Plenty of specialized companies out there sell PCs with Linux, but Dell is one of the very few mainstream contenders to have done so over the years. After some spotty initial offerings, it's taken a different approach with its latest Linux PC. Rather than try to sell Linux hardware to the masses, which the company has said typically requires support, it's focusing instead on developers, a savvy group that tends to need less help.

That's the plan behind the $1,549 Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, an ultrabook that was born via the company's “Project Sputnik” skunkworks initiative last year combining Ubuntu Linux 12.04 Long Term Support Precise Pangolin and the company's existing XPS 13 laptop.

What started out as a pilot project turned into a real commercial product last fall, and earlier this year it got a nice upgrade. We got our hands on one recently and put this latest model through its paces.

A thing of beauty

Visually, the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition is a thing of beauty. It's thin, sleek, and lightweight, weighing in at just under 3 pounds. With a top cover precision-cut from a single block of aluminum, the silver-toned machine features a carbon-fiber composite base surrounded with a ring of matching anodized aluminum. A comfortable magnesium palm rest features soft-touch paint.

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Whether you use one monitor or three, Windows XP or Windows 8, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, you’re bound to have windows on your desktop. And you probably juggle several of them at once.

Windows operating systems come with several built-in management features, but they’re very basic and don’t always play well with multiple monitors. To control a cascade of windows effectively, you need a third-party window manager. I tested five popular ones—some of them free, and most of them inexpensive.

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The Actual Window Manager ($50, 60-day free trial) includes every imaginable desktop-management feature, and then some. Assuming, of course, that you manage to find your way through the complicated, confusing, and rather unattractive interface.

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WindowSpace grants you the ability to intricately control windows with dozens of customizable keyboard shortcuts. These range from your regular window-snapping and moving windows between monitors, to fine-tuning a window's position on the screen, resizing, rolling up, transparency toggles, and almost anything else you can dream of.

Aside from keyboard shortcuts, WindowSpace can enhance each window's title bar with additional context menu items and mouse actions. These, too, are pretty flexible, letting you decide which menu items you want to add, and even how you want them to appear in the context menu. In addition, you can set title-bar buttons such as the close, minimize and maximize to perform new actions when right-clicked or middle-clicked.

Unlike most other window managers, WindowSpace takes the focus off simple window-snapping, providing only elementary features in that arena, and instead sets its sights on giving you the best control possible over your windows. In WindowSpace, the Snapping tab is all about your windows' behavior when they're moved next to each other. Will they automatically snap to each other, or will they overlap, making it harder to place them side by side? In other words, WindowSpace makes it easy for you to arrange your windows however you want, but doesn't necessarily do it for you.

The program's lack of real interface could be confusing at first, as is the amount of settings you need to read and go through before you can even start setting things up, but if fine-tuned control is what you're looking for, WindowSpace is a solid option. It costs $25 after a 30-day free trial.

Note: The Download button will download the software to your system.

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Snapping and tiling windows isn't everything. In your daily use of Windows, you may need more advanced features if you want to really tame your desktop. You might want windows to always open on a certain monitor or in a certain size. You might want easy access to transparency or always on top toggles. You might want certain program windows to automatically snap to one side of the screen every time you open them.

Chameleon Window Manager offers all these features and quite a few more, in one of three packages: a very limited free version, a $25 Standard version, and a $30 Pro version. Surprisingly, basic features such as drag to snap are included only in the Pro version, while the other, more advanced, features are part of the Standard version as well.

Chameleon Window Manager's somewhat cluttered and confusing interface includes a multitude of options which you can set for all your windows, for specific programs, or even for specific windows within programs. For each window, you can include various title-bar buttons for actions such as basic snapping, monitor switching, transparency toggling, etc. After spending quite a while setting everything up, you can save your configuration so you don't lose it, or switch between several different ones that you've saved.

