Windows 7 Help & Advice 2013-12

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Welcome
Welcome to the latest issue of Windows 7 Help & Advice, the only
computer magazine that will inspire you to do more with your PC.
How long have you been using Windows? Six months? Two years?
More than a few? Well, whatever the answer, you probably know
a thing or two about what makes your machine tick. The more you
know about how it works, the better equipped you will be to do
things when the time arises, such as fixing specific problems or
carrying out regular maintenance.
You might not know everything, though, which is where we can
help. This month, weve collated an impressive 100 different ways to
get more from your PC from discovering how to make working
with applications more productive, to scheduling regular tasks, and
even how to make big screens easier to read. Youll fall in love with
Windows once again!
Adam Ifans Editor-in-Chief
www.facebook.com/windowsmag
THE ONLY COMPUTER MAG TO HELP

YOU GET MORE FROM WINDOWS
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 its 7, 8, Vista
or even XP. Windows 7 Help & Advice also comes with
a disc, on which you can find all the great apps covered
in the magazine, saving you having to find them online.
If you get a chance, take a look at how you can even
read the magazine on your laptop, phone or tablet.
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
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FEATURES
14 100 ways to love Windows
We reveal the tips, secrets and hints to

improve your Windows experience
54 Refresh Windows XP part 2

Improve your PCs performance and get
help from a friend with Remote Desktop
58 Lightweight networking tools

Ten of the best free programs for solving
issues with your home network
REGULARS
6 Discover Take your education

further with free online courses
29 Next month Gaze into the

future Whats happening at Christmas?
32 Subscriptions Save up to 30
per cent when you subscribe today
EXPLORE The best PC tutorials
42 Competition Enter by text to win
<L$G,IQV\
10,000 worth of amazing gadgets!
Each month we include as wide a range of tutorials

as possible, to help you use your computer more
efciently and inspire you to try new things.
61 Overseas reader? Get your

mag for less with a subscription
SUPPORT
26 Master Windows 8s
Reliability Monitor
40 Convert video
formats with VLC
On your
free disc
30 Call friends using

Viber for Windows
44 Create your own

custom shortcuts
On your
free disc
34 Get quick notifications

on your PC with Growl
48 Control your PC
with Twitter
On your
free disc
38 Watch classic movies

for free with BitTorrent
50 Discover the best

Gmail power tips
62 Four pages of help,

including technical queries
and Windows Watchdog
4
Help & Advice | December 2013
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ON THE COVER
UPGRADE
100 WAYS TO
IMPROVE
WINDOWS
70 Loads of reviews
and recommendations
68 Panasonic DMR-BWT720
68 WD TV Live
14 Fall in love
with Windows
all over again
69 Pure Avalon 300R Connect

69 Humax HDR-S100s
70 Acer Aspire P3
74 Samsung Series 7 Ultra
WINDOWS XP SECRETS
ON THE COVER
78 HP Envy TouchSmart 23
82 Dell Alienware 14
84 Hotlist Our roundup of the best
54 Bring
that classic
OS to life
with the
second part
of our XP
superguide
laptops, tablets, phones and more
90 Play this Four great new games

put through their paces, just for you
ON THE COVER
10 free tools to
boost your
home network
58 Diagnose any
network problem
with these free and
lightweight apps
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December 2013 |
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NEW THINGS TO DO
AMAZING WEBSITES
FASCINATING FACTS
WEB LESSONS Theres never been

a better time to pick up a new skill
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Discover
Take an online course
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TAKE YOUR EDUCATION

FURTHER ON THE WEB
The Knowledge...
With more than 20 UK universities offering free courses online, we

take a look at how to find the best adult education on the internet
hen we were at university we

spent most of the time
nursing a hangover in a stuffy
lecture theatre. Today higher
education has moved on most courses
are available online for students, complete
with class notes. Whats more is that you
dont even need to enrol on a course or
endure Freshers Week to join a course or
two with a leading UK university.
A new site, www.futurelearn.com, offers
completely free short courses in areas such
as maths, philosophy and science from
more than 20 universities, including
Reading, Warwick and Bath. As its still in
an experimental phase, and the courses
themselves arent of a
degree level theyre
also assessed via
multiple-choice
questions rather than
endless essays. If the
project is a success, university-level
courses might also be added.
Dubbed massive open online courses or
MOOCs, the benets of the courses are
two-fold: people who take them get to add
them to their CVs, and they serve as taster
courses to tempt adults back to education.
Even if youre not looking to further your
career or pursue education, they can still
be an interesting and informative way to
spend your spare time.
Distance learning is nothing new, and

the Open University which runs
FutureLearn has been educating people
via post and the internet for over 40 years.
Its site www.open.ac.uk has details on
all its courses, which range from
standalone modules to full-blown PhD
research degrees. As the Open University
is a university like any other, you will have
to pay for these courses, but its been
created with accessibility in mind.
One of the benets of the Future Learn
project is that its truly open to all, as
anyone in the world with an internet
connection can access the courses. It
works the other way, too MOOCs began
in America, and sites
such as www.
coursera.org let you
take part in them
from the other side of
the Atlantic.
Stanford, Princeton and California
universities all offer free mini courses on
the site, and its global repertoire includes
institutions based in Barcelona, Peking
and Tel Aviv.
As more universities offer more free
ways to learn online, the adage of not
being able to teach an old dog new tricks
has become less relevant, and were sure
everyone will nd a subject that interests
them in an online course.
MOOCs are a great way to

add to your CV and tempt
adults back into education
HERES WHERE TO START Find your inner forte

While the idea of doing an online course
or degree is enticing, it can be hard to
know what to study. Youll potentially
spend a lot of time getting to know the
intricacies of a subject, so its important to
know whether youll enjoy it. There are
also courses that overlap and sometimes it
can be hard to know which to go for.
Fortunately, UKCourseFinder is at
hand. It consists of a simple questionnaire
that offers you a guide to any relevant
courses once you nish and submit it.
LATE REGISTRATION Visit www.ukcoursender.

com, enter your email address and click Register
PASS GRADE Youll be given a password, then

click Continue to the questionnaire to proceed
REVISIT THE PAST Next, click Take Questionnaire

and begin answering the questions that follow
iOS 7
I have no idea what that is
Good, because that allows us to
use this answer as an introductory
paragraph. The i refers to iPhone
and the OS stands for operating
system. The number 7 is indicative
of this being the seventh, and
latest, version of the Apple mobile
operating system.
Okay, so what does it do?
Basically, it makes the iPhone
work, so you can make calls, play
games, surf the web and take
pictures. Apples CEO Tim Cook
described the latest revision of the
operating system as the biggest
change to iOS since the
introduction of the iPhone.
Whats changed then?
This latest revision rejects previous
uses of skeuomorphism and
pseudo-3D eects in favour of a
atter, more translucent
experience. It also adds new
features such as AirDrop so you
can share content with people in
the vicinity, and iTunes Radio, a
free station based on your
listening preferences.
Is it any good?
Dont worry about that. iOS 7s
release has been met with
frustration from users and
journalists, who found it dicult
to download, and found it
signicantly impaired battery life
once it was installed. However,
many have praised Apples
dramatic overhaul of its OS.
How can I get it?
Youll need an iPhone 4 or above,
an iPad 2 or above (including Mini)
or a fth generation iPod Touch.
The update can be downloaded
via Wi-Fi, or installed from iTunes
through your computer. Its fairly
straightforward, and youll nd
TechRadars full guide to iOS 7 at
goo.gl/5aLBjY.
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December 2013
Help & Advice |
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6
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1

5
2
,
Checking in
You can use [Ctrl] to choose multiple
les or folders to copy, move or delete
within Windows Explorer, but its all
too easy to click on the wrong thing
and lose your whole selection.
Fortunately, you can place a tickbox
next to items to make them easier to
choose. Click Organize followed by
Folder and search options, then click
View. Scroll down and select the tick
box next to Use check boxes to select
items, then click the OK button. Now
youll be able to accurately select les
and folders, and you can use the
check box at the top to select every
le or document as well.
Solitary pursuits
Before Facebook and BuzzFeed took
up the majority of workers oce
time, there was a little game called
Solitaire. The card game built in to
Windows XP is still a cracker, and
perfect for idling away a lunch break
or boring conference. The game can
be set to deal one card at a time
rather than three, but if youve got it
set to three and youre stuck, holding
[Ctrl], [Shift] and [Alt] then clicking the
deck will deal one perfect if you can
see the card you need, but cant get
to it. If youre truly stuck, you can
press [Alt], [Shift] and [2] to instantly
win the game you can then impress
your co-workers with the bouncing
card animation that follows.
Show me the menu

While we bemoaned the lack of a
Start menu in Windows 8, there is
something similar baked into the
program, its just been tucked away.
From the Windows desktop, (pressing
[Windows]+[M] will take you here)
simply press [Windows]+[X] and youll
see a quick access menu this
includes quick jumps to essential
tools, such as Device Manager,
Control Panel and File Explorer. For
even quicker access, you can press the
underlined key in the menu to open
an associated task. Its a great feature
because it saves you the trouble of
scrolling through the Start menu
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 well share your perfect Windows tweaks in a future issue.
Tip of the month
The calculator
Go beyond a
simple equation
It may seem like a basic utility, but the calculator app is

full of hidden uses that make it an invaluable free tool
Windows 7s calculator just keeps
giving and giving. Fire it up, then click
View followed by Unit conversion
and youre able to convert inches to
centimetres, Celsius to Fahrenheit and
stones to kilograms. You can also use
the Date calculator option to work
out the number of days until a certain
event perfect for determining how
many sleeps there are until Christmas!

Finally, Worksheets can be used to
calculate your mortgage, figure out
how many payments are left on your
car and even plan how much fuel
youll need for an upcoming trip or
holiday. And all your calculated data
is saved in the calculator until you
finally close it, too. Very useful!
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Chrome
Experiments
www.chromeexperiments.com
Googles Chrome browser has fast
become our website viewer of
choice its quick, easy-to-use and
powerful. Its also highly
adaptable, and its created an
ecosystem all its own. Chrome
Experiments is a collection of fun
games and cool toys that push the
browser to the limits, and its
hugely impressive, too.
Youll obviously need Chrome
installed (available at www.google.
com/chrome), to make the most of
it. Our favourite Experiments
include WebGL Water Simulator,
which realistically renders a lush
swimming pool; Map Dive, in
which Google Maps Pegman falls
to the earth and the WebGL skin,
which renders a human head with
unnerving accuracy. If youve got
Chrome on your smartphone you
can use it to play Roll It and Racer.
PLAY TIME Experience the many uses of

Chrome with this fun collection of games
WINDOWS 8.1 IS HERE

The new Win8 update promises some much needed improvements
he original launch of Windows 8

last year could have gone better.
Confused consumers couldnt work
out if it was a tablet operating
system or a PC one, and while the Metro
Start screen looked good on computers in
Currys, it proved unintuitive and clumsy
elsewhere. Thankfully, Microsoft has
listened to customers feedback and with
the Windows 8.1 update it aims to put
right past mistakes.
The biggest
change in Windows
8.1 is the return of
the iconic Windows
Start button in the
lower-left corner of
the screen, which
was the biggest
source of confusion
for consumers. The
crucial ability to
quickly shut down and restart the
computer is a great addition, but theres a
host of new user-friendly features.
SkyDrive, Microsofts cloud storage
product, is completely embedded in
Windows 8.1, which means your les are
permanently and securely backed up
online. A cool new feature is the ability to
sort and manage your les and folders
when youre ofine. With the SkyDrive
app, youll be able to mark any folders or
les you want for ofine access, wrote
Microsofts group program manager for
SkyDrive apps Mona Akmal. Edits on
this device or another device will be
synchronised so that youre always
working with the latest le.
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November 2013
22
Also available from the word go is

Skype, the web-based communications
service Microsoft bought in 2011 for $8.5
billion. It was notable in its absence from
Windows 8, which was unsual given
Microsofts massive investment. With
Skype in Windows 8.1 it will be easier
than ever to connect and do more with the
special people in your life, in any
moment, says Aga Guzik, Microsofts
head of desktop
product marketing
at Skype.
Windows 8 users
will be able to
download the
Win8.1 update for
free from the
Windows Store
you can also
purchase the
software for
around 75 (for the standard version) and
125 for the Pro edition. Once youve got
the software, you can install it as an
upgrade on PCs running Windows 7, but if
you wish to install it on a Windows Vista
or XP computer, youll have to completely
format your PC (making sure youve
backed up your les rst).
We feel its going to be hard to go back
to a more traditional version of Windows
just after weve got our heads around
Windows 8, but all the changes Microsoft
are rolling out are denitely for the best,
and it makes it far easier for people who
are upgrading from Windows 7. Finally,
Windows 8 feels like the operating system
weve wanted all along.
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What happened to
one of Googles
Street View cars?
A) It was stolen by
joyriders in Sao Paolo
B) It failed its MOT
in Bradford
C) It crashed into a bus
NASAs Curiosity rover

failed to detect which
sign of life on Mars?
A) Nitrogen
B) Methane
C) McDonalds packaging
How much did Grand

Theft Auto 5 make in
its first day of sales?
A) $800m
B) $1bn
C) $1.5bn
Which well-known
chocolate bar has
Google partnered with
for its latest version of
the Android OS?
A) Kit Kat
B) Tracker
C) Wagon Wheel
FRIDAY
10
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The US Court of
appeals declared
what as free speech?
A) Instagram pictures
B) Facebook Likes
C) Retweets
Vacuum
manufacturer
Dysons next product
will be what?
A) A robot housekeeper
B) A smartphone
C) A humidifier
Answers 1C, 2B, 3A, 4A, 5B, 6C
Download this
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WHO IS RESPONSIBLE
FOR THE MAJORITY OF
PIRATED DOWNLOADS?
Henry Winchester reveals a host

of fascinating digital facts
WHY DO PEOPLE
LEAVE FACEBOOK?
The act of terminating your Facebook

account dubbed Facebook suicide
is the subject of research from the
University of Vienna. Over half the people
who left the social networking site
did so due to privacy
concerns. 13.5 per
cent left due
to general
dissatisfaction
and six per cent
deleted accounts
because they
were scared they
would become
addicted to the site.
According to research from Kantar,

which was commissioned by UK
communications regulator Ofcom,
almost a quarter of all UK downloads
are in breach of copyright, and 58
per cent of internet users have
downloaded or streamed at least
one illegal item in the last year.
However, people who consume a
large amount of pirated material
make up just two per cent of users.
WHATS HAPPENING EVERY MINUTE

IN MMO GAME RUNESCAPE?
257
players
208
bosses are
killed
12
die
61,985
weapons are
2,076
cows are
crafted
307,000,000
experience points are earned
slain
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Discover
WorldMags.netFacts & figures
TOP MAIL ONLINE FACTS
The British tabloid was

founded in 1896 and its
website launched in May
2008. The site receives 50.1m
unique visitors a month,
making it the most popular
newspaper website in the
world today.
Around 200 new news
articles are added every day
and a total of 42m of these
visitors are based in the UK.

