School is right around the corner, and you’ll need a solid laptop to get you through those long study hours. Well, that and a lot of coffee. Whether you’re a first-time buyer or you’re ready to cut your old boat anchor loose, I’m here to help you separate your nice-to-have wants from your essential needs, so you can get the most bang for your back-to-school buck.
Microsoft may have bungled a few things with Windows 8 (snark reply: "Just a few?!"), but File Explorer isn't one of them.
For one thing, the file manager finally earned a home on the Taskbar (even if you have to switch to the desktop to find it). Even better, Microsoft endowed it with the now-familiar Ribbon interface, making for much easier navigation of your files (and Explorer itself). However, I think it could be even better with a little tweaking. Here are three simple changes you can make to improve the File Explorer experience: Two is definitely better than one when it comes to monitors. A single display may suffice for basic computing, but multiple monitors make a big difference for heavily graphical work, intensive multitasking—and of course, serious gaming. LCD prices continue to drop, too, making multimonitor setups more affordable.
But before you go on a monitor-buying spree, make sure your computer can support more than one display. This usually isn’t a problem with recent desktops, but it can be with laptops. After confirming that your system is multimonitor-ready, check out these tips for setting up those displays to maximize your productivity. Windows uses a file's extension--the part of the file name after the period--to identify what program should open it. When you double-click, say, a .docx file, Windows checks to see what application is associated with that extension (probably a word processor) and opens the file in that program.
You can change these associations yourself, and you can associate multiple programs with a single extension. In fact, there's a good chance Windows has already done that for you. The speed at which my PC operates is important to me. Put simply I’m impatient, and waiting 30 seconds for a program to load is simply not an option. But we’ve all experienced this issue, then we take a look at our desktop and see what the problem is. Hundreds of programs, used only one then never opened again, left to rot taking up disk space and slowing down PC performance. It’s time for a re-install... or is it?
Windows 8 may have the greatest learning curve of any Microsoft operating system. Fortunately, it generally offers at least two ways to do a particular chore. I'll give you search techniques for both the Modern Interface (also known as Metro, although I prefer calling it the flat, ugly interface--FUI) and the Desktop (AKA, Windows 7 without the Start button).
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