All this is great on paper, but in reality I found that Chameleon Window Manager is a very inconsistent performer. My settings worked some of the times and not in others, windows became transparent when they shouldn't have, and the title bar buttons disappeared without a trace for no apparent reason. Not a great loss, considering these buttons are not the most attractive thing I've ever seen. You can try the 30-day free trial and see how you fare, but considering other options, Chameleon is not the best value for money out there.

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If your desktop deteriorates into a morass of windows, look to Mosaico to help you tile them neatly.  You can use this $10 window manager (14-day free trial) to create different desktop snapshots for various situations.

Once you're happy with the way your windows are laid out, click the snapshot button to save the arrangement. You can save up to eight different desktop snapshots, and restore them easily from the program's snapshot browser.

When restoring a snapshot, Mosiaco will open relevant programs if closed, and will minimize others that are not part of the snapshot. It cannot, however, go as far as opening specific documents.

Snapshots aside, Mosaico also comes with an enhanced window-snapping feature which can be accessed by clicking the arrows on the program's interface, or by dragging windows around. The latter can be achieved by enabling the "Arrange manually" option in the toolbar, or by pressing the "M" key. Mosaico supports multiple monitors well, and features a built-in button for moving windows between monitors.

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There are any number of products promising to restore the start menu to Windows 8, but there are not so many to help you customize the tiles that have replaced it. You can give the animations on the Windows 8 grid menu a bit more zip with Start Screen Animations Tweaker. This nice little free portable piece of software allows you to dictate the speed of the animations and the background wallpaper to have it exactly the way you want it.

It may seem like a small insignificant thing to accomplish, but if you are looking the grid and using it all day long, making it go faster will matter. It makes the screen load faster, which enables you to open programs faster. It may only amount to a gain of a few seconds, but add those seconds up over the course of a day or a week, and you will start to see why using this app may prove beneficial. And it's also quite entertaining, pressing the WIN key and watching the tiles fly across the screen.

It's less entertaining when File Explorer crashes after repeated WIN key presses. The developer claims this is not a bug of the software, but a bug from Windows 8.

Since this is a portable app, no installation is required. Just unzip the contents of the downloaded zip file into its own folder. It is worth pointing out that the download link on the website is a bit camouflaged. The gray "download" button sits next to a green "download" button.  The gray one is the one to click.  The green one is a Google Adsense advert. Whether this is an honest error from the developer or an underhanded way to make some Adsense money is unclear. But nevertheless you should be careful and click the correct button: gray, not green.

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Windows 8 is transforming into the desktop OS users thought it would be when they first heard about it, but it's not Microsoft doing the work: It's Stardock. The company's Start8 start menu replacement is best-of-breed, and they've hit the nail on the head again with ModernMix, a $5 program (with 30-day free trial) that lets you open Windows 8 modern UI apps as windows on the classic desktop.

ModernMix is super-easy to use. Head to the Modern UI, open a modern UI app, press the F10 key, and the app moves to a window on the classic desktop. You can also choose to make this the standard behavior for programs launched from the Modern UI so you don't even have the press the key.

Right-click the icon in the upper left-hand corner, and along with the usual move, size, close, etc. options you'll find the option to create a shortcut to the app on the classic desktop. When you subsequently launch the program using this icon, it behaves as a classic windowed application. When you access the same app from within the modern UI, it behaves as it normally would. Best of both worlds.

However, you can change this behavior as well, having the icons launch the program full-screen. There's also an overlay menu in the top right corner of windowed Modern UI apps that lets you full-screen or window the application.

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When I upgraded to Windows 8 64-bit a few months back, a strange thing happened. The thumbnails for all of my PDF files disappeared. Normally, when I view an Explorer folder, I have the PDF files on "view large icons" (as it then gives me a preview of what the first page of the file looks like).  But Windows 8 wiped all of that. I couldn't even get the standard Adobe PDF logo. So I did my usual and went Googling for answers and ended up with a free program called 64-bit Adobe Preview Handler.