Around 25 per cent of
visitors only look at the celeb
gossip stories, while most
visitors spend an average of
46 minutes on the site.
Somewhat surprisingly, the
readership of the website is
around 54 per cent male. In
the last 30 days, around 50m
comments have been green-
arrowed and 14m have been

red-arrowed. the sites own
take on the common Like
and Dislike buttons.
The site finds its biggest
following in the US state of
California, and least popular
in Wyoming. In the last
month, just 14 people have
visited the site from the
Central African Republic.
1 IN EVERY SEVEN
will be spent online by 2017, according to retail consultancy

company Verdict. At the moment, 1 in every 10 is spent online.
Just four per cent of people consider shopping in store to be
more enjoyable than shopping online, and 67 per cent have
made purchases from their living rooms, which indicates a
significant rise in the use of second-screen devices.
74 PER CENT
of smartphone users have used their devices to
get direction or other information about where
they are, figures from the Pew Research Center
show 30 per cent have their social media
accounts set up to show their locations in posts.
The use of check in services is decreasing,
though just 12 per cent use Facebook or
Foursquare to present their location, down
from 18 per cent last year.
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
13
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TO FALL IN LOVE
WITH WINDOWS
ALL OVER AGAIN
We reveal the hints, tips and
secrets that will open up your
heart to Windows all over again
ou may have been using Windows 7 for

years or you may be a relative newcomer.
However long youve been using the
operating system, theres always something
new to learn and for more seasoned users
there are plenty of little tricks that you may
have forgotten. Whichever camp you fall
into, weve unearthed 100 reasons to fall in
love with Windows 7 all over again.
If youve been using Windows for a few
years, you may well have forgotten some of
the neat tricks its capable of and some of
the impressive tools and options that are
built in. There are plenty of things that are
obvious and easy to discover, but there are
numerous other secrets that you can
discover just by scratching beneath the
surface of your Windows OS.
Windows 7 has many layers to it. For some
people its not something they give a great
deal of thought to its simply a necessary
part of owning a PC. Many people think of
their operating system as dull and boring,
but there really is a great deal to love. Over
the coming pages were going to share with
you some of the reasons we love Windows 7.
Youll nd all manner of hints and tips to
help you to get more from your computer
and lots of hidden gems to help you get
even more from your beloved Windows
operating system.
14
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Cover feature
100 amazing Windows tips
WorldMags.net
01
Burn ISO disc

images
Just right-click an ISO
le and select the Burn
disc image option.
Select the disc burner
youd like to use, insert
a blank disc and click
the Burn button.
02
Re-order the
Taskbar
If youd prefer that your
Taskbar icons appeared
in a dierent order, you
can simply drag and
drop them into a new
position using the left
mouse button.
03
Quickly launch
Taskbar apps
You dont need to use
the mouse to launch
programs that have
shortcuts in the Taskbar.
Press [Windows]+[1] to
launch the rst icon on
the Taskbar, and so on.
04
Quickly check
the desktop
You dont need to
minimise all of your
open windows to view
the desktop just move
the mouse to the
lower-right-hand corner
of the screen. Simple!
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December 2013 |
05
Close apps
without
switching to them
Hover the mouse cursor
over a Taskbar button
and click the red cross
located to the upperright of a preview to
close it completely.
Help & Advice |
15
WorldMags.net
06
Ru
un two program
ms
sid
de by siide
Dont bother manually resizing
program windows, just drag a
window to the left side of the
screen and it will expand to ll
half of it. Repeat with another
window to the right to see
both side by side. Windows
can be un-docked by dragging
them out of position again.
07
Usse pinne
ed folde
erss
fo
or fast access
Pinned folders come in very
handy if you use the same
folders often. To pin a folder to
Windows Explorers jump list,
drag a folder onto the
Windows Explorer icon in the
Taskbar. When a message that
reads Pin to Windows
Explorer appears, release the
mouse button. Now when you
right-click the icon, its there.
08
La
aunch a new
prrogram window
w
When a program is running
and you click its Taskbar icon
you will nd that youll switch
to that app. If youd prefer to
launch a new window, just
hold down the [Shift] key as
you click the icon.
10
Ga
ain morre
de
esktop space
The Taskbar is useful, but you
may not feel that you need it
on display at all times. To
maximise the size of your
desktop, right click an empty
section of the Taskbar and
select Properties. On the
Taskbar tab, tick the box
labelled Auto-hide the
Taskbar and click OK. The
Taskbar will disappear until
you move your mouse to the
very bottom of the screen it
will then slide into view.
11
Move bettween
yo
our mon
nitors
If youve got more than one
monitor connected to your
computer, you can avoid
having to drag and drop
windows between screens by
simply pressing the keyboard
combo [Windows]+[Shift]
along with the left or right
arrow keys.
reduce their size by adding

them to a compressed zip le.
Just select all of the les you
want to work with, right-click
and then select Send To
followed by Compressed
(zipped) Folder.
12
13
(D
DV\OHFFRPSUHVVVLLRQ
Need to send a number
of les to someone but
worried theyre too large to
attach to an email? Without
any extra software you can
09
Schedule
defragmentation
Its important to look after your hard drive and for the best
possible performance, regular defragmentation is key but
you dont need to remember to do it manually. Click Start >
All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and then click
Disk Defragmenter. Click the Modify schedule button, and
use the drop-down menu to choose your scheduling
preferences. Click OK twice and Windows will take care of
your hard drives for you in future.
16
KEEP IT SNAPPY Multitask like a pro with the ergonomic snapping feature
Prreview program
m
Windowss
With more than one instance
of a program running you may
not be able to tell which one
you want to switch to next. To
make things a little easier,
hover the mouse over a
programs Taskbar button to
display a preview of any
currently running program.
Move the mouse over one of
the preview and youll be able
to peak at a full screen preview
so you can switch to the right
one in an instant.
14
Acccess virrtual disskss

If youve used Virtual PC
before you may well have
created a number of virtual
drives in VHD format. Theres
no need for extra software to
browse through the contents
of such a drive as Windows 7
has built-in support. Press
[Windows]+[R] at the same
time, type diskmgmt.msc and
press [Enter]. Click Action
followed by Attach VHD and
then select the virtual disk
youd like to begin working
with. You can use Explorer to
access the drive just as you
would any other, and you can
easily copy les back and forth
between drives.
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15
Lo
ock with
h a key pre
ess
Stepping away from your
computer for a few minutes?
Keep it safe by locking it with
the [Windows]+[L] keyboard
shortcut. Its that simple!
16
Windowss XP Mod
de
Still in love with
Windows XP? As long as youre
running Windows 7
Professional, Enterprise or
Ultimate you can use Windows
XP Mode to run a virtual copy
of XP. You can then use it to
install and run all of your
favourite older software.
17
Co
ompatib
bility mo
ode
Some older software
that you rely on may not work
as you expect under Windows
7. Never fear all is not lost!
Right-click the shortcut of a
troublesome program, select
Properties and move to the
Compatibility tab. Tick the box
in the Compatibility Mode
section and select the version
of Windows you would like to
pretend youre using.
18
Ta
askbar buttons
on
n your terms
Want to save space? Multiple
Taskbar buttons can be
combined into one. Prefer to
see every button individually?
Not a problem. Right-click the
Taskbar, select Properties and
use the Taskbar buttons
drop-down menu to choose
between the Always combine,
hide labels and Never
combine options.
Cover feature
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19
Ca
alculate
an
nd conv
vert
The calculator is capable of
much more than adding and
subtracting theres also unit
conversion, date calculation
and more to choose from in
the File menu. See, the
humble calculator do more
than just sums!
20
Ch
hange window sizzes
wiith a sh
hortcut
There are lots of ways you can
change the size and position
of an open window. Press
[Windows] and the up arrow
to maximise a window, or
[Windows] and the down
arrow to minimise it
completely. You can also use
[Windows] in conjunction with
the left and right arrow keys to
snap the currently selected
window to the left or righthand side of the screen. You
can quickly tidy things up by
pressing [Windows]+[Home]
to minimise everything except
the current window, too.
21
Cy
ycle thro
ough
askbar previewss
Ta
You can easily use the mouse
to select Taskbar previews, but
if youre more of a fan of using
the old keyboard, you could
try using the rather handy
[Windows]+[T] shortcut as well
both are great for getting a
snapshot view of open apps.
22
Re
e-arrang
ge the
QR
RWLFDWLLRQDUHD
If you dont like how icons are
ordered in the notication
area of the Taskbar, they can
be simply dragged and
dropped into new positions.
Perfect for tailoring the
Taskbar to suit your needs.
32
Take
screenshots
The Snipping Tools is
the perfect way to
capture an image of
whats happening on
your desktop handy
for screenshots and
troubleshooting.
23
Frree up disk spacce

To keep your hard drive
running well, its a good idea
to clear out the clutter. To do
this automatically, select Start
> All Programs > Accessories >
System Tools and click Task
Scheduler. Click Create Basic
Task, enter a name and select
Next before choosing how
often the schedule should run.
Click Start A Program
followed by Next, then type
cleanmgr.exe before clicking
Open. Select Next, followed
by Finish and youre done.
24
Minimise
e all wind
dows
To quickly minimise all of
your open programs and
windows, either press the
[Windows]+[M] key combo at
the same time, or grab a
window with your mouse and
shake it. This gesture will
immediately minimise the app.
25
Prreview your fon

ntss
Open the Fonts folder
from the Control Panel and
you can preview the fonts you
have installed without even
having to open anything. Any
you dont need can be hidden
or deleted, too.
26
6H
HOHFWOH
HV
more eassily
When you need to select
multiple les, it can be quicker
and easier if you use check
boxes. Open the Folder
Options Control Panel and
select the View tab. Scroll
down to the bottom of the list
of options and tick the setting
labelled Use check boxes to
select items. Click OK and a
new check box column will
appear that can be used to
select any number of les.
33
Project your
desktop
Built-in support for
projectors means that
connecting your laptop
to a projector is
incredibly simple. Just
hit [Windows]+[P] to
view projector options.
34
27
ClearType looks amazing
ClearType ensures that text looks great on your

screen, but it can be ne-tuned to suit your preference. Click
the Start button and type cttune to access the ClearType Text
Tuner and youll be guided through the process of getting the
best possible look for text.
28
30
29
31
US
SB spee
ed up
Speed up your computer
by simply inserting a USB
drive! Plug one in and in the
AutoPlay menu that appears
select the Speed up my
system option to enable the
ReadyBoost feature. You can
then choose how much space
should be used to help your
computers memory
Sh
how all your driv
ves
If you would prefer to
see all drive letters at all times,
open up the Folder Options
Control Panel and move to the
View tab. Scroll down through
the list of options that appear
and untick the box labelled
Hide empty drives in the
Computer folder and then
click OK now all of your
drive letters are visible.
Check PC
performance
Open up the System
Control Panel and youll
see a score that gives
an indication of the
performance of your
personal computer. The
score is out of 7.9.
35
Prrevent window
re
e-arrang
gement
If youd like to disable any
window arrangements, you
can do that with this handy
tip. Open up the Registry
Editor, navigate to HKEY_
CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\
Desktop and change the value
of the option entitled
WindowArrangementActive
down to 0.
Give netw
work
loccations a letter
If you have a network folder
that you tend to access quite a
lot, you can always speed
things up by assigning it a
drive letter. Navigate to the
network location in Explorer,
right-click it and select Map
network drive and then
choose your new drive letter.
Action Center
warnings
If Windows detects
potential problems with
your computer, youll
be warned via a
notication area icon
just click the ag to see
what needs sorting.
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December 2013 |
36
Check your
memory usage
To see which of your
running programs are
using up your memory,
right-click the Taskbar
and select Task
Manager then select
the Processes tab.
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17
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37
View cloccks from

m
otther tim
me zoness
The Taskbar shows you the
current time, and it can also be
used to check the time in
other countries. Click the clock
and select the Change data
and time settings option.
Move to the Additional Clocks
tab and then tick the box
labelled Show this clock. Use
the drop-down menu to select
the clock youd like to add and
you can even change the label
if you want to.
38
Hiide unu
used libra
aries
If there are libraries that
you dont use, you can claim
some space back in Explorer.
Right-click a library in the
left-hand pane and select the
Dont Show in Navigation
Pane option.
39
Pe
ersonaliised
alibratio
on
display ca
Of course its not just text that
gets displayed on your
monitor there are plenty of
images to think about as well.
If you like to be in complete
control over how your display
is calibrated, you can click the
Start button and type dccw
to access the Display Color
Calibration Wizard. To
proceed, click Next and the
wizard will help you to choose
the best display settings.
40
Sp
peed up
p
th
he Startt menu
If you nd the Start menu isnt
responsive enough for you, try
50
Access any
hidden menus
Happen to be missing
the File menu in
Explorer? No need to
worry, just hit [Alt] and
itll pop into view so
you can access the
menu option you need.
18
this little solution: launch the

Registry Editor (press
[Windows]+[R] and then type
regedit, before pressing
[Enter]) and navigate to HKEY_
CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\
Desktop. In the right-hand
pane, double-click the entry
labelled MenuShowDelay,
which has a default value of
400. A value between 50 and
100 will add extra speed.
44
On-screen keyboard
If youre having trouble with your keyboard and

need to buy a new one, theres an on-screen one you can use
in the meantime. Click the Start button, type the command
osk and press [Enter] to bring it up.
41
Cy
ycling backward
ds
Most people know
about the [Alt]+[Tab] keyboard
shortcut that can be used to
cycle through open programs
and windows, but if you add
the [Shift] key, you can cycle
through them backwards.
42
Diisable hibernatiion,
ee up sp
pace
fre
Windows hibernation le
takes up a lot of space. Claim
back this disk space by
launching the Registry Editor,
navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_
MACHINE\SYSTEM\
CurrentControlSet\Control\
Power, and set both
HibernateEnabled and
HiberFileSizePerfect to 0.
43
Acctivate window
ws
without clicking
To save having to click
windows to bring them into
focus, a feature of the Ease of
Access Center can also be
exploited. Launch the tool
from the Control Panel, click
the link labelled Make the
mouse easier to use and then
51
Quickly close
window
When looking at a
Taskbar preview of a
program or window,
just click the middle
mouse button to close
the window without
having to switch to it.
52
select the option labelled

