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Personalization

How to personalize your computers and devices, the appearance of your apps, and their behavior, as well as other aspects of their functioning. In other words, how to make your computers, devices, gadgets, and all their apps look and work the way you want to.

Introducing Windows 8.1: What are Quiet Hours & How to Configure Them?

  • tutorial
  • Radu Tyrsina
Windows 8.1 introduces a neat little feature, named Quiet Hours. As the name implies, quiet hours are an interval within the day when you don't want to be interrupted by notifications, by any Windows app, not even the Mail app. You can also set that, during those quiet hours, you won't even take calls through Skype. Here's where to find this feature in Windows 8.1 and how to configure it.

Where the Desktop & Lock Screen Wallpapers are Stored in Windows 8

  • tutorial
  • Radu Tyrsina
Where can you find the images used by Windows 8 as wallpapers for its default Desktop themes and for the Lock screen? It turns out that they are placed in the same folder and you can copy and paste the images from there with ease. Here's how: [DC-SUMMARY-BREAK] The Wallpapers Used by Windows 8 for the Desktop & the Lock Screen Windows 8 has three default themes: Windows, Earth and

Where are the Start Screen Patterns Located & How to Extract Them?

  • tutorial
  • Radu Tyrsina
I like some of the patterns used by Microsoft on Windows 8's Start screen and I thought I could be using them as Desktop wallpapers. But the problem is - where are they located? They are not stored in any of the usual locations used by Windows to store its Desktop wallpapers. It turns out that they are embedded in a special file and you need to use a special

How to Configure the Windows 8 Apps Inside Which You Perform Searches

  • tutorial
  • Radu Tyrsina
Performing searches in Windows 8 is fast and easy. One important difference versus Windows 7 is that you can perform searches inside Windows 8 apps, directly from the Start screen. You type a search term, select the app where you want to perform the search and the results are displayed inside that app. Pretty cool, isn't it? Also, you can configure the list of apps inside which you perform searches.

Introducing Windows 8.1: Transform the Start Screen into a Start Menu

  • tutorial
  • Radu Tyrsina
One of the changes made by Microsoft in Windows 8.1 is that, due to user feedback, anyone can change the Start screen with a Start Menu. It's not the old Start Menu from Windows 7, but it sure is close enough. But how do you enable it? Here's how: [DC-SUMMARY-BREAK] The Start Screen vs. The Start Menu in Windows 8.1 In Windows 8.1, just like in Windows 8, the Start

Introducing Windows 8: Customize the Look of the Start & Lock Screens

  • tutorial
  • Radu Tyrsina
Changing your Desktop wallpaper in Windows 8 is exactly the same procedure you've seen in Windows 7. While the choice to customize your Desktop is a given, Windows 8 goes farther than previous versions of Windows by giving you two more things to customize: the Lock Screen and Start screen. These settings aren't accessible by right-clicking the Desktop, which is what most new users will try first. Rather, you'll have

How to Use Special Characters in Windows with Character Map

  • tutorial
  • Radu Tyrsina
What do you do when you have to insert special characters that can't be found on your keyboard? You use the Character Map tool found both in Windows 7 and Windows 8. It allows you to insert scientific notations, mathematical operators, currency symbols and characters from languages like Japanese Hiragana , Katakana, Korean Hanji and others. In this tutorial, I will show how to find the Character Map, share a

The Complete Guide to Pinning Everything to the Windows 8 Start Screen

  • tutorial
  • Radu Tyrsina
The new Start screen is by far the most controversial feature in Windows 8. Personally, I view it as a glorified full-screen app launcher, which makes it easy to start any app you want. But, until you see things my way, you will need to learn how it works, experiment and work with it for a while. To help you become productive, I would like to show how to pin

The Geeky Way of Personalizing Windows Themes

  • tutorial
  • Radu Tyrsina
Did you know that, beyond the basic personalisation of Windows themes, there's a slightly more hidden but more powerful way to customize visual settings? With the help of the Window Color and Appearance window, you can change the background color used by certain applications, you can increase the size of the scroll bar or change the fonts used for menus. This tutorial will show how you can do all this
article Will Austin About His Trip to the Desktop of Millions

Will Austin About His Trip to the Desktop of Millions

One of the great things about Windows 7 is the fact that it has a very strong visual personality. It includes a very diverse set of wallpapers from a long list of visual artists. The funny thing is, the wallpapers which our team likes best are all created by one photographer. His name is Will Austin and we were very fortunate to have him
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