This small app (which weighs in at a measly 1MB) makes a small Windows registry fix that brings your PDF thumbnails back. The issue of disappearing thumbnails doesn't seem to be confined to just Windows 8 though. Anyone with either Vista or Windows 7 64-bit may also experience this problem, and 64-bit Adobe Preview Handler is here to save the day.

Simply do the usual download and install and when you start it up, you will see a small window. There is pretty much nothing to configure–no options or anything. Click "apply fix" and then restart Windows Explorer.  If it still doesn't work, you may also have to clear your thumbnail cache, but don't worry, this is very easy to do. Simply run Disk Cleanup, select the C drive, put a tick in the Thumbnails checkbox, and then click OK. The system will do the rest.

Check back again on Windows Explorer, and you should see your PDF thumbnails appear again.

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Web apps are great when you're on your PC, but they require a browser. Mobile apps, on the other hand, require nothing but a smartphone, but are not very convenient to use while working on your computer. So why choose? A new platform called Cubiez (currently in public beta) offers the best of both worlds: Light and responsive apps that feel almost like mobile ones, don't require a browse, and run on your computer. Very similar to the better-known Pokki, Cubiez is an online marketplace for apps through which you install and then run a variety of apps.

Cubiez is fairly new in its field, and therefore doesn't offer many apps yet. While its biggest rival Pokki includes hundreds of different apps, Cubiez has only a few dozen at the moment. There's no way to view Cubiez apps online, but you can check them all out by installing Cubiez and clicking on its taskbar icon. You can look at all available apps, only new apps, or apps you have installed. There is no way to view apps by category, but since not many apps are available, this doesn't make much of a difference.

Cubiez sits on the leftmost side of your taskbar—right next to the Start button (if you still have one)—and each app you install adds an icon on the taskbar as well. This is nice at first, but when you've installed seven apps, it starts to get crowded, and there's no way to put Cubiez to sleep or collapse all the icons into one. Installing apps is a breeze: After choosing an app from the marketplace and clicking the install button, you can't even count to five before the app is installed and available for use. Cubiez and its apps are all highly responsive, and there were no unexplained lags, sluggishness or unresponsiveness in any that I've tried.

Of all the apps Cubiez offers, about half are games. Among these, you'll find some big names such as Kingdom Rush, Little Alchemy, and Plants vs. Zombies, some classics such as Pacman, and some super-addictive ones such as Unicorn Robot Attack. Aside from games, you'll find useful apps such as Calculator, Facebook, Google Maps, Google Search, NewsHub (an RSS reader), and Weather. If you're looking for a specific app, you can use the search box to find it quickly, but note that search strings are case sensitive, so searching for "facebook" will yield no results. The apps all run in a small window that can be moved around the screen, but cannot be resized.

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I have no icons on my desktop. I have two wide-screen monitors totaling almost 4,000 horizontal pixels, and not a single icon— because one icon often begets many, ending up with a messy, disorganized desktop and crowding my beautiful wallpapers. But $10 utility Fences 2 has me rethinking my anti-icon stance.

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Windows 8 is doing quite a job of alienating longtime Windows users. No more Start button, but a whole Start screen full of distracting live tiles; a double interface (Desktop and "Modern"); low information density on Modern apps; and the list goes on. For many companies, this isn't a disaster but a golden opportunity: The market is full of applications rushing to fix Windows 8, from Stardock's Start8 and Decor8, through open-source Classic Shell, through $5 utility RetroUI. Although RetroUI 3.1.1 does offer an interesting feature for running Modern apps in a window, awkward implementation keeps it from being the cure-all it could be. In fact, the current version brings its own headaches.

Much like Windows 8, RetroUI is bisected into two distinct parts that bear almost no relation to each other: a Start menu replacement, and an innovative feature called Enforce. The Start menu replacement is hardly unique, but Enforce does something I've never seen before: It lets you run Modern apps in a window. If you've used Windows 8 for any length of time, you probably realize how exciting that is.