Activate a window by
hovering over it with the
mouse in the Make it easier to
manage windows section.
can adjust just how sensitive it

is to suit your preferences.
Click the Start button, type
uac and press [Enter]. You can
then use the slider to choose
when warnings should appear.
45
48
46
49
Qu
uick and easy
co
ommand
d promp
pt
Hold down [Shift] while right
clicking a folder and youll
reveal the previously hidden
Open command window
here option. This embedded
option is fantastic for taking a
much deeper control of the
les and folders on your PC.
Run as administrrator
You can run any
program in the Taskbar in the
role of an administrator by
simply holding down the keys
[Ctrl]+[Shift] at the same time.
47
Ta
ake conttrol of UAC
User Account Control is a
great security feature, and you
Jump to search
When you want
to search for a le
within a particular
folder, simply press [F3]
to jump to the search
box, enter your chosen
search term and hit the
[Enter] key.
53
Cy
ycle thrrough an
n app
[Alt]+[Tab] is a handy
shortcut for cycling through
programs. If you want to cycle
through just the instances of
one program, hold down the
[Ctrl] button and click the
Taskbar with the left-hand
mouse button. Simple.
Op
pen Exp
plorer
att My Co
omputer
You can even take control of
where My Computer opens on
your machine. To customise
this feature, simply right-click
the shortcut for the program
and select the option entitled
Properties. Change the Target
eld so that it now reads
Zoom in
and out
To get a better view of
whats happening on
your desktop, or in a
program, press
[Windows]+[+] to zoom
in. Use [Windows]+[-] to
zoom out again.
WorldMags.net
54
Arrange
your window
Right-click the Taskbar
and click either Show
windows stacked or
Show windows side by
side. You can right-click
again to access the
undo option, too.
Cover feature
WorldMags.net
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /
root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069A2D8-08002B30309D} and
click OK.
55
Co
ontrol AutoPlay
y
Open up the AutoPlay
Control Panel and you can
take control of what happens
when you insert a disc or plug
in an external drive. You can
opt to disable AutoPlay
completely as well.
56
Crreate yo
our
ow
wn shorrtcuts
Create your own custom
keyboard shortcuts to launch
your favourite programs.
Right-click a program shortcut
and select Properties. Move
to the Shortcut tab, switch to
the Shortcut key eld and
press the keyboard combo
youd like to use before
clicking the OK button.
57
Ge
et more
e from
yo
our large monito
or
Massive monitors with
super-high resolutions can
make on-screen text too small
to read easily. Click the Start
button, type DPIScaling and
press [Enter]. You can then opt
to boost the size of text by
selecting one of the options.
dicult to explain whats

going wrong to someone else,
and this is where Problem
Steps Recorder can help it
makes it possible to record
what happens on screen and
send it to someone who might
be able to help. Click the Start
button, type psr and click psr
in the list of results. Click the
Start Record button and use
your computer until the
problem you have been
experiencing occurs again.
Click Stop Record and then
save and email the le.
61
Se
ee how your PC
is being used
Windows Resource Monitor
enables you to see how your
processor, memory and hard
drive are being used. Press
[Windows]+[R, type resmon
and press [Enter]. The graphs
give you an idea of how
individual programs and
processes are making use of
your hardware.
62
Re
epair a
prroblema
atic PC
Problems can arise from time
to time and you may nd that
youre unable to boot into
Windows. Before you reach for
your installation disc,
58
Side screen Taskbar
If youd prefer to make better use of the width of

your widescreen monitor, why not move the Taskbar to the
left or right rather than the bottom of the screen? This is a
great way to reapproach the way you use your desktop.
Right-click an empty section of the Taskbar and make sure
that the Lock the taskbar option does not have a tick next to
it (if it does, just click it to remove it). You can then drag and
drop the Taskbar to your preferred position before locking it
in place again. Give it a try!
59
Se
end To more pla
ace
es
The Send To section of
the context menu is very
useful. If you hold down [Shift]
while right-clicking a le or
folder, youll see an expanded
list of options in the sub-menu
that appears.
60
Re
ecord any problems
yo
ou expe
erience
There may be times when you
run into a problem with your
computer and you dont know
how to remedy it. It can be
64
Logon automatically
Get to work faster. Press [Windows]+[R], type

netplwiz and press [Enter]. Untick the box labelled Users
must enter a user name and password to use this computer,
click Apply and then select your account before entering
your password. Click OK and youre done!
oer these as suggestions to

subsequent users) could be a
privacy concern for some. To
stop these suggestions from
being displayed, youll need to
launch the Registry Editor and
navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_
USER\Software\Policies\
Microsoft\Windows\Explorer.
Youll then need to create a
new DWORD value called
DisableSearchBoxSuggestions
and assign it a value of 1
before restarting Windows.
65
6D
DYH2IFH
:RUG3DG
OHVLQ:
It might seem like a rather
simple tool at rst glance, but
the WordPad program has
more capabilities than you
might think. If you click the
File option, followed by Save
As, youll nd that youre able
to save in the common Oce
DOCX format without the
need for any additional
software or applications
great for quick edits.
remember that Windows 7

may be able to help you x the
problem. Restart your
computer and press the [F8]
key during the start-up
process. Providing the repair
tools are available on your
hard drive, you will see a
Repair Your Computer option.
63
Hiide your
pa
ast searcches
On a shared computer, the fact
that Windows can save the
words you search for (and
DISC CONTROL Use the AutoPlay Control Panel to customise disc options
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
19
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66
Le
eave yourself a
he
elpful note
Theres no need to clutter
your desk with a hundred
dierent paper notes and
reminders you can leave
electronic reminders on your
desktop, instead. To do this,
launch the Sticky Note tool
from the Start menu and
create notes as and when you
might need them. You can
even right-click notes to
customise their colour. This
simple feature is a great way
to help them to stand out.
67
Play mussic on
an
nother compute
er
Windows Media Player can be
used to play local or network
music les, but you can also
push music to play on another
computer as well. Youll need
to set this up in advance, so
launch Windows Media Player,
click the Stream button and
then select Turn on media
streaming. In the window that
appears next, click the Turn
on media streaming button.
Back in Windows Media Player,

click the Stream button again
and then select Allow remote
control of my player > Allow
remote control on this
network. Next, select the
option Stream, followed by
Automatically allow devices to
play my media repeat this
on other computers on your
network. You can then
right-click a music le and
select the Play To option,
before selecting a computer to
use as the playback device.
69
Olld-style
e Taskbarr
co
ontext menus
In Windows 7, when you
right-click a button in the
Taskbar you gain access to
jump lists. If you would prefer
to see options to maximise,
minimise and close windows
instead, hold down [Shift]
while you right-click.
70
Re
einstate
e the
Qu
uick Lau
unch
Its not obvious, but the Quick
Launch bar can also be
68
Design your own fonts
Windows 7 includes a handy tool called Private

Character Editor that can be used to create your own fonts.
The program isnt easy to nd, though press [Windows]+[R]
at the same time and type eudcedit, before pressing [Enter].
Even if you dont want to spend the time creating a complete
font of your own, you can create your own custom characters
and logos and quickly insert into any documents you create.
CAPTURE THOSE ISS

SUES Record any problems for future troubleshooting
restored. Right-click an empty

section of the Taskbar and
select Toolbars, followed by
New Toolbar. Type
%userprole%\AppData\
Roaming\Microsoft\Internet
Explorer\Quick Launch and
press [Enter]. Right-click again
and untick Lock the Taskbar
so you can move the new
toolbar to your preferred
position theres even a Show
Desktop button. You might
want to opt to hide the toolbar
label and then re-lock the
Taskbar, though.
71
Viiew a sliideshow
w
on
n your desktop
Cant decide which picture to
use as your background?
Theres no need to settle for
just one image when you
could use a rotating slideshow
instead. Right-click the
desktop and select the
Personalize option. Click
Desktop Background and
select all of the images youd
like to include in the slideshow.
At the bottom of the dialog
you can then choose how
frequently the image will
change. This is great for
keeping the boring old
desktop fresh and interesting.
72
De
esktop tidying
If you have icons
scattered everywhere, just
press [F5] on the desktop and
Windows will automatically
re-arrange all of your icons.
73
Ge
et more
e
sccreen sp
pace
You can see more of the
desktop and your running
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programs by simply shrinking

your Taskbar buttons.
Right-click the Taskbar and
select Properties on the
Taskbar tab, tick the box
labelled Use small taskbar
buttons to shrink them.
74
Ge
et more
e Taskbarr
Conversely, you might
want to have a larger Taskbar
so you can see more buttons
or extra running programs.
Right-click the Taskbar and
make sure that the Lock the
taskbar option is not ticked.
You can then drag the top of
the Taskbar upwards to make
it even taller, too.
75
Sttep back
k in time
e
Made an unwanted
change to your computer?
Theres no need to manually
reverse the steps you
performed, just head to
System Restore in the Control
Panel and revert your system
to an earlier time.
76
View all
QR
RWLFDWLRQLFRQVV
Windows 7 will save space by
hiding some icons from the
notication area. To see them
at all times, right-click the
Taskbar and select Properties
before clicking the Customize
button in the Notication area
section on the Taskbar tab.
Make ssure you tick the box
labelled Always show all icons
and notications on the
taskbar and then click OK.
77
Un
ndo tha
at move!!
If you accidentally move,
copy or delete a le, you can
Cover feature
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78
Reduce
system
volume during
a voice call
To prevent the music youre
listening to interfering with
computer-based phone calls,
you can opt to automatically
have the volume level of system
sounds reduced when a call is
underway. Right-click the
speaker icon in the notication
area and select the Sounds
option. Move to the
Communications tab and select
one of the three options to
reduce volume or completely
mute sounds.
press [Ctrl]+[Z] to undo the

pesky action it can be a real
life saver!
79
Cu
ustomisse Send To
Many programs will add
entries to the Send to menu,
but you can also add your
own. Press [Windows]+[R],
type shell:sendto and press
[Enter] to open the Send to
folder. You can then easily
create your own shortcuts.
80
Ke
eep bro
owsing
in
n private
e
You can keep your browsing
history private in Internet
Explorer by switching to
InPrivate mode. You can do
this by pressing the combo
[Ctrl]+[Shift]+[P].
81
Ch
heck yo
our
HQ
QHUJ\HIIFLHQF\
\
Click the Start button, type
cmd, right-click Command
Prompt and select Run as
Administrator. Type
powercfg-energy and press
[Enter]. After about a minute
or so of loading you can
navigate to the folder you are
told about and open up the
energy-report.html. This will
show you what you can do to
improve energy eciency.
82
Hiide app
ps away
ay
in the tra
In older versions of Windows
some programs only featured
an icon in the system tray

(otherwise known as the
notication area). In Windows
7, these programs also have a
Taskbar button. You can make
things work the way they used
to by right-clicking the
program shortcut and using
the Compatibility tab to force
the app to run in Vista mode.
83
Ch
hoose your
sh
hutdown
n option
ns
The power button can be used
to do many things Restart,
Shutdown, Sleep, etc and
you can choose what should
happen by default. Right-click
the Start button and select
Properties, then move to the
Start Menu tab and use the
Power button action
drop-down menu to select the
default action.
84
Ch
hange Library Vie
ew
When youre viewing
les in a library, you can
quickly change the way in
which les are displayed. The
Arrange by menu appears at
the top of a library window
and can be used to order les
by date, album, size, etc. Try
experimenting with dierent
layouts to nd the one that
most suits your tastes.
accidentally deleted a le,

document or folder that you
need back, just open up the
Recycle Bin from the desktop
and youll nd your les are
still there ready to be restored
to their original locations.
account, you dont need to

hunt through the Control
Panel. Just bring up the Start
menu and click your user
image to the upper-right and
youll be taken straight to the
rather handy settings screen.
86
88
87
89
Se
earch frrom Starrt
Whether youre looking
for a le or a program, theres
no need to launch a special
search tool: everything you
need is in the Start menu. Just
click the Start button and
start typing. As you type,
matching results will be shown
straight away and you can just
click whichever one matches
your search criteria.
Qu
uick acccess
acccount settings
If you need to change a
setting relating to your
Ad
dd new
w features
to
o Windo
ows
If you feel like youre missing
out on some of the features of
your Windows operating
system, open up the Programs
and Features Control Panel.
Click the link to the left
labelled Turn Windows
features on or o and take a
browse through some of the
extra tools that are available
on your PC.
Ta
alk to yo
our PC
If you cant type very
quickly or just fancy trying out
85
8Q
QGHOHWH
H\RXUOHVV
Its easy to forget just
how handy the Recycle Bin
folder really is. If youve
MUSIC FOR ALL You can easily share your music between more than one PC
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
21
WorldMags.net
something a little nifty, open

up the Speed Recognition
Control Panel in Windows 7.
Here youll nd everything you
need to congure your PC for
voice activated control its
great for dictation, too.
90
Monitor the child

dren
Any parent wants to let
their child use a computer,
while ensuring theyre kept
safe. The Parental Controls
section of the Control Panel
makes it possible to place
restrictions on user accounts
that will be used by children,
as well as enabling a special
monitoring feature that will
inform you about the websites
they visit during their session.
91
Alll settings
in one pla
ace
Its something that has been
dubbed God Mode, but in
reality it is just a fantastically
handy way to access a massive
range of system options in one
place. Create a new folder and
type the name xxx.{
92
SPEAK EASY The Speed Recognition Control Panel is also a useful tool for dictating notes and documents as well
ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C99712043E01C}. You can

change the xxx to anything
you like, and when you open
up the folder, youll be
Turn the Control

