Fast technology will allow you to use your smartphone. It’s a gesture-controlled app, so moving your hands in a certain way can trigger a selfie snap or open a web page. Unlike similar systems, which use the device’s camera to track movements, Elliptic Labs’ app outputs an ultrasound signal from the speaker and uses the microphone to pick up fluctuations.
YouTube, You rich?
Even though YouTube generated $4 bn last year, the company barely broke even, according to a source discovered by The Wall Street Journal. This is due to the costs of hosting and streaming videos, and it has to pay out to content providers too. Despite having more than a billon users), it only made up 6% of Google’s sales.
Just How many people are using Windows 10? According to web analytics service NetMarketShare. 0.08 per cent of computers are running the beta version of Microsoft’s new operating system. Windows 10 is 14th overall in NetMarketShare’s results, ahead of Windows 2000 (0.04 per cent) but behind Windows Vista (2.11 per cent). At 55.99 per cent, Windows 7 is the most popular operating system in the world – but Microsoft is hoping that will change with Windows 10’s official release later this year.
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Discover Facts & figures
How much money does YouTube make the biggest inWhat’s a year? microSD card you can buy?
Memory manufacturer Sandisk has unveiled a 200GB microSD card, which is now the world’s largest. The tiny chip will plug into Android phones and digital cameras, but it might face a setback as newer mobiles – such as Samsung’s new Galaxy S6 – are increasingly ditching the microSD slot in favour of internal memory. Its $399 (£264) price tag makes it more valuable weight-for-weight than blue sapphire.
WHEN WILL I GET MOTION DETECTION to control MY PC? There’s a lot happening in this area. Microsoft has Kinect on the Xbox, and has already shown Hololens, which melds the concepts of gesture control, virtual and augmented reality together. You put on a headset that lets you add holographic elements to your whole room! We hope to see something in the wild by next year at least.
2002: HP buys Compaq for $18.6 billion
2005: Symantec buys Veritas for $13.5 billion
2000: AOL buys Time Warner for $106 billion
Top Apple Facts Steve Jobs, along with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, founded the company in his parents’ garage in California on April 1 1976. The Apple I, its first computer, went on sale in July 1976, priced at $666.66 – the sweet spot between the cost of the unit, the retailer’s mark-up and Apple’s profit. The Macintosh – the first personal computer with a graphical interface – was launched in 1984, complete with a $1.5-million television commercial directed by Ridley Scott. The all-in-one iMac, introduced in 1998, was an instant bestseller, and it helped generate $1.53 billion in revenue per quarter for the company. On October 23 2001, Apple released its first iPod, a portable music player, complete with a mechanical scroll wheel and a 5- or 10-gigabyte hard drive. The iPhone – Apple’s debut mobile phone – was released in 2007. In the last three months of 2014 it sold a total of 74.5 million iPhones – or 34,000 per hour. Steve Jobs passed away on October 5 2011. He was posthumously named as the “greatest entrepreneur of our time” by Fortune magazine. On November 25 2014, Apple became the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalisation, valued at over $700 billion.
What are the most expensive
tech acquisitions of all time?
May 2015 |
2008: HP buys E D Systems Corp for $13.9 billion
2014: Facebook buys WhatsApp for $19 billion |
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