Enforce couldn't be simpler to use. It actually works like Windows 8 should have worked in the first place, if you ask me. With RetroUI installed, Modern apps just start in a maximized window. You can then resize that window, drag it around, and generally work with it like you would with any other windows.

There are a few caveats and oddities remaining: It won't show up on your taskbar, and you won't be able to have two Modern apps on-screen at the same time. You can have two Modern apps open at the same time and switch between them using Alt+Tab, but you won't see them both on the screen simultaneously. That's sometimes frustrating, because even the default full-screen Modern interface lets you have two applications on-screen concurrently (a primary app taking up most of the space, and a secondary one taking up a vertical on the side). And Modern apps don't show up on the taskbar, even when they're running in a window.

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Windows 8 comes with an entirely new interface called Modern (formerly known as Metro), featuring generous swaths of color, flat icons, and large typography. You'll first meet Modern in the lock screen, immediately followed by the Start screen. You'll be visiting both quite often: The lock screen whenever you start using your computer, and the Start screen whenever you want to launch an application. As such, you might want to customize them a bit to suit your personal style. Microsoft offers a few preset backgrounds you can choose from, but for no-holds-barred personalization, you should try $5 utility Decor8.

Decor8 comes from Stardock, and just like the company's other customization products, it ties into Windows very tightly. While Decor8 isn't a Modern app, it looks like one: It can only run in fullscreen mode, and there's no way to resize the window. A sidebar lines the left side of the window, with a simple menu done in large type: Background, Colors, Options, Lock screen, and About.

The Background section lets you set what appears behind the tiles in your Start screen. The first few backgrounds in the list are simple vector affairs, quite similar to the limited selection that ships with Windows 8. But then the list goes on to feature bold nature and macro photos that stand in stark contrast to the flat Modern aesthetic and lend the Start screen a dramatic flair far beyond the default.

If none of the included options appeal to you, you can specify your own Start screen background using any image on your computer. You can select several images and have them rotate throughout the day at an interval you set, or set the Start screen background to be the same as your desktop wallpaper. You can also fade the image, blur it, and adjust its tint and contrast.

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Third-party replacement of the missing Windows 8 Start menu (I'm sorry, the Modern/Metro UI is not a start menu) has become quite the booming cottage industry. Stardock's Start8, a $5 alternative, has been the most seamless replacement for several months, but it's now going to have to share the larger part of that honor with Iobit's Start Menu 8, which is free.

Start Menu 8 installs easily, mimics the Windows 7 Start menu to a tee—including the search field—and is just as configurable as that which it seeks to duplicate. You can show or hide the items such as administrative tools, control panel, documents, network, photos, etc., as well as disable the hot corners and the Windows 8 sidebar. You can also change the appearance of the start button to match Windows 8, XP, Windows 7, etc., though the menu itself retains the look of Windows 8. Here it loses out to Start8 which can morph its entire appearance and even simulate the Modern UI (formerly known as Metro) interface.

The Start Menu 8 installation routine will ask you if you want to install Iobit's Advanced SystemCare 6 software (the default is yes), but there's no advertising aside from that.

I found one minor bug. Start Menu 8 didn't interact with the taskbar properly when the latter was set to Auto-hide. Unlike Start8 and the normal Windows Start menu, which keep the taskbar displayed when it's open, Start Menu 8 would let it disappear, leaving itself hanging in mid-air, so to speak. This is a mere cosmetic issue which should be fixed soon.

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We’ve seen many versions of Windows, but one of the things that has barely changed is the Windows Explorer. We still have the same single folder view, and we still have minimal functionality. Multi Commander tries to replace this and add to it by offering features that Microsoft seems either unwilling or unable to give us by default.

There are two versions offered, a regular installable version and a portable version that requires no installation (although it is worth noting that the installable version can make a portable version for you, if you decide you want that later). Whichever one you choose, open it up and you will immediately see the difference between Multi Commander and your standard vanilla Explorer.