Panel into a menu
If you spend a lot of time adjusting system settings of your

machine, a Control Panel menu is a very useful and time
ecient tool to have to hand. To create one, Right-click the
Start button and select Properties before moving to the
Start menu tab. From there, click the Customize button and
look through the list of settings generated the Control Panel
heading and then select the option labelled Display as a
menu. When youre nished, click OK and the next time you
click the Start button, the Control Panel will appear as a
cascading menu to the right.
presented with a massive list

of settings to work with. Just
dont go too mad with power!
93
La
aunch a website
e
from the
e Taskbarr
Sometimes it can be too much
trouble to switch from the
program you are working in,
move to a browser and place
the cursor in the address bar
before typing a URL. Add an
address bar to the Taskbar and
you can access sites in a ash.
Right-click an empty section of
the Taskbar and from the
Toolbars menu, tick the
Address option.
94
Crreate an
n
em
mergen
ncy boot disc
Its always good to be
prepared and this is where an
Emergency Boot Disc comes in
more than a little handy. Click
the Start button and then
select All Programs >
Maintenance > Create a
System Repair Disc. Youll be
guided through the process of
creating a disc, and at the end
of it youll be presented with
something that can be used to
get your PC back up and
running again.
95
Usse encry
yption
wiith yourr drives
Providing youre running the
Ultimate version of Windows 7,
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youll have access to BitLocker

in the Control Panel, which can
be used to encrypt the
contents of a particular drive.
To use it, just click the Turn On
BitLocker link and create a
strong (but memorable)
password. Simple.
96
Giive your Start-u

up a
go
ood spe
eed-up
Right-click any shortcuts to
programs you dont need in
the Start-up group of the Start
menu and delete them. This
will help signicantly reduce
the boot times of your
personal computer.
97
Crreate ne
ew
fo
olders quickly
Theres no need to lift your
hands from the keyboard
when you need to create a
new folder in Explorer theres
a simpler way! To do this
handy little trick, just use the
special keyboard shortcut
[Ctrl]+[Shift]+[N], type a name
for the folder and press [Enter].
98
Pe
ersonaliise your
PC
Cs inforrmation
You can change whats
displayed in the System
Properties screen to just about
anything you like (within
reason). Open up the Registry
Editor and make sure you
navigate to HKLM\ Software\
Cover feature
WorldMags.net
99
Location-based
printing options
If you use your laptop at home
and in the oce you can opt to
change the default printer based
on which network you are
connected to. Open the Devices
and Printers Control Panel,
select a printer and click the
Manage default printers
button. Select the option
labelled Change my default
printers when I change
networks, select a network from
the list and then choose an
available printer. Keep in mind
that youll need to do this for
each of the networks you
connect to as well.
Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\
OEMInformation and create
any of the following keys,
adjusting their value however
you wish: HelpCustomized
(DWORD) = 0, Logo (REG_SZ)
= C:\Windows\System32\
oemlogo.bmp, Manufacturer
(REG_SZ) = Your text here,
Model (REG_SZ) = Your text
here, SupportHours (REG_SZ)
= Your text here,
SupportPhone (REG_SZ) =
Your text here, SupportURL
(REG_SZ) = Your text here.
100
Paste to the
command prompt
If youve tried to copy text

from a document or website
and paste it to the command
prompt youll know that it
doesnt really work. At least
not when you press the
keyboard-based combination
[Ctrl]+[V]. As an alternative, try
this solution instead. Having
copied some text to the
clipboard, switch to the

command prompt window
and press [Windows] and hit
[Space]. From the menu that
then appears, simply click the
option entitled Edit, followed
by the Paste button. Then, as
if by magic, your copied text
will appear in the command
prompt window! Q
Adams verdict
Its incredible to think that Windows 7 has so much to oer. Using
the operating system day in and day out, its really easy to get
stuck in a rut and end up using the same tools and options again
and again. But if you spend a little time investigating whats
hidden slightly out of view, you might well be surprised at what
you discover buried in your beloved operating system.
Windows 7 is an operating system with great depth and there
are plenty of hidden secrets to be found and used to your
advantage. It doesnt matter if youre a power user or more of a
beginner, there are tips, tools and techniques that will make your
computing life a great deal easier.
We hope youve learned something new in this feature its
amazing that even after four years of use there are still new gems
to unearth in Windows 7. We know weve fallen in love with
Windows all over again we hope you have, too.
Adam Ifans Editor-in-chief
WorldMags.net
WorldMags.net
WorldMags.net
WorldMags.net
WINDOWS TIPS
INTERNET ADVICE
Welcome
Whether
youre stuck for
inspiration or
want to become
a master of your
Windows computer, our
Explore section is the place
to come. Each month we
pack it with tutorials covering
a range of subjects suitable
for all levels of expertise.
This month Christian
explains how to do more with
your email, Dan shows you
how to get smartphone-style
notifications on your PC and
Alan shows you how to
improve the reliability of your
Windows 8 machine with the
help of Reliability Monitor.
Theres never been a better
time to see how your PC can
make your life easier!
Adam Ifans Editor-in-chief
adam.ifans@futurenet.com
YOUR DISC SOFTWARE
26 Master Windows 8s
Reliability Monitor
40 Convert video file

formats with VLC
30 Message and call friends

using Viber for Windows
44 Create your own

custom shortcuts
34 Get instant notifications

on your PC with Growl
48 Control your PC
with Twitter
38 Watch classic movies

for free with BitTorrent
50 Discover the best

Gmail power tips

<L
$O'[V\
Reliability Monitor gives

you peace of mind that
your PC hasnt become
infected with malware
7WSDIP
Our promise to you

Get more from Windows, software and all your favourite sites
Packed with informative tutorials
Get more from your favourite websites
Every issue, we guarantee to pack the

magazine with great tutorials teaching
you all the best things you can do with your PC.
Each article features step-by-step instructions
to make learning new skills fast and enjoyable.
We all have our list of favourite sites

but often we miss out on great features
because theyre difcult to use or hidden from
sight. Well show you how to do more online,
for a more satisfying web life.
Customise Windows to work your way
Use our full software to try new things
We all know how to do the basics but

getting the most from Windows isnt
always easy. Our dedication to the operating
system means you get the very best tips and
tricks for all versions of Windows.
Our exclusive industry access enables us

to pack your free disc with full commercial
software. From speed-up and security software
to superb photo apps, theres always
something new to try on your PC.
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
25
WorldMags.net
Investigate and improve

Windows 8s reliability
<L$O'[V\
Get to the bottom of your computing

woes and nd out whats troubling your
PC with the help of Reliability Monitor.
At a glance
SKILL LEVEL
Anyone can do it
Straightforward
Tricky in parts
TIME TAKEN
25
minutes
SUITABLE FOR
Windows 8
Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP
indows 8 is fast and reliable,

but like any program or
operating system, its not
perfect. Even at the best of times,
programs and services can still silently
crash in the background and bring your
whole computer crashing to a halt. The
problem is, if we dont know about
these problems, well always be at their
mercy. Saving your work doesnt always
ensure that its been committed to disk,
either. It may only be sent to cache of
memory to await a larger disk write. As
you can imagine, this can be incredibly
frustrating for any user.
Windows 8 does contain built-in help
options however, which comes in the
form of the Windows 8 Reliability
Monitor. This little-known utility can
save you from an unstable system by
pinpointing exactly whats gone wrong.
It also gives you peace of mind that
crashes, system foul-ups and driver
issues are causing your crashes, rather
than something malicious like malware.
Step-by-step Investigate Windows 8 reliability issues
16%673
:9LL
LVWV \FL
SLFH$'DW
HXURDLF
R\FX HO
Performance Monitor
1 Open
The Performance Monitor is buried away in the depths of
Reliability History
2 View
Click the down arrow next to Maintenance, then click View
the Control Panel. To open it, first open the Control Panel by
typing control panel into the Start screen. Then click System and
Security. Next, click the Action Center group and expand the
Maintenance section. Here youll find the necessary option to
view your PCs reliability.
reliability history. This creates a report using the reliability data

stored. Towards the top youll see a graph that gives an indication
of your PCs overall reliability. Underneath that is a chart of the
different kinds of problem that are keeping your personal
computer from scoring a perfect 10.
26
WorldMags.net
Explore
Master the reliability monitor
WorldMags.net
Jargon buster!
Service
Software that runs in
the background and
handles events that
would normally
disrupt your apps.
view
3 Weekly
To get a fuller overview of system reliability,
details
4 Event
Critical events are ones that cause internal
click the Weeks option at the top. You can scroll

back and forth over the weeks with the left and
right arrow keys. To see associated data press
[Enter] and a list of all the day or week problems
appears in the lower pane.
failures or complete crashes. Theyre listed in the

top three Failure lines of the data table under the
graph. Click on weeks when these occurred to see
what they were. Double-click on an entry to see the
technical details.
Reliability Monitor
Special recording
software unique
to Windows 8 that
keeps a full history
of updates, software
recongurations and
software failures,
along with any
other crashes and
unexpected events
that occur.
Anonymous report
A message about
a software crash
thats sent direct to
Microsoft.
6 Windows
Update issues
System updates should
happen without any
input, but if it fails, you
usually wont be any
the wiser. To learn more,
click on weeks that are
highlighted with a
yellow triangle. If there
are any Failed Windows
Update entries, make a
note reminding yourself
to update each one
manually later.
for solutions
5 Check
Windows can help solve issues by accessing
its online database of previous problems and issues.
To seek out a possible answer, click the option
Check for a solution in the Action column of the
relevant entry in the lower pane. Theres no
guarantee that Windows will fix it, but its certainly
worth a try nonetheless.
troublesome drivers
7 Update
Its likely that as you step back through the reliability history
youll find certain drivers that keep crashing on you. Sometimes
these crashes cause instability to your system. This can also
happen with browser plug-ins Adobe Flash Player is a favourite
for this. If youve not updated such software recently, add it to
your list of updates for later.
info messages
8 Investigate
Select an entry where there are blue I symbols in the data.
As well as telling you about failures and warnings, Windows
Reliability Monitor also tells you about things that have gone well.
You can also see how the system and applications have been
updated. Often, these updates happen silently, so this is the
notification of any success.
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
27
WorldMags.net
all problems
9 Show
At the bottom, youll find the option to view all problem
reports. This produces a long list of all the problems Windows and
installed software have recently encountered. You can easily sort
this list by clicking a column title. By checking this list you might
find an anonymous report has been sent to Microsoft to help its
programmers with system stability.
all solutions
11 Check
To see if there are any solutions to the collection of
available solutions
10 Identify
In the list of problem reports, youll see solutions listed
for certain applications and drivers. Find one and right-click it,
then select View solution. Reliability Monitor will then access any
information regarding the problem. It might provide instructions
for you to follow, or give you a link to download a more recent
version of the application.
crash settings
12 Set
When a program fails, Windows starts looking for a solution,
problems your PC has encountered to date, click Check for

solutions to all problems on the main Reliability Monitor screen.
Windows may need to send anonymous information to Microsoft
to get solutions. If this is the case, click Send information to
receive any available answers.
but this isnt always appropriate. Click the Back button in

Reliability Monitor and open the Maintenance section. Click
Settings to set default behaviour for crashes. Its best to check for
solutions as you go, but you can get Windows to ask you what to
do when it crashes as well.
update applications
13 Auto
Its possible for installed software to update itself. To test
the computer
14 Search
Finally, if you need to update Windows, its time to do so.
this, open the application you want to update in this case, well
use Firefox. Click the Firefox button and allow your cursor to rest
on the Help menu. Select About. Its usual for the About pane in
apps to either auto-update the software or to provide an update
button for you to use.
Click the back button at the top-left of the screen, then click
Windows Update on the bottom-left. Next, click Install Updates
you may have to reboot afterwards, too. Be sure to check
Reliability Monitor often for any failures especially with new
updates to keep your PC looking healthy. Q
28
WorldMags.net
WorldMags.net
Windows 7 Help & Advice is an internationally licensed title and is
exported to another 22 countries.
Future Publishing Ltd, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW
Tel: 01225 442244 Fax: 01225 732275
Email: windowsmagazine@futurenet.com
Web: www.facebook.com/windowsmag
EDITORIAL
In the next issue...
Editor-in-chief Adam Ifans

Deputy editor Nick Odantzis
New media editor Simon Arblaster
Reviews editor Matt Hanson
ON SAL
Frid E
22 Noveay
mber
2013
ART/PRODUCTION
Art editor Fraser McDermott
Deputy art editor Mat Gartside
Managing editor Catherine Emma Ellis
Production assistant Dom Reseigh-Lincoln
CONTRIBUTORS
Editorial Dan Grabham, Christian Hall, Henry Winchester,
Mark Wilson
Design Cormac Jordan
Photography Joseph Branston, Dave Caudrey, Philip Sowels,
Thinkstock.com, iStockphoto.com, Gettyimages.com
SENIOR MANAGEMENT
Group art director Steve Gotobed
Group senior editor Paul Newman
Head of computing Ian Robson
Managing director of technology, film and games
Nial Ferguson
Creative director Bob Abbott
Editorial director Jim Douglas
ADVERTISING
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Senior sales executive sally.mclachlan@futurenet.com
Account manager tamzyn.young@futurenet.com
CIRCULATION AND MARKETING
Guide to making your

PC run faster than ever!
Group marketing manager philippa.newman@futurenet.com

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Distributed in the UK by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry
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Next issue on sale 22 November 2013
A member of the Audit

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Catch up with us on
Future Publishing Limited 2013. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may
be used or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. Future
Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales.
The registered oce of Future Publishing Limited is at Beauford Court, 30
Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW. All information contained in this magazine is for
information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press.
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WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
29
WorldMags.net
Message and call

friends for free!
<L'*UKV\
Viber for Windows is a powerful

messaging app that enables you to text
and call your favourite people.
At a glance
SKILL LEVEL
Anyone can do it
Straightforward
Tricky in parts
TIME TAKEN
30
minutes
SUITABLE FOR
Windows 8
Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP
iber is a terric way to chat

to your friends online.
Designed predominantly for
mobile phones, theres now also
a Windows version of the app. In this
tutorial, well show you how to install
it and start chatting to your contacts
within seconds.
There is a caveat to Viber for
Windows, though youll need to
install it on your smartphone rst
(but well explain about this later on).
This feature is required because it
uses your phone number to identify
you (including texting you
a conrmation) it also relies on the
contacts you have on your phone.
The advantage of this is that you
dont have to fa around adding
contacts afresh, but the downside is
that a smartphone is a prerequisite.
It can, however, be of any type
Windows Phone, Nokia, iOS and
BlackBerry are all supported.
16%673
<FQWDFWKX9
UH\
QVWL\PUK
QDJ\QVW
9I:QGZ
Step-by-step Get to grips with Viber chat
the app
1 Install
Install the desktop app from www.viber.com. After youve
run the installer, youll see this screen appear. Were going to
assume you dont have Viber installed on your phone, therefore
were going to click No on the screen pictured above. Viber will
also show you a variety of links that enable you to download the
app for each platform.
30
it on your phone
2 Put
You can click the relevant link to download the app for your
smartphone or, if youd rather do it on your device, just search for
Viber in your App Store, Store or Play app depending on what
mobile platform youre using. Once youve done this, follow the
instructions on your device to set Viber up. Tell it your phone
number, and enter the code from the text you receive.
WorldMags.net
Explore
Message and call friends using Viber
WorldMags.net
your number
3 Enter
On the Windows app, click Back to return to the screen we
saw in step 1 from here, click Yes to confirm you now have Viber
on your smartphone. Keep in mind, you will need to have set it up
on your phone before you do this next stage. Youll then be asked
to enter your phone number, just as you did on the phone itself.
To proceed, click Continue.
ahoy
5 Contacts
Note the navigation on the left. Were in the Contacts tab
here, so you can see your Viber-using contacts are automatically
synchronised from your phone. The top button on the left takes
you to the Conversations screen, but were going to go to it
automatically by double-clicking a contact you can make
a voice or video call using the purple buttons, too.
check
4 Identity
Once again, Viber needs to check who you are, so it will text
your phone once more with a code that you will then need to
type into the box on the next screen. Check the box below to say
you agree to the terms and conditions (click the blue links if you
want to read them as well as the licence agreement). Finally, click
Enter Viber.
to chat
6 Time
Simply type into the box at the bottom of the screen to
begin a conversation with a contact. Whats more, these chats are
synchronised with your phones, so you can immediately pick up
from where you leave off at any time. You can also add pictures
and emoticons to the conversation using the buttons at the
bottom of the window.
a phone
7 Dial
Calling contacts is as easy as using those purple buttons in
thats it!
8 And
That concludes our quick guide to Viber for Windows we
the Conversations view, while you can also use the numeric
keypad if you wish. Calls between Viber users are free, though if
youre running it on your smartphone be aware that it will use
large chunks of your mobile data plan and might end up costing
you extra. It is easier and less costly to call over Wi-Fi networks.
hope you get a lot from it. Apps such as this are great for keeping
in touch. If you have problems calling, click the Settings button in
the bottom-left of the window and go to Audio and Video. Check
your microphone and webcam have been detected, though
Viber can be a little temperamental in this regard. Q
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
31
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
33
WorldMags.net
Get instant
notifications
<L'*UKV\
Growl for Windows is a powerful free

