For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
My new slogan for Windows 8: "It's not all bad!" ($50K and it's yours, Microsoft.)
Misguided though the Metro interface may be, there are some nice under-the-hood improvements to be found in the OS. For example, there's the File History feature I wrote about a couple months ago.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
For the past week or so, I've been trying to pinpoint a problem with my Internet connection.
Usually I blame Comcast, my ISP, but a typical Comcast outage is exactly that: a total interruption of service. I can tell from looking at the System Tray network icon that there's no connection.
This time, however, the problem was intermittent. Sometimes my connection would slow to a crawl, other times it would disappear altogether for a few minutes. But the network icon didn't indicate a loss of service.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
Over the past few weeks I've had the opportunity to test-drive a couple Windows 8 laptops, and even though I've used the OS intermittently for months now, I still find it jarring every time the Metro interface (a.k.a. Start screen) appears.
Indeed, for anyone brand new to Windows 8, anyone who's already familiar with an earlier version of Windows, that tile-based interface can be startling, confusing, and ultimately very frustrating.
Can you learn it? Sure. Should you have to? No. With a few simple steps, you can make your new Windows 8 PC much more familiar, both in look and operation.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
StarRSS
After the events of the last few days, I thought everybody could use a smile. And this definitely brought one to my face.
Many users still rely on RSS feeds to see the latest posts on their favorite sites. Of course, now that Google is pulling the plug on Reader, the door is wide open for interesting alternatives.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
The Internet? Kind of a cesspool. And as the parent of kids who are now old enough to operate a Web browser, you can bet I'm keen on checking their activities and filtering out the inappropriate content.
Thankfully, Windows 8 offers some solid tools for doing just that. (Windows 7 does, too, but Microsoft made them easier and more robust in the new version of the OS.)
For example, you can limit your child's Web browsing to age-appropriate sites and block or allow specific sites as needed. You can impose time limits, perhaps locking out the PC during hours when you're at work and not able to supervise. And you can control what games and apps can be played and purchased.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
Now that I'm running Windows 8 for at least part of my workday (much to my chagrin), I'm doing my best to make it hospitable. And for me, the first step is installing Google Chrome, my preferred Web browser.
So I dropped into Desktop, fired up Internet Explorer, downloaded and installed Chrome, and set it as my default browser.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
Firefox 20 adds a handy new Download button.
If you're a Firefox user, you may have noticed a few changes in the latest version of Mozilla's browser, which "turned 20" last week.
Among them: a new Download Manager. It's a small tweak, and I'd say one for the better, but as I noted in Monday's post about Google Chrome's bookmark spacing, not everybody appreciates sudden and unrequested changes.