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There are things in Windows the vast majority of us never touch. Look at your system, and then look at your friends' PCs. Do you all have the same Start Menu button? The same items in the desktop context menu? Do you all have the same logon screen and taskbar thumbnail size? I'm betting the answer to all of these questions is "yes." The reason for this uniformity is not lack of personal preferences, but the way Windows is built, certain things are not meant to be changed, so most of us don't change them. But would you want to personalize your system in this were it an easy task?  Meet a small utility called Sunrise Seven.

Before diving in, there are a few important things to know about this program: Sunrise Seven is Polish, and while it's mostly translated into acceptable English, Polish terms pop up here and there. In addition, Sunrise Seven has not seen a new version in quite some time, and might not see one ever again. Despite these facts, the program is surprisingly effective, and not as hard to use as you might expect.

Sunrise Seven is divided into nine different sections, each dealing with slightly different aspects of your system. Before doing anything, I recommend that you use the provided option to create a system restore point from within the program. You can find the button at the bottom of the program's main screen, and by doing this you're protecting yourself from anything bad that can happen while playing with important settings. Note that some of the changes made by Sunrise Seven require explrer.exe to reload, and that some are only activated after you log off and log back on again.

In the Quick Adjustment tab, you'll find several of the most popular tweaks. From here, you can add items such as "Copy to Folder," "Move to Folder," "Encrypt," "Decrypt," "Search," and more to your context menu. You can disable system notifications, remove the word "Shortcut" and arrow icon from new shortcuts, disable the UAC prompt, and make some changes to your taskbar appearance. In the Performance tab, you can control the reaction time for menus, taskbar thumbnail appearance, and other actions. You can also turn off certain services, or recover the original state of your services, if something goes wrong.

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Windows 8 doesn't have a Start button. If you don't think that's something that needs fixing, you're probably in the minority, at least for now. Maybe in time, Windows 8's Modern-style Start Screen will grow on users and it'll turn out Microsoft was right all along. Until that happens, there's a flourishing niche of aftermarket utilities that bring the Start button (and menu) back to Windows 8, from excellent ones like Stardock's Start8, to ones that add value like Pokki. But you don't need to pay to get a Start button: There's one tool that's free, open-source, and very customizable. Meet Classic Shell.

Unlike most Start menu replacements, Classic Shell has been around for a while. Its first version came out in November 2009, long before Windows 8 was even close to public. At the time, it was meant to fix interface annoyances in Windows Vista. That was version 0.9 (the first publicly available version), and today, more than three years later, it's at version 3.6.4. As software projects are wont to do, Classic Shell grew over time, and now consists of three separate parts: Classic Explorer, Classic Start Menu, and Classic IE9.

That tendency of software projects to grow and morph over time is exactly what Classic Shell sets out to fix. It doesn't try to invent anything new: In the project's own words, Classic Shell is "a collection of features that were available in older versions of Windows but were later removed." You're not going to find any groundbreaking UI innovations here, and in my eyes, that's a good thing. These are interface patterns that worked and that Microsoft took away for reasons unknown.

Classic Shell's most newsworthy component is Classic Start Menu, and it's stellar. Hit the Windows key on your keyboard, and up pops a Start menu, just like you remember it from Windows 7 (or Windows Vista, or Windows XP–you can choose your own skin). Start typing to search for programs, hit Enter to launch. Search is blazing fast. You can pin items to the Start menu, and customize every aspect of it. Never use the Printers item? No problem, you can easily make it go away. In other words, Classic Start Menu is just like the Start Menu you know and love, only more customizable.