tool that helps you stay on top of your
emails, downloads and more.
At a glance
SKILL LEVEL
Anyone can do it
Straightforward
Tricky in parts
TIME TAKEN
45
minutes
SUITABLE FOR
Windows 8
Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP
LISTEN
You can choose
the default sound
that Growls
notications will
chime with when
they pop up.
You can also
mute them all
if you want.
martphone users will be used to

notications messages that tell you
when certain things happen, such as
when someone sends you an email, replies to
you on Facebook or mentions you in a Tweet.
Wouldnt it be great if your PC did the same?
Originally designed for Apples OS X
operating system, Growl is a notication
tool that lets you know when things happen
on your PC. Its very useful youll nd out
immediately when an email arrives, or when
a le has nished downloading. Growl isnt
intrusive though, and can be set up exactly
how you want.
As well as downloading and
installing the Growl application
from www.growlforwindows.com,
youll also need to download apps
16%673
to work with Growl from www.
,\QVW:QGZ
growlforwindows.com/gfw/apps.
%ORQ*UX\
aspx. These are the plugins that
FODHI
link Growl to popular applications
:QGZ\VEORQ
such as iTunes, Facebook or
L*UQRLLFDLQ
Gmail, and enable them to alert
you through Growl.
Step-by-step Set up Growl for Windows
your settings
1 Adjust
Once youve installed Growl, right-click its icon in the
notification area and select Settings. You will then see this
window, where you can decide how Growl works. All the options
here are explained on the opposite page, but essentially it lets
you choose when Growl runs, and what it should do when it
detects that youre away from your PC.
34
Applications tab
2 The
Now click the Applications icon at the top of the window
and youll see this screen. Its blank now, but this is where the
Growl apps will appear when youve installed them (these are
the plugins I mentioned about in the introduction above). These
enable Growl to interact with other applications on your system.
Ill show you how some of them work very shortly.
WorldMags.net
Explore
Get instant notifications
WorldMags.net
NAVIGATE
This is Growls Settings
window. Find your way
around its various
options using the icons
at the top of the screen.
Jargon buster!
1RWLFDWLRQ
A pop-up alert that
appears on your PCs
display for a few
seconds. Growl can
even be congured
exactly how you
want it, so pop-ups
can appear where
you choose.
Plugin
A small application
that works inside
another and
provides extra
functions. Growl uses
these inside other
applications so it can
work with them.
AUTOSTART
As well as turning Growl
on and o, you can also
decide whether it should
run as soon as your
system starts up.
1RWLFDWLRQDUHD
The zone to the left
of the clock in the
taskbar. It provides
status updates from
Windows plus
other third-party
apps and enables
you to change
some settings
FULLSCREEN
You can disable notications
if youre running something
in full screen, which is very
useful if youre watching
streamed TV or a DVD.
IDLE
If you dont use your PC for
a while, you can tell Growl
to consider you away. Growl
will save missed notications
until you return.
your design
3 Choose
Growls notifications can appear in variety of ways, and
you can choose from an assortment of designs. The Displays tab
lets you decide how your notifications should look. I prefer the
Smokestack design, which displays notifications in smart, dark
grey boxes. You can also choose where on your display you want
your alerts to appear.
it on
4 Pass
Growl can pass notifications to other computers if youre not
at your desk. Say youre waiting for something big to download
and you want to receive a notification on your phone when youre
away from your PC. No problem just ask Growl to send a note to
your email address. Check Forward notifications to other
computers to set this up.
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
35
WorldMags.net
an email
5 Send
Click the green + icon at the bottom of the window, and
in your details
6 Fill
Enter your email address. The final check box here is crucial,
this menu will appear. Here Ive chosen to choose to forward

notifications to an email account, but you can also forward to
an iPhone via the Prowl app, or via the Toasty app if you have
a Windows smartphone. That way, you can see notifications on
your phone instead of your PC! Its clever stuff.
because it tells Growl whether you always want notifications

forwarded to your email, or only if your PC is idle. I recommend
choosing the latter option to stop your inbox being flooded!
You can also decide to only forward notifications above a certain
priority level (all notifications can be given priorities).
iTunes with Growl

7 Use
You can make Growl even better by using it with other apps.
Here Ive downloaded the iTunes plugin. Once youve installed
a plugin, it appears in the Applications tab. This particular plugin
tells you when the track changes while youre listening to music in
iTunes. As you can see, you can alter settings for this notification,
including the priority we mentioned in step 6.
more apps
9 Try
Other installed apps also appear in the Applications tab.
This is Trowl, an app that can notify you of messages you receive
on Twitter. Note in the settings shown here that Ive also asked
this Notification not to be forwarded to another device or email
account. There are also more actions you can ask to be notified
of in this app, such as when you get sent a spam tweet.
36
notifications
8 See
Youve probably noticed that Ive given this alert the
Emergency priority, although its probably a very low priority in
truth! Your notifications will appear in your preferred location as
the track changes (mine pop up in the top right corner of the
screen), and will use your chosen design (Ive picked the dark
grey Smokescreen option).
experimenting
10 Start
Now that you understand the basics of Growl, the best
thing to do is download some of the add-in apps, explore their
features and experiment to find the notification settings that are
best for you. If youre anything like me, youll probably configure
too many notifications at first, but before too long youll be
wondering how you managed without them! Q
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Watch classic
movies for free
<L
V\
You dont have to search eBay for your favourite old

lms many are available to download for absolutely
nothing thanks to some great internet libraries.
At a glance
SKILL LEVEL
Anyone can do it
Straightforward
Tricky in parts
TIME TAKEN
20
minutes
SUITABLE FOR
Windows 8
Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP
ou hear a lot about illegal

lesharing and how torrent
services are to blame, but
its perfectly possible to use them
legally. BitTorrent is a legal lesharing
service, and is one of the most
ecient ways to get les from the
internet you just have to know
where to look. Whether its books,
music or video, there are hundreds
of depositories lled with legal
downloads for you to enjoy.
If youre into classic movies, theres
no better place to start than www.
publicdomaintorrents.info. This
website hosts content thats in the
public domain typically because
the original copyright has expired
and is therefore free and legal for
anyone to download. All movies on
the site are AVI les encoded in DivX
a standard codec for convenientlysized video les and most of them
are around 600MB in size.
+616%673
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\KLQQ
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3HQH!'HFWH
Step-by-step Configure uTorrent to download legal movies
torrent client
1 Install
The BitTorrent protocol is fast and efficient because it uses
many computers (a swarm) to download lots of file fragments
simultaneously. Youll also need a piece of software called a client
to assemble these fragments. BitTorrent has its own official client,
but there are lots of alternatives. These all work in the same way,
but we like uTorrent (www.utorrent.com) as its so easy to use.
38
port forwarding
2 Allow
You need to use your routers admin panel to set up a
firewall rule for uTorrent, otherwise itll be blocked. You need to
choose a port number (within a range defined by your router) and
set the inbound and outbound status options to Allow. You need
to enter the primary and secondary DNS settings of your ISP in
the appropriate fields, too.
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Watch classic movies for free
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protocol encryption
3 Enable
Some ISPs interfere with filesharing to reduce demands on
simultaneous connections
4 Tweak
Click Preferences > Bandwidth to set limits for how your
their infrastructure, which causes download speeds to slow. To

avoid this, uTorrent has an encryption protocol to prevent ISPs
from identifying BitTorrent traffic. Go to Options > Preferences >
BitTorrent. Click Protocol encryption and enable outgoing
encryption, then check Allow incoming legacy connections.
BitTorrent client behaves in a swarm. You can define a maximum

download and upload rate and choose a maximum number of
connections. A higher number should mean a faster download,
but too many can crash your router. Check online for more
information about your specific make and model of router.
preferences
5 Other
If you get the downloading bug, you might want to set a
download cap on your torrent client so that you dont exceed the
monthly download limit set by your ISP. This is easy in uTorrent
just click Preferences > Transfer cap and enter a value (in
gigabytes) that youre comfortable with. You can change this at
any time, depending on how much or how little you download.
a movie
7 Download
Now youve familiarised yourself with uTorrent, youre ready
to grab a free film. Find something that interests you at www.
publicdomaintorrents.com and click on the link. Scroll down and
choose a file format (weve chosen DivX AVI). Click the now
downloaded file to open it with uTorrent (you can change the file
destination or change the name if you want to) and click OK.
downloads
6 Schedule
If you want to set up your computer so that torrenting
behaves in a certain way at a certain time of day, try using the
Scheduler option. Youll see a green grid of time blocks that
reflects that your uTorrent account is set to operate normally at all
times. Click on each square to change this status to either
Limited, Off or Seeding only.
the show!
8 Enjoy
You should find the file downloaded to your chosen
destination on your hard drive. The torrent file will also be
downloaded somewhere, but you can delete it. The files from
www.publicdomaintorrents.info are in AVI format and will play
using a variety of media players, including Windows Media Player
and VLC. Double-click the AVI file, sit back and enjoy! Q
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
39
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/HKW
Convert video files

for any device
<L&LVL+V\
VLC is one of the best free video players around, but its
also a powerful conversion tool that can deal with almost
any le type for your movies.
At a glance
SKILL LEVEL
Anyone can do it
Straightforward
Tricky in parts
TIME TAKEN
30
minutes
SUITABLE FOR
Windows 8
Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP
LC media player is often

called the Swiss army knife
of video players because it
gives you such precise control of
nearly every aspect of video
playback. For example, you can
change the speed of subtitles, tell
the audio to play a bit behind the
video to compensate for syncing
problems, or change the brightness
and contrast if a video appears too
dark. Amazingly, its not just a great
media player; its also fully equipped
with everything you need to convert
video les.
Because VLC is open source
software, its been added to and
improved upon by a community of
skilled and passionate programmers.
Youll also nd a fantastic array of
skins and extensions for VLC that will
ensure youll want to keep using it
long term. In this tutorial, well walk
you through the main features.
+616%673
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7RO!(IHFWHF)OU
L6QU]DLW
QQWRIH
XLUD
Step-by-step Change the format of a video file with VLC
and customise
1 Install
Begin by installing VLC media player from your free cover
media
2 Locate
When youre ready to convert a video file, click on Media
disc or by downloading it from www.videolan.org/vlc. Its a highly

streamlined video player, so if you want a more snazzy look
instead, try installing one of the many skins available from
www.videolan.org. Choose the Skins link and follow the
instructions to get one.
from the top menu and select Convert/Save. Then, in the Open
Media window, click the Add button and browse to the location
of the video file you want to convert. When youre ready, click the
Convert/Save button again. Theres also an option to add
a subtitles file if you have one.
40
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Convert video files with VLC
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file
3 Convert
Finally, select the destination folder, give a filename, select
the desired video profile and click Start. By default, VLC media
player comes packed with a few profiles that can convert your
video to most of the widely used audio and video formats. You
can edit, delete or create new profiles using the three buttons
located next to the Select Profile drop-down list.
a new profile
4 Create
Under the Encapsulation tab, select a file type to convert to
(in this example, were using MP4/MOV). Now, under the Video
Codec tab, pick the MPEG4 codec, choose a bit rate and frame
rate, then click the Save button. You can also define a particular
ratio to export your converted file as ideal if you dont like the
original format the film was in.
parameters
5 Resolution
You will need a bit of prior knowledge when choosing the
and play back

6 Convert
Hit Start to begin the conversion. Youll see the main VLC
best resolutions to output your file, which depends entirely on

the destination device you want to use. Here, we want whats best
for playback on an iPad, utilising full screen mode. Enter the
details in the Width and Height fields and your converted file will
be forced into this ratio (it may crop the original).
player bar move along as the file is converted and downloaded to

your destination folder. When complete, locate that folder and
double-click to play. You may still have Windows Media Player set
as your default player, so if you want to use VLC right-click the file,
then choose Open with > VLC media player.
watermarks
7 Add
To add a watermark when converting a video (typically
a home movie), all you need to do is navigate to Tools > Effects
and Filters. On the Video Effects tab, you need to click on the
Vout/Overlay sub-tab. Alternatively, you can add a logo on the
next sub-tab (Logos) you can even select the transparency,
using the slider.
on your tablet
8 Play
Weve now converted the file and can play it back on our PC.
However, we chose a resolution suitable for use with an iPad.
To get the file onto an iPad, open iTunes, connect your iPad and
select File > Add File to Library. Youll need to sync your iPad with
iTunes to port the film across. You can then play it back with the
Videos app or use the free VLC iPad app from the App Store. Q
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41
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/HKW
Create your own

custom shortcuts
<L'*UKV\
Make your PC your own with this app

that helps you create shortcuts to suit
your every computer-based need.
At a glance
SKILL LEVEL
Anyone can do it
Straightforward
Tricky in parts
TIME TAKEN
45
minutes
SUITABLE FOR
Windows 8
Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP
utoHotkey is a utility that

helps you develop specic
shortcuts for oft-used
actions on your PC. It means you
can automate plenty of previously
tiresome processes and establish a
way of working thats right for you.
In this tutorial were going to show
you how you can automate
launching a particular app or a
keyboard shortcut to open a new
email. The potential on oer is
almost endless, and you can record
mouse clicks and ask for user input
when youre more used to the app.
You can also use AutoHotkey to
change [Windows] key combos
should you nd them unnecessary.
Its true that AutoHotkey is a
potentially complex app, but well
help you with the basics. You can
also discover more about how it
works using the useful help les
included with the app as well.
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:$FYDLFPQ
KDFOVXHW
PHLL
QDFQG
Step-by-step Create your first scripts for AutoHotkey
it
1 Install
The first thing youll need to do is to install the AutoHotkey
a text document
2 Create
Now right-click on the desktop, go to New and select Text
app on your system after youve downloaded it from www.

autohotkey.com or from your free cover disc. This process is
extremely simple, but resist the temptation to run the application
from the installer and instead click Exit to finish the set-up. This is
because we want to walk you through the whole process.
Document from the menu. Now, click to rename it weve used

the name test then change the extension to AHK. Not got any
file extensions showing? Go to the Control Panel, and select
Appearance and Personalization and select Folder Options. Clear
the Hide extensions for known file types box, then click OK.
44
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Create custom shortcuts with AutoHotkey
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edit your script

3 Now
Believe it or not, youve now created a simple script file for
a task
4 Add
AutoHotkey commands consist of the hotkey you want to
AutoHotkey it really is little more than a text file which you then
add a series of commands to. To continue, right-click the file and
choose Edit script from the menu that appears. Were now going
to add some text into the file so AutoHotkey knows exactly what
tasks we want it to perform for us.
use, followed by the command you want it to perform. Here weve

used #, which is the [Windows] key believe it or not, and a space
which is well, you can guess that one. Then there are also two
colons ::, followed by the command itself. Run is the most
common one used by AutoHotkey. Here, we want to open a URL.
it
5 Save
Now save your task keep in mind that you can leave
Notepad open so you can make more edits as you progress. There
are plenty of things you can ask AutoHotkey to do, as youll see,
but we thought this was a simple enough thing to get started
with. Next you want to double-click your task on the desktop (or
wherever you decide to save your script in future.
your keys!
7 Press
Now its time to use your script press your chosen
keyboard shortcut and see what happens. We pressed
[Windows]+[Space] as we commanded in our simple script and
AutoHotkey launched our default browser and went to www.
windows.com, exactly as wed asked. And theres plenty more we
can show you, too.
your script
6 Reload
Youll notice that the AutoHotkey icon now appears in the
Notifications area. You may have to click the upward arrow if its
not showing by default. Now, weve only just double-clicked our
script to launch it, but if you do make any edits to the script and
save them, youll need to choose Reload this script by rightclicking the AutoHotkey icon.
apps
8 Launching
Now we want to ask AutoHotkey to launch Microsoft Word
for us. We need to get the full filename for the application we
want to launch, so here weve found the Microsoft Office folder
within Program Files. Default Windows applications such as
Windows Media Player (wmplayer.exe) or Calculator (calc.exe) can
just be referred to by the name of their exe file without a path.
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
45
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the script
9 Write
Now copy the file path from the address bar and paste it
into your script, adding the filename at the end (here its winword.
exe). As you can see, weve chosen [Windows]+[W] for our
keyboard shortcut. So since weve made some changes, weve
reloaded the script in the way weve shown you before, by
right-clicking the icon.
an email
11 Write
As well as what weve already taught you, the mailto:
the script
10 Execute
Now run the script using your newly-chosen keyboard
shortcut. As you can see, Word has launched (although we typed
the Hello! it still wasnt automatic). Now youve got these couple
of basics in place, we can start to write some more complex
scripts with multiple commands to get your computer working to
suit your needs and requirements.
characters
12 Getting
One of the things you might have to do is assign more
command can also be used to open your default email

application and open a new email auto-addressed to a chosen
contact. This could be very useful if youre always emailing the
same person. Note that it doesnt actually email the person you
still have to write and send the mail as normal.
unusual commands for the [CTRL] key and other keys (see the full
list at www.autohotkey.com/docs/Hotkeys.htm). To do this, the
easiest way is to use the Windows Character Map and copy the
characters from there or from that web link. Were going to use
^ character in our next script this one refers to the [CTRL] key.
commands
13 Combining
Now were ready to write our multi-command script. Weve
thats it!
14 And
And there you go you now know how to use AutoHotkey
deliberately chosen [CTRL]+[A] so you can see what effect it has

on your system (if this script is running, you cant [CTRL]+[A] to
select files in Windows Explorer!) Here, weve combined several
commands in one to do this, put everything on separate lines,
ensuring the shortcut and the final return are on their own lines.
to launch various apps on your system and perform basic tasks.

There are far more complex things you can do with the
application though, including automating the typing of phrases
you might type often or running a series of mouse clicks without
you having to do them. Now start experimenting! Q
46
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Control your PC
remotely with Twitter
<L&LVL+V\
You might be used to using Twitter to talk to friends

and make your opinions known to the world, but did
you know you can use it as a user interface, too?
At a glance
SKILL LEVEL
Anyone can do it
Straightforward
Tricky in parts
TIME TAKEN
15
minutes
SUITABLE FOR
Windows 8
Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP
witter is now right up with

there with Facebook as one
of the worlds best and most
popular social networks, but it has a
power of its own that goes way
beyond just tweeting for fun. The
clever developers at CodePlex have
managed to create a tiny-but-mighty
application called TweetMyPC that
allows you to control and access your
computer from anywhere in the
world by simply sending a tweet
with a special command as its
content. You might be used to other
kinds of software to remote control
your personal computer, but with
this tool you can make it even more
simple and convenient tweeting
from a smartphone or tablet, for
example. Unlike many other remote
access programs, such as VNC, an IP
address is not a necessary for
TweetMyPC to work. Lets see what
you can do with it.
+616%673
,\WXWG\
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REUWXWG
Step-by-step Tweet instructions to your PC
the latest build

1 Get
To install TweetMyPC, go to http://tweetmypc.codeplex.
com. Switch to the Download section and download the latest
TweetMyPC file (version 4.0.4). Download it to your computer and
follow the installation instructions. An older build (version 3.0) is
available on the same downloads page, but we recommend using
the latest iteration on Windows 7 and 8 machines.
48
a second account
2 Get
If you dont have a second Twitter account just for
TweetMyPC, then go to www.twitter.com and create another
account. Make your tweets private by going to Settings > Security
& privacy > Tweet privacy and Protect my tweets. After youve
finished creating and configuring the Twitter account, open up
TweetMyPC from your desktop.
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Control your PC remotely with Twitter
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your info
3 Enter
The main window of TweetMyPC will now pop into
PIN
4 Enter
When you click on the Sign in with Twitter button at the
existence fill in the required data to link the program to your

Twitter account. You dont have to use one, but if you dont enter
a username and password for a usable Gmail account, then useful
commands like getprocesslist, getfile and getfilelist cannot be
used in the application.
top, your browser will be redirected to the Twitter website for

authentication. Click Authorize and youll then be shown a
unique PIN that youll need to enter on the pop-up that appears
on your desktop. Enter the PIN and hit OK. When youre done,
click the Save and Hide button to finally activate TweetMyPC.
notification area
5 The
When signing in, one of the options that appears is Show in
control
6 Take
Now its time to tell our PC to do something with a simple
notification area, located just under the Sign in with Twitter

button. This is selected by default so theres no need to change it.
This is handy as itll add TweetMyPC to your Windows notification
area. Youll get messages related to it here, but if you double-click
the icon you can bring up the main program window, too.
tweet. From another device, use the Twitter account thats been
linked to TweetMyPC to perform a command. Lets start with
something simple, such as ip, which will display the IP address of
the PC youre connected to. The results will then show up as
another tweet on your Twitter timeline.
controls
7 Advanced
Next we can try powerstate, which is a useful tweet that will
tweeting
8 Happy
And thats it you can now control your PC with your Twitter
display the current power state of a PC. This also tells you the
battery percentage of a laptop, as well as the online status. Now
try getprocesslist (Gmail users only), which will list all the running
programs on your PC. The difference here is that the results are
sent as an email, rather than a tweet.
account! Youll find a full list of commands at http://bit.ly/d1Tzz6.

Some of these commands include the ability to shutdown a PC by
tweeting shutdown and even the ability to update the wallpaper
on your machine from something youve found on the internet,
just by tweeting wallpaper followed by a URL. Q
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
49
WorldMags.net
Discover the best

power tips for Gmail
<L&LVL+V\
Get more from your messages with

our collection of the nest tips, tricks
and tweaks for Gmail.
At a glance
SKILL LEVEL
Anyone can do it
Straightforward
Tricky in parts
TIME TAKEN
20
minutes
SUITABLE FOR
Windows 8
Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP
ne of the biggest dierences

between Gmail and other
email services is the way you
organise your mail. Others let you
sort your messages into folders, but
Gmail uses labels. For example, if you
create a label called Photos, then
apply it to messages with pictures
attached, you can click the label to
see all those emails. So far, its exactly
the same as folders.
The beauty of labels, however,
is that you can add another one
Veras Birthday, for instance. Now
you eectively have two folders
doing dierent things, but the email
is in both of them at once. Even
better, you can send the email to the
Archive, and it will still show up when
you click on either of the labels.
The innovative label system is just
one of many amazing things youll
discover as you read this tutorial, so
dont delay lets get cracking!
Step-by-step Do more with Gmail
the adverts
1 De-personalise
Those personalised adverts that pick up on words used in
your emails and appear at the top of your email list are pretty
annoying, arent they? Lets stop them scanning our messages.
Click the Why this ad? text, then click the Ad Preferences
Manager link. On the left, click on Opt out. Now Google will
stop examining your emails to personalise ads for you.
50
rid of them altogether

2 Get
If you want to get of the advertising strip above your inbox
messages completely, its easy to do. Click the small cog icon on
the right-hand side of the page, then select the Settings option.
Now choose the Web Clips panel and untick the box at the top.
Click on the Inbox link on the left again and youll be able to see
your new ad-free inbox. Much nicer!
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Power tips for Gmail
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comfortable
3 Get
Gmail offers three basic ways of viewing your email:
Comfortable, Cozy and Compact. You can try these out now by
clicking on the cog icon on the right-hand side and selecting each
option in turn from underneath the heading Display density.
Choose the best one for you, based on your eyesight and the
screen size of your device.
into Settings
5 Delve
Now lets take a look under the hood and look at Gmails
options and settings in more depth. Click the cog icon, then select
Settings. The first tab is General. Here you can change the display
language of Gmail, alter the number of emails that appear per
page, and choose whether replies go to one person or all those
on an email by default.
star general
7 Four
Further down in General Settings, we come to the Gmail
stars. By default, theres just one star available, which you can use
to highlight particularly important emails, or ones containing
tasks you need to do. If youd like to add more stars, drag them
from the Not in use section to In use. There are also three preset
groups of stars you can choose.
good looking
4 Hey,
Gmail offers themes for those of us who want to brighten
up our desktops. If you fancy a new look, click the cog icon again,
then select Themes to bring up a list of colours to choose from,
as you can see in the picture above. Click a theme to try it out.
The first theme (Light) is the standard one, if you wish to change
back at any time.
view
6 Conversation
Also in the General Settings tab is the Conversation View
setting. We recommend you leave this option turned on. Its a very
powerful way of following the thread of an email conversation,
with replies from everyone all running down the screen in order.
This makes it much easier to keep track of whos said what when
lots of emails are being fired back and forth!
galaxy of stars
8 A
Dont forget to click Save changes to activate the stars once
youve finished tweaking your settings. In this example, weve
chosen the All stars preset. When you want to highlight a specific
email with a star, just click on the blank star on its left. Keep on
clicking to change the star to whatever you like. If you stop, then
click the star, it will become blank again.
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
51
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I have your autograph?

9 Can
The last parts of the General Settings tab that were going
labels everywhere
10 Labels,
The unique label system is so important in Gmail, theres a
to look at are the Signature box and Vacation Responder. The

Signature box enables you to create a short message that appears
at the bottom of every email you send, while the Vacation
Responder lets people know youre away from your email by
sending an automated message.
whole tab in the Settings area to help you manage it. Here you
can create new labels for your emails, and decide which ones
appear in the left-hand panel in your email view. You can also
get here by clicking the Manage Labels link, which appears at
the bottom of that panel.
a new label
11 Create
You can create new labels in two ways: either in the Settings
with the Inbox

12 Get
You may think your Gmail inbox is just like any other a
area, or by clicking on the Create new label link on the left-hand

side of the main email view. Type in a name for your new label
and decide whether you want to nest it under an existing label.
For example, you might want to organise Photos of Barcelona
under a general Photos label.
place where all your email is sent automatically so that you can
read and sort them when you have the time. Think again. Gmail
has a new system of tabs for the inbox, whereby emails that fit
within specific categories are automatically placed into the
relevant tab, resulting in less work for you!
tabs
13 Activate
If youre not already using a tabbed inbox (you have just a
your tabs
14 Choose
When you select this option, a new window will appear,
single inbox that appears when you log into your Gmail account),
dont worry you can easily activate this option to try it out. To
get started, just hit the cog button in the top right corner and
select Configure inbox, which appears just above Settings on the
drop-down menu.
allowing you to customise which tabs you see in your inbox.

Primary is switched on by default, but you can also add tabs
to categorise your social emails, promotional emails and more.
Check the tick box next to ones you want to activate and then
hit Save to confirm your selection.
52
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Explore
Power tips for Gmail
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hooked up
15 Getting
Back in the Settings area, under Accounts, you can connect
your Gmail account to other email accounts you might use, such
as Hotmail, or the email account provided by your ISP. You can
import mail if you permanently move to Gmail, or Check mail
from other accounts to pull in mail thats sent to any of your
other email addresses.
power of the filter