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You know what's frustrating? When something that's supposed to be really simple turns out to be complicated to the point of impossibility. For example, remotely shutting down a Windows computer: This is not rocket science. In fact, it's something built into Windows, and Microsoft even provides an extra tool for free, to make it easier. Yet try as I might, I couldn't get either of these tools to work. I spent hours perusing forums and tweaking firewall settings, user accounts, group policies, and anything else I could think of–and I still couldn't shut down my computer remotely. That is, until I installed $9 utility Switch.

Switch v1.1 was a breath of fresh air. Finally, something simple that just does what it's supposed to do. With Switch installed, I could shut down my file server using any computer on my LAN, without installing any client software. All I needed was a regular Web browser, which I'd just point at the file server's IP address. Switch shows up as a pretty webpage with a Shut Down button. Click the button, and the computer running Switch goes bye-bye. It's that simple.

Of course, that's not everything Switch does: That Shut Down button has a drop-down component that can be used to reboot the computer or make it go to sleep. It can also do all three operations (shut down, reboot, and sleep) after a ten-minute delay–not something I'd personally use, but the option is there.

You can also use Switch to automate shutdowns. The simplest example is shutting down the computer at a set time: It took me less than a minute to set up a rule that shuts down my file server every day at 5am. You can have more sophisticated rules–Switch can monitor the list of running processes and take action as soon as a certain process (application) starts up or terminates. It can also listen for a tweet from your account (or any account you choose) containing specific text, which means you can shut down your computer remotely from anywhere without setting up any special Firewall rules or using a custom client.

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The death of the Start menu is way up there on my personal list of modern tech tragedies and epic Microsoft blunders. It's almost as egregious as Microsoft Bob, but not as funny. Fortunately, there's no lack of ways to bring it back, from traditional-looking applications such as Classic Shell to bolder reimaginings such as Pokki, a free start menu and app store that shows what Windows 8 might have been.

First and foremost, it's a Start menu. Click the button or tap the Windows key on your keyboard, Pokki displays a list of applications that doesn't take over your entire screen. Start typing, and potential applications instantly pop up, alongside custom Pokki apps and real-time results from the Web (something the traditional Start menu doesn't offer). The default theme is light, and the whole thing feels nice and airy.

Pokki's search is useful, but it isn't perfect: Apps from the Pokki store are highlighted (even if you've decided you don't want to install them), and there is no way to mix documents from your local hard drive into the search results. Web results are quick to appear, but they tend to be too general. There is no way to search a specific website, such as YouTube.

Now, about those apps: These used to be the core of the Pokki experience, back when Windows still had a Start button. Now, they're there mainly to offer added value. It feels like Pokki does want you to know about them and install them, but it isn't overly pushy about it (except for prominently featuring them in search results). Being subtle about a new breed of apps is exactly the sort of thing that could have won Windows 8 some points, and Pokki gets it right.

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It's been just a few weeks since the launch of Linux Mint 14 “Nadia,” but already the project behind the popular distribution has been making plans for its next release.

In fact, last week project lead Clement Lefebvre laid out a roadmap for Linux Mint 15, whose nickname is still to be decided.

Linux Mint has remained at the top of DistroWatch's page hit rankings for the past year or so, making its next version a topic of widespread interest.

Ready for a rundown? Here are three features we can expect to see in Linux Mint 15.

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The Chinese zodiac is thousands of years old, so what better decoration for your glossy, state-of the-art PC? The twelve zodiac animals make a stately parade across your Windows 7 desktop with the Chinese Zodiac Windows 7 Theme. PCWorld editor Kim Saccio-Kent selected these wallpapers from the many available at deviantART, an online community showcasing user-created art and photography.

Other deviantART images include the Chinese zodiac ox by KatVonB, the rabbit by Vajk, the Chinese dragon by orgastic, the horse by immanuel, the sheep by inoxorum, the monkey by SubterfugeMalaises, the rooster by Iceandsnow, and the dog by branka42.

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Out-of-date drivers can cause plenty of problems with your PC, but few of us want to devote much time to keeping our drivers fresh. That's what makes an automated solution like the $30 Driver Reviver (free demo) especially useful.

Install Driver Reviver v3.1.6 and it will begin to scan your PC for outdated drivers automatically. It does so every time you boot up your PC, too, unless you tell it otherwise.

You can change these settings easily if the frequent scans are too much for you. The scans are quick, though, and the results easy to read at a glance. Driver Reviver displays a list of outdated drivers, with an icon that rates the age of your drivers from "Old" to "Very Old" to "Ancient."

Driver Reviver identified only one outdated driver on my Windows 7 PC. Free rival SlimDrivers identified six outdated drivers and $30 rival PerfectUpdater found 10. But you can't judge these products simply on the number of outdated drivers they find.

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Relaxed and easygoing, designer Ray Larabie's Shifty Chica font from is perfect for invitations, posters, and other display uses. Regardless of the nefarious-sounding name, this TrueType font's deep descenders with extra curly serifs make me want to dig out my 1950's one-piece and stir up some Cherry Cola Salad. It sets the right mood for a Hawaiian-themed party invitation.

Although the letters' bulk can sometimes make them bunch up a little, Larabie shows his skill as a typographer with generally excellent spacing, so good in fact that you could use this font as small as 12 point without making it impossible to read. That said, perfectionists may want to tweak the kerning of certain letter combinations.

Shifty Chica is free for personal use; the designer suggests a donation of $40 for commercial use.

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The first version of Google's Chrome OS wasn't much more than a Chrome browser window with a few apps. It felt more like a statement -- "Who needs local storage?" -- than an operating system you could rely on.

A year and a half later, the latest version of the Chrome OS adds some of the features of a more traditional OS: a file manager (hooray!), a desktop and the ability to use storage connected through a USB port. Google's Cloud Print system even makes it fairly easy to print.

The only thing that's missing is the ability to keep writing, working on a spreadsheet or reading email when you're offline. We used to have that capability through Google Gears, but since Google shut down that project last winter, services like GMail and Google Drive work only when you have a connection. (Google Senior Vice President of Chrome & Apps Sundar Pichai reportedly told the audience at All Things D this week that Google Drive offline is coming in five weeks.)

The advantages of the Chrome OS remain the same. The new Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook I tested shuts down in less than 5 seconds and starts up again in less than 10. When you log in, there's no waiting for programs to load. You go right back to the last browser window you were working in, with all the same tabs you had open before you shut down. Jumping from window to window (that's right -- now you can have more than one) is instantaneous. And while all new machines are fast, it's hard to imagine what would slow down a Chromebook over time -- there's no registry to get junked up and no local software to leave debris on your hard drive. Battery life is great, too. I was able to work a full day on a single charge.

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If you administer cloud servers or services, such as those from Amazon Web Services or Rackspace, you might be relieved to learn that you don't need access to a notebook or desktop PC to perform routine administrative tasks.

Install one of these five apps--AWS Console, Android AWS Manager, Decaf Amazon EC2 Client, Rackspace, or ConnectBot--on your Android phone or tablet, and you can manage your cloud infrastructure from anyplace where you can access the Internet.

The first three apps are compatible with AWS, the fourth can be used with Rackspace, and the fifth is a Secure Shell client that's compatible with any cloud host.

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But that's where the similarities end.

At its heart, Mac OS X is still an operating system designed for desktops and laptops. Sure, Apple brought over a number of features from the iPad, but OS X is still based on windows, menus, folders, and the like. With Windows 8, Microsoft has bigger aspirations: Windows 8 will run on your desktop and your laptop as well as on your tablet, and it's unlike anything that has come before it.

Let's take a closer look at each one, and try to get a better feel of the direction each OS is headed.

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Designed for novices and businesses without access to on-site tech support, a new and growing breed of tech support services are ready to lend a hand. Using remote-control software, these services can troubleshoot your PC while you kick back and finish your latte--provided your Internet connection isn't the problem. And the best part is that you no longer have to cart your computer into a shop or even walk through a fix on the phone.