17 The
Click Create a New Filter to decide what Gmail should do
tips
16 Filter
The Filters tab shows a list of all the filters that are applied
to your email. Filters can automatically label mail as it comes in,
archive it, mark it as read, delete it and so forth. Click Create a
new filter, then enter the criteria you want. Leave fields blank if
you dont care what they contain (for example, leave From blank
if you dont want to filter emails from a specific person).
chat
18 Chit
Gmail has a neat text-based chat function built into the
with emails that fulfil all the criteria youve set. Weve decided
that any email that contains the word Photos should skip the
inbox and be sent to the Archive immediately instead. Weve also
chosen to give these emails the label Photos, mark them as read
and ensure that they will never be sent to the spam pile.
main screen, which you can use to talk to other Gmail users when
theyre online. Click the Chat tab in Settings. Here you can turn it
on or off, decide whether to save your chat history or not, and you
have the option of only allowing people youve pre-approved to
start chats with you.
with labels
19 Fun
Now were going to take a closer look at Gmails brilliant
Gmail
20 Enjoy
Congratulations youve made it to the end. As you can see,
label system. Click on the tiny arrow next to a label on the left side
panel to bring up a host of options. Here you can colour the label,
change its name, remove sub-labels and so forth. If you have a lot
of labels, colour-coding them can make life a whole lot easier,
letting you identify each one at a glance.
Gmail has more settings, options and stuff to play with than you
can count, but if you follow our advice here and concentrate on
the ones that matter most to you, you can safely leave the rest
alone. If you get stuck at any point, just click the cog icon and
select Help from the drop-down menu. Q
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December 2013 |
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53
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3U
Z
Refresh
Windows XP
Part three in ne
xt
issue
In part two of our essential guide, well show you how to do more with your user account,
improve your PCs performance and access it from afar using Remote Desktop
USER CONTROL TIPS
You can control what other accounts can

do on your computer in a few different
ways. In this section well show you some
tweaks in the Group Policy Editor and also
show you how to restrict access to
the Control Panel, which will stop other
people from ddling about with such
important things as your System Settings.
Use Group Policy Editor
Windows XP Professional
Edition includes the excellent
Group Policy Editor, which is
a very powerful tool that enables you to
congure what permissions and access
each account has. This isnt available in
the Home Edition.
To launch the Group Policy Editor,
choose Start ! Run and enter gpedit.
msc in the Open bar. Click OK. Expand
User Conguration in the left-hand
pane. Youll see subfolders for Software
Settings, Windows Settings and
Administrative templates.
By expanding these, you can nd a
range of options to congure. Expand
Administrative templates, followed by
Control Panel. Here you can alter what
appears in the users Control Panel.
One particularly useful setting is the
one that prohibits access so you can
stop other users changing your settings.
Double-click Prohibit access to the
Control Panel in the right-hand pane.
This opens a dialog. Select Enabled and
click OK. Choose the Explain tab to
nd out more about this setting.
Each setting listed here has three
options for conguration. Not congured
means youll make no change to the
current setup. Enabled turns the setting
on, and Disabled turns it off again. Its
worth exploring the various congurations
you can make, but make sure youre fully
backed up before you do so.
54
Restrict folder access

in Group Policy Editor
Restrict hard drive access

in Group Policy Editor
In Group Policy Editor you

can restrict folder access by
disabling Simple File Sharing, then
right-clicking the folder and selecting
Properties. Move to the Security tab
and youre ready to restrict access.
Click Add and select the user you
would like to restrict. Tick the top box in
the Deny column to prevent the selected
user from accessing, viewing or modifying
the les in the folder you selected.
You can restrict access to

certain hard drives by clicking
Start ! Run, typing gpedit.msc and
pressing >Enter@. In the User Conguration
section navigate to Administrative
Templates ! Windows Explorer to select
the drives you want to restrict.
If you want to restrict access to

the Start menu, navigate to the
Start menu and Taskbar section and you
can choose from a range of restrictions.
Disabling the Run command and search
function can help prevent other users
nding system les, for example.
Note: You may nd that the changes
you make in the Group Policy Editor do
not seem to be carried out immediately.
You can force a refresh of the settings
by opening a command prompt click
Start ! Run and type cmd) and typing
gpupdate before pressing >Enter@.
If you nd that you cant access the
Group Policy Editor gpedit.msc), start by
making sure that youre logged on as an
administrator, because limited accounts
cant access this tool. Remember, Group
Policy Editor is only included with
Windows XP Professional.
STAY OUT If you dont

want certain users
getting into your folders,
you can restrict them
with Group Policy Editor
Lock down access

to the Start menu
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Cover feature
Refresh Windows XP
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Limit control panel access
Encrypt an entire folder
Before you disable any Control

Panel items, we advise creating
a shortcut for easy access.
Open the Control Panel, highlight all the
applets and drag them to your desktop to
create shortcuts. If youre using Windows
XP Home Edition, youll need to edit
the Registry to disable access to certain
Control Panel applets. Click Start ! Run,
type regedit, then click OK.
Go to HKEYBCURRENTBUSER?Software?
Microsoft?Windows?CurrentVersion?
Policies?Explorer. Click Edit ! New !
DWord Value and name it DisallowCpl.
Give it a value of 1.
To disable applets in the control panel
go to Edit ! New ! Key and name it
DisallowCpl. Click Edit ! New ! String
and name it 1. Double-click to set the
value to the name of the applet to disable
using the list in the box above.
Beneath the Control Panel tree entry
youll see four more folders that you can
use in order to customise which Control
Panel tabs are made available.
Instead of restricting other

users you could always just
encrypt important folders in
Windows XP. You need to select the folder
to encrypt by right-clicking Start !
Explore. Navigate to the directory then
right-click it and select Properties.
Click Advanced and check Encrypt
Contents to secure data. Click OK ! OK.
This will encrypt the selected folder.
Windows XP can apply this setting to just
these les, or to all the les and folders.
Youll be prompted to conrm whether
you wish to apply encryption to just the
selected folder, or to also encrypt its
subfolders. Choose the option that suits
you and then click OK. In Windows XP
all encrypted les are coloured green,
and compressed les are blue.
Note that Encrypting File System EFS)
is part of Windows XP Professional, but
not the Home Edition.
PERFORMANCE TWEAKS
There a number of ways to squeeze out

extra system performance in Windows XP,
especially for older systems. In this section
well cover a cluster of handy Registry and
hardware control tweaks.
Unload application
'//OHVRQFORVXUH
Its possible to congure

Windows XP systems with large
amounts of memory so that the core
operating system les are never paged
to virtual memory, thereby improving
responsiveness and performance.
Similarly, its also possible to force
Windows XP to automatically unload DLL
les from memory when an application
is closed. To do so, open Registry Editor,
browse to HKEYBLOCALBMACHINE?
SOFTWARE?Microsoft?Windows?
SPRING CLEAN
You can disable
unnecessary
services to free
up resources for
a faster PC
Disabling the Run command

and search function can help stop
other users nding system les
CurrentVersion?Explorer and create a
sub-key named AlwaysUnloadDLL.
Double-click the Default) value and
change it to 1.
Keep the operating

system in RAM
Disable all
unnecessary services
Open the Registry Editor and

browse to HKEYBLOCALB
MACHINE?SYSTEM?CurrentControlSet?
Control?SessionManager?Memory
Management. Change the value of the
DisablePagingExecutive DWORD value
from a 0 to a 1. This will limit the kernel
les to physical RAM, so you should only
consider applying this tweak on systems
with more than 256MB of RAM.
Reclaim memory and other

resources by streamlining
which services run on your PC. Open Task
Manager using >Ctrl@>Shift@>Esc@, and
select the Processes tab. Click the Image
Name column header once to sort
processes by name, then nd all the
svchost.exe entries. Make a note of their
size in KB. Next, youll need to open the
Services console. Click Start ! Run, and
type services.mmc. All currently installed
services are shown in alphabetical order,
along with their status, telling you
whether they are running or not.
Double-click a service and identify its
le from the Path to executable box.
Search for this le name in your favoured
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search engine to nd out more about it.

Many services rely on others to function,
so you need to verify your service isnt
required by another one you want to use.
Switch to the Dependencies tab to check
if any other services need it.
Once youve veried that you dont
need a service, change it to Manual by
double-clicking its entry and changing its
startup type. Dont disable it unless the
service could be a security risk.
After disabling the unnecessary services,
restart Windows XP. Check the memory
consumption of svchost.exe in Task
Manager again use the Commit Charge
gure to help determine how much
memory youve saved.
10
Reduce hanging time
11
Set up custom
KDUGZDUHSUROHV
By default, Windows waits for

ve seconds to allow time for
any hung applications to be
closed properly as you shut down your
computer. You can change this hanging
time with a Registry edit.
Browse to HKEYBCURRENTBUSER?
Control Panel?Desktop and select the
string entry called HungApp Timeout.
Right-click it and choose Modify. The
number is in milliseconds, so the default
of 5,000 is a wait of ve seconds. Choose a
lower number to shorten the wait time.
December 2013 |
Windows XP has a default

hardware prole that loads
Help & Advice |
55
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drivers for your installed hardware. If you
have an older PC there will be times
when you wont want all hardware to be
functioning, for instance when watching a
DVD. To avoid choppy playback as a result
of resources being consumed by loaded
drivers, applications and services, heres
how to set up a custom hardware prole.
Open the System applet through the
Control Panel. The Hardware tab gives
access to the Device Manager, as well
as driver signing options and hardware
proles. Click the Hardware Proles
button to open the Hardware Proles
window. You can view available proles
and congure how hardware proles will
be displayed during the boot process.
With Prole 1 Current) selected, click
Properties to congure basic settings,
such as whether the system is a portable
computer, then click OK. Click Copy.
In the Copy Prole window, give the new
prole a descriptive name, such as Basic,
and click OK to create a duplicate prole
you can congure with different settings.
Click OK to close the applet. Reboot
Windows XP. From Hardware Proles,
select the new prole, then log on.
Open the System applet, return to the
Hardware tab, click Device Manager.

Expand a device type such as Network
Adapters, then right-click the device and
choose Disable or Enable if disabling,
click Yes. Disabling devices frees up
resources for this proles specic job.
REMOTE ACCESS FEATURES
You dont always have to be in front of

your PC to access it. Here are a few handy
ways to remotely tap into your PCs
workspace, whether youre away and need
to check in with your work or home PC or
if you need help with your computer.
12
Set up a virtual
private network
Virtual private networks

or VPNs) are a way to link
computers together in a secure,
transparent manner using the internet.
Windows XP has made the process simple.
Open the Network Connections
window Start ! Settings ! Network
Connections or My Computer ! Control
Panel). If a web connection hasnt been
created yet, you must dene one.
From the Network Connections File
menu, select New Connection or choose
Remote Assistance means another

user can take control of your PC from
their own Windows XP machine
Create a new connection from the

Network Tasks panel.
The New Connection Wizard launches
and shows what you can congure.
Although its not called a virtual private
network, the second option is what were
trying to set up. Click Next.
Youll be presented with a window
asking you to choose the type of
connection you want to create. Click the
radio button next to Connect to the
network at my workplace, then click
Next to proceed.
You now have two choices: dial-up and
VPN connection. Select VPN and click
Next to continue. Even though you can
congure a VPN over a dial-up line, that
option is for non-tunnelling. A VPN tunnel
is a connection between two computers
over a LAN, WAN or internet network
thats maintained as a consistent, more
permanent connection rather than
temporary connections youd use to get
to something like a website or FTP server.
Each VPN connection is identied by a
name, usually representing the gateway
youre connecting to. You must identify
the gateway at the other end of the
tunnel. Enter either the IP address of the
VPN gateway you want to connect to, or
its fully qualied domain name.
A summary screen appears, specifying
the VPN connection name and the users
allowed access to the connection. If you
want a shortcut placed on your desktop,
check the Shortcut option. Click Finish
and a window asks for your user name
and password. This login is transmitted
and encrypted when you access the
VPN gateway.
Click Connect to start. If your
connection doesnt establish itself
right away you may need to tweak
some parameters. Right-click the
connection icon and select Properties.
Select the Security tab.
Under Security Options select
Typical. The box under Validate my
identity as follows should show
Require secured password. The
Require data encryption box should
also be checked. To use your login and
domain settings for the VPN validation,
check Automatically use my Windows
login name and password. This is useful
for connecting to corporate networks.
Make sure the Windows Firewall is
congured and working correctly with
your VPN, otherwise your connection
will be blocked.
If you just want to check on your
home computer every now and then,
you may want to consider using
Remote Desktop instead.
13
Access your PC
from work with
Remote desktop
Windows XP
Professional includes the facility
to enable your computers
desktop to be accessed
56
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Cover feature
Refresh Windows XP
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HELPING HAND With Remote Assistance, you can ask a friend to show you how to solve a problem
remotely from other PCs via the Remote

Desktop Connection tool.
Right-click either the My Computer
icon on your desktop or the Start button
and click Properties. From the Remote
tab, tick Allow users to remotely connect
to this computer. Finally, click OK and
add a password to your account from the
User Accounts Control Panel. Remember,
a password is mandatory.
To control your PC from another one,
click Start ! All Programs ! Accessories !
Communications or download the
Remote Desktop Client. A screen will
appear for you to select your target PC
from the drop-down menu or type in its
name/IP address and click Connect. If
your rewall throws up a prompt, allow
the connection. Youll now need to log on
using your password. Once done, you can
use the PC as if you were sitting at it. To
relinquish control, close the dialog. To
change any options, simply open Remote
Desktop Connection and click Settings.
14
Moving to the Experience tab, you can

use the drop-down menu to tell Remote
Desktop what type of connection youre
using, and Windows XP will select the
best settings for your setup. Alternatively,
simply clear the tick box next to any of
the graphical features you feel you can
live without to create your own custom
remote desktop prole.
15
Request assistance
from a friend
The Remote tab also enables

you to allow Remote Assistance
invitations. This is an extremely useful
feature that means another user can
effectively take control of your PC from
their own Windows XP machine, which
can be very handy for troubleshooting a
problem you might be having.
Click Start ! Help and Support. Under

Ask for assistance, click Invite a friend to
connect to your computer with Remote
Assistance. Choose Invite someone to
help you to start the invitation process.
Enter the persons email address and click
Invite this person. Type an explanatory
message and click Continue.
For security reasons, you should set an
expiry time or date for the invitation, plus
a password that your friend will need to
enter. Youll need to communicate this
separately by phone or another email.
Click Send Invitation.
Once your friend receives the email,
theyll initiate the process of connecting
to your PC. Youll see a pop-up window
asking you to accept the connection
click Yes to give your friend access and
start troubleshooting. Q
Speed up the
remote desktop
You can improve the

performance of Remote
Desktop sessions, particularly on slow
connections, by disabling a number of
superuous graphical features. To choose
the settings you would like to use, launch
the tool by clicking Start ! All Programs
! Accessories ! Communications !
Remote Desktop Session.
Click the Options button to expand
the dialog and move to the Display tab.
Here you can choose the resolution and
colour depth that remote sessions should
run at choose lower settings if things are
running slowly for you.
EXCLUSIVE ACCESS Connect PCs together securely over the internet by creating a VPN
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
57
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Network issues? Diagnose

them quickly with these
free utilities
ooking for some useful and reliable network

utilities? There are plenty of options out there
to choose from, but its easy to waste time on
the bulky and more heavyweight contenders.
Unless you really need them, our selection of tiny
tools will provide all you need. Theyre all on
your free disc.
On your disc
Youll nd all the
software mentioned
here on your free disc.
NETWORK
STUFF 3.0.9
Figuring out whats happening on your network

normally involves a whole library of tools, yet somehow
Network Stu has managed to cram them all into a
single portable application.
Its strong on the basics for instance, the program
can display your IP addresses (both local and external),
scan your network for other systems, reveal MAC
addresses and run graphical ping or traceroutes.
Network Stu can also display all the currently open
network and internet connections, as well as use
built-in Whois and DNS tools to get more information
on IP addresses. It can even remotely wake up or shut
down other systems on your network.
58
NETWORK CONNECTION Network Stu 3.0.9 has a lot of options on oer, but one of its
most useful is the ability to display and test any open network and internet connections
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Feature
10 best free lightweight networking tools
WorldMags.net
DNS
JUMPER 1.0.5
DNS ALTERNATIVES Getting to grips with the many aspects of DNS can be intimidating,
but DNS Jumper 1.0.5 oers an easy-to-use interface that tests your connection speeds
Changing your DNS settings can improve your online