We put four remote-control tech support services to the test, peppering them with three problems that we (intentionally) created on a test PC, a Samsung Series 7 Chronos laptop running Windows 7. We tested during different times of the day, but always during business hours, one problem per call. To make things tougher, we disabled System Restore, eliminating the option of an easy fix for some of these problems. (Techs are often quick to jump to this fix--after blaming viruses--as a cure-all.)

The Tests

We designed three tests to mimic common complaints that we've heard over the years.

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It can be hard to justify paying for software that handles a task that can, otherwise, be done for free--even when the software makes the process easier. That's why I was intrigued by DriverMax, one of the few free applications that helps you identify and update aging drivers. It works as advertised, but pales in comparison to its free rival SlimDrivers.

But once you move beyond the price, DriverMax lags behind SlimDrivers. Where that product features a slick interface and an almost-seamless update process, DriverMax stumbles. Its interface is usable, certainly, but not as clean as it could be. I also dislike how its scan results include both outdated and updated drivers, and differentiates between the two with only a small icon. I continually found myself attempting to update drivers that were actually current, only to be told that no more current drivers were available.

And when I did update an outdate driver, the process was a bit convoluted. DriverMax informs you that, as a free user, you will be directed to a page on the DriverMax Web site, where you can choose between the recommended driver or another one. Only PRO users ($29 per year) can download drivers from within the application. Being bumped to a Website to download the drivers is annoying, but it's less so than the message I saw every time I landed there: "You are a free user and the DriverMax servers are currently overloaded. Since you are not a PRO user, you have to wait." The wait was usually no longer than 20 seconds, but it felt unnecessary. Add in the fact that DriverMax's free version only allows you to download two driver updates per day, and you'll realize that this application quickly makes the updating process a very time consuming project.

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Let's face it: Keeping your PC's drivers up-to-date can be a pain. Several apps, such as PerfectUpdater and DriverScanner, will make this task easier, but they cost $30 each. What if you don't want to shell out any money, and you still want to make driver updating an easy process? The free SlimDrivers can help. This utility isn't quite as seamless as its higher-priced rivals, but it's the best free solution I've tested for identifying and updating outdated drivers.

Where SlimDrivers really sets itself apart from the competition is in its ability to update drivers easily: This is something that none of its true rivals offer in their free versions. (The free Device Doctor does include updates, but the process is incredibly clunky.) SlimDrivers says its updates are manual, but they're not a lot of work: to update an outdated driver, you simply click the "Download Update" link that the software provides. SlimDrivers does all the work, and even automatically creates a system restore point for you.

SlimDrivers is not perfect. It only allows you to update one driver at a time, where its paid rivals let you run several updates at once. SlimWare does offer a paid product, the $30 DriverUpdate, which offers this feature--and much more. In addition to its driver updating capabilities, DriverUpdate also delivers OS and software updates, too.

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Beware the font that thinks too much of itself. Case in point: Dactylographe, a shareware TrueType font that has been on offer on PCWorld.com since 1997 with the bold claim that it is the champion to replace Courier as a text face.

There are a number of problems with Bujardet's claim, but the most glaring one is that a variable width face like Bodoni and a monospace set like Courier serve two very different masters. To throw them at each other in a face-off does both fonts a disservice, although it is always tempting to carry on against a style that has been around so long that it threatens to trip over its own descenders.

Unfortunately for Dactylographe, Courier has grown up rather nicely since the days of electric typewriters with cast letterforms. IBM commissioned Howard Kettler to create the first rendition of Courier in 1955. Remastered by Adrian Frutiger for the IBM Selectric series of typewriters--and still later tweaked by Monotype and Microsoft during the leap to desktop publishing--Courier has been a stable in electronic font libraries ever since. Used and misused, Courier remains a steady choice for typing programming code behind the scenes where legibility is key, or for any other task calling for a monospace font.

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