security it could even give you access to sites you
couldnt reach otherwise, and improve your general
browsing speed. Windows doesnt exactly make this
kind of task easy, but thats where a utility like DNS
Jumper comes into its own.
This little tool comes with a lengthy list of DNS
alternatives, too. If youre not sure which one is best for
your situation, it can test them all to nd the fastest.
When youre happy, its able to apply your preferred
DNS settings in a single click the program can even
back up and restore your original settings to reduce the
chance of any future problems.
RAWCAP
0.1.4.0
THINKSTOCK.COM
Packet sning capturing network trac for later

analysis can be an invaluable way to diagnose tricky
network problems, in terms of both hardware and
software. And there arent many programs that make it
as easy as the super-lightweight RawCap.
The program is a command line tool, but its also
straightforward to run from Explorer. Just double-click
the le, choose your network interface, enter an output
le name, and thats it the program will capture raw
packets and save them in a pcap le.
Unsurprisingly for a 20KB tool, theres no help here to
analyse the nished results. You can open the le in
Notepad too, if youre just looking for a list of results.
RAW SIMPLICITY The simplicity of using RawCap as a tool extends so far that it doesnt
require any additional components or DLLs to operate, beyond the .NET Framework 2.0
FAST SOFTWARE
AUDIT 1.0.0
If you manage a PC network then youll know its important to keep track of
the software your users are installing. You could check this manually, or
invest in some big corporate inventory tool, but the ultra-compact Fast
Software Audit which is portable and only 160KB could be what youre
looking for. Just enter the network names of the computers youd like to
audit and itll quickly scan them, revealing the list of installed applications.
However, keep in mind that your systems will need the Remote Registry
service to be running for this to work.
CLOSETHEDOOR
0.2.1 PORTABLE
When you want to secure your network, its important to

understand which processes are listening for connections,
and the portable CloseTheDoor will tell you everything you
want to know. With this great tool you can check the network
interface, ports, protocols and related Windows services.
All this information can seem baing at rst, but
CloseTheDoor can help. Right-click something and youll nd
options to search the web for useful information on the
process, port and how its generally used.
And if you do identify malware then CloseTheDoor can
even shut down that process. However, if you accidentally
terminate something important, you could crash your PC.
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
59
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BLUELIFE HOSTS
EDITOR 1.0
NETWORK ACTIVITY
INDICATOR 1.6
REMOTE
REBOOTX 2012
The HOSTS le can be used to tell Windows the IP address of various

network or Internet resources, which allows you to improve performance or
block some sites or resources entirely.
Windows doesnt make it particularly easy to access HOSTS,
unfortunately, but the BlueLife Hosts Editor provides everything youll
need. Just launch the program to view your current HOSTS le, then add or
remove entries to suit your need.
But be warned if you try to block a site youve just visited then itll look
like its not working, as Windows will cache the previous IP address. Save the
new le, click Flush DNS and everything should now work like normal.
Network management is easier than

you think if youve got a copy of
RemoteRebootX to hand, that is.
Add the names of your network
computers to the program, and in a
click or two you can then remotely
shut them down or wake them up
again, all from your own machine.
You can even automate the
process for example, having a PC
woken up just after lunch so its
ready and waiting when you return.
We often miss the old Windows XP network icon,

where the monitors ashed to show network activity
thankfully, theres now an easy way to get it back.
Install Network Activity Indicator and itll immediately
restore the same icon to your system tray. However,
Windows Vista/Windows 7 will often hide it again to
sort this issue out simply click the arrow to the left of
the system tray area, click Customize and set Network
Activity Indicator to Show icon and notications to
bring it back into place.
This isnt just a cosmetic tool, either. You can also
customise the program to ash only for particular
network trac (TCP, UDP, ICMP), or on specic network
interfaces. Its even able to provide details on network
trac (MBs uploaded and downloaded), and a host of
useful statistics (open connections, failed connection
attempts, errors received and much more).
HFS
2.2F
And there are even system info

options to retrieve any free drive
space or a helpful list of any
automatically stopped services.
10
When you want to share your les with other network

users, then you could try sharing folders. But if you
cant get that working as well as youd like, setting up a
web server with HFS could be a simpler approach.
Theres no
complex set-up
just run the tool
and its ready to go.
Drag and drop the
les youd like to
share and theyll be
easily accessible.
SIMPLE IP
CONFIG 2.3
If you regularly use a laptop on a couple of networks such as at home or

at your place of work then chances are you probably waste a lot of time
manually adjusting a host of low-level network settings as you switch
between each one. Thankfully, it doesnt have to be that way.
Simple IP Cong 2.3 allows you to create separate network proles for
home, work, and anywhere else youre likely to be using your laptop. Each
of these can be used to store your IP Address, Subnet Mask, Gateway, DNS
Server, and so on, meaning all of those important options are already in
place, regardless of where youre working. And switching from one prole
to another is as simple as selecting it, and clicking Apply so theres no
more messing around in the Control Panel. Q
60
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
61
WorldMags.net
WINDOWS HELP HARDWARE FIXES SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS INTERNET TIPS

Software
NEED CD FOR UPDATE
Do you have a
PC problem?
Get in touch
Email full details of your
problem to the
support team and well
do our best to help
windowsmagazine@
futurenet.com
Q I am unable to install an
important security update
(KB2092914) for Microsoft Works 9
on my Dell PC because it asks for
the product CD, which I dont have
(the software was pre-installed).
When I contacted Dell for the disc,
it refused to send it, saying I must
sign a software agreement, which
will cost me 59. Can you help me
install this update?
HIDE UPDATES Stop annoying prompts about unwanted updates
62
Adams solution
Our reader told us that
Dells only suggestion
was to uninstall Works 9
because nobody these days uses it,
which is hardly helpful.
Sadly, theres no real way around
this problem. Sometimes the les
are placed on the computer so
theres no demand for the CD, but
this isnt the case here. As a result,
our reader has a choice to make.
He could ignore the update. To do
this, click Start > All Programs >
Windows Update. Click the update,
then right-click it and choose Hide
update. This will prevent you being
prompted to install it again, but will
leave Works vulnerable.
The second option here is to
purchase your own copy of
Microsoft Works 9 . It can be
bought for under 30, making
it a much cheaper alternative
to paying Dell. Once done, try
installing the update again and
inserting the CD in your optical
drive when prompted; if this
doesnt work, uninstall Works
and then reinstall it from the CD.
WorldMags.net
Hardware
CONNECTION PROBLEM
Q My Sony DCR-PC105E
camcorder has both USB

and Firewire connections, but my
Windows 7 laptop only has a USB
port. Im trying to nd Windows 7
USB drivers, because the built-in
ones only support transferring data
from the memory stick, which is of
poor quality. Whats the best way to
transfer video to my PC?
Nicks solution
Firewire ports ensure
that camcorders can
transfer video to newer
PCs even when the manufacturer
stops supporting them, as Sony
appears to have done here. If you
can connect via Firewire, youll be
able to transfer and edit the video
using Windows Live Movie Maker
grab it from http://bit.ly/17A0P7V.
If your PC has an ExpressCard or
PCMCIA slot, you can purchase an
add-on Firewire card such as those
oered by StarTech; a two-port
PCMCIA card costs 26 in the UK
and a two-port ExpressCard
Support
Technical help
WorldMags.net
FIND THE SOLUTION! Office Suite Solution Centre

Got a problem with Microsoft Office 2010 or 2007? Check out
the dedicated support centre at http://snipurl.com/13ybrk.
Quickfire questions
USB DRIVERS
Older camcorders dont
support transferring video
via USB ports in Windows 7
I am unable to install Microsoft

Oce 2010 Home and Student
it keeps asking me for Oce
XP Service Pack 3, which is
already installed on my PC!
We instructed our reader to
rst uninstall Microsoft Oce
XP from her computer; once
done, she was able to install
Microsoft Oce 2010.
Is my PC infected? Windows
Defender keeps getting
switched o during startup.
Im using AVG 9.0.
Dont worry. AVG disables
Windows Defender because
it doesnt want its real-time
anti-spyware component to
conict with AVGs own
anti-spyware engine.
You can run Windows XP in a

virtual environment if you
dont have Windows 7 drivers
adapter costs 39 see http://bit.
ly/15jAGJ4 for details.
Sadly, our readers laptop didnt
oer any form of expansion slot,
which leaves him with two choices:
he can either transfer the footage
on another computer, or try
running Windows XP in a virtual
environment that allows him to
capture the USB ports, hopefully
enabling him to transfer the
footage through that. Windows 7
Professional users can simply install
Windows XP Mode; otherwise
youll need a spare retail copy of
Windows XP and access to software
such as VMWare Player, from
www.vmware.com.
Jargon buster!
and settings (such as email) rst

using a program such as GFI
Backup Home (www.g.com).
Firewire
High-speed interface used as
an alternative to a USB 2.0
connection, primarily used
for transferring data. Also
known as IEEE1394.
Hardware
MOUSE FREEZING
Q After a short period of
inactivity, my wifes Logitech

Wireless M205 mouse becomes
non-responsive unless I press [Ctrl]
and [Alt] and [Del] to open Task
Manager, where wriggling it about
makes it spring back to life. Ive
downloaded the latest driver from
Logitech, but the problem still
exists. Can you solve this glitch?
FRESH INSTALL
Make sure to wipe
your hard drive
during the
Windows reinstall
Service Pack
A collection of previously
released patches, xes, security
updates and new features,
designed to bring a program
or Windows up to date.
Windows
GET RID OF UNWANTED

INSTALLATIONS
Q My niece has ended up with
two non-working Windows

installations on her PC. Ive got her
up and running again with another
Windows XP reinstall, but want to
know how to get rid of the other
installations (on drives C and D).
Simons solution
The simplest, most
elegant solution is to
reinstall Windows XP a
fourth time, making sure you delete
both C and D partitions during the
process, so you end up with a
single fresh installation of Windows.
Make sure you back up any data
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
63
WorldMags.net
Quickfire questions
There are no lenames listed in
My Music unless I switch to list
or details view. Can you help
me retrieve them?
Filenames can only be hidden
when a folder is designated as
a pictures folder to rectify
this click Start, followed by
your username. Right-click
Music and choose Properties
> Customise. Change the
drop-down menu to Music
Icons and click OK.
How do I access Microsoft
Word 2007 documents in
other programs?
The Oce Compatibility Pack
from http://bit.ly/PMoy gives
you the ability to open, save
and edit Oce 2007 le
formats in earlier versions of
Microsoft Oce. Support for
Oce 2007 is built into later
versions of other programs,
including OpenOce 3.
Why does my PC say Explorer
has encountered a problem
whenever I right-click a le
and click Delete?
Adams solution
The eventual
solution to
this problem
was similar to one we
featured in issue 47
our reader discovered
that hed accidentally
left an old PS/2 mouse
plugged into the back
of the computer the
Logitech mouse was
connected to. The two
mice must have been
conicting with each
other removing the PS/2
mouse resolved this problem
immediately, suggesting that
a driver conict may have been
responsible, although our search in
Device Manager hadnt revealed
anything obvious.
AVOID CONFLICT
Make sure you
only have one
mouse connected!
Windows
NETWORK CONNECTION
ANNOYANCE
Q When I try to connect my Dell
netbook to a Wi-Fi network,

it sometimes works automatically,
but with other connections I have
to change advanced settings
and select Enable Windows to
congure the setting on each
start-up. Can I avoid doing this
when I use these connections?
Wi-FI
CONNECTIONS
Use the built-in
Windows XP
wireless utility
when possible
This is usually due to a

third-party program, and
we were able to trace the
problem to a program called
PowerDesk. You can either
remove this, or visit www.
avanquest.com to download
a more recent version.
Jamess solution
This problem occurs
when your netbook is
congured to use Dells
built-in wireless utility, instead of
the perfectly adequate (and often
superior) utility built into Windows
XP. To make sure Windows XP
always takes control of your Wi-Fi
connection, click Start > Run, type
services.msc and press [Enter].
Locate the Dell Wireless LAN Tray
Service entry double-click this
and change its startup type to
Manual. If its currently running,
click Stop before clicking OK. You
may lose your network connection
dont panic! Now locate the
Wireless Zero Conguration entry,
double-click it and change its
startup type to Automatic. Click
Start followed by OK and close
the Services management console.
Now choose Start > My network
Places. Select View network
connections, right-click your
connection and choose Properties
> Wireless networks. Make sure
Use Windows to congure my
wireless network settings is ticked
and click OK. You should now be
able to connect the Windows XP
utility, and once done youll
connect automatically in the future.
SCANNING IN TEXT
Q I scanned in some family
history information using

Microsoft Works, but I cant nd the
le to edit it. Please help!
Matts solution
When you scan a text
document into your
computer, its converted
into an image, which cant be
accessed and edited using a word
processing tool. To open it with a
word processor, you need to use
Optical Character Recognition
(OCR) software such as SimpleOCR,
which can convert the image into
an editable text document.
64
steps
1 First
Install and open SimpleOCR from www.
simpleocr.com. Click Machine print, choose
English (UK) and click Select to open the
main window. Click Add page followed by
Scanner options to set up your scanner.
Start by clicking Select scanner to choose it.
document
2 Scan
Select Grey under Colours, click on the
A4 button and then make sure Main driver
and 300 are selected before clicking OK.
Now leave Scanner selected under Image
Source and click OK again. Wait while the
page is scanned for the preview.
WorldMags.net
Support
Technical help
WorldMags.net
One reader wants to keep using his old router, and another
is unsatisfied with his download speeds after moving house
COMPANY Thomson
READER Peter D
NATURE OF COMPLAINT
Peter wants to keep his Thomson
router after switching computers,
but cant nd the original driver CD.
Jamess solution
Peter wanted to switch
PCs and move his old
Thomson Speedtouch
716v5 modem/router to the new
machine: What I need is the CD
driver for the Thomson Speedtouch,
he says. Thomson, however, has
disappeared swallowed up by new
owner Technicolor. An initial search
online turned up nothing. Peter
seemed resigned to getting himself
a new modem.
We had a look into the issue, and
though we were able to confirm that
Thomson had been acquired by
Technicolor and there is no longer
any downloadable setup software,
he still may be able to use his router.
There is a full manual for the router,
which contains instructions for
connecting to the internet without
using the set-up disc. If youre in the
same boat, you can find the manual
online at http://bit.ly/15RH5YG.
Instructions for setting up the router
can be found in chapter two.
STATUS: ONGOING
Weve yet to hear back from Peter
about how he got on. If youre
reading this, please let us know!
COMPANY Virgin Broadband
READER Paul Robertson
NATURE OF COMPLAINT
After moving house, Paul found a
drastic drop in download speeds
Simons solution
When Paul moved
house, he was forced to
switch from a cable
connection back to ADSL. Virgin
didnt have cable in my area, so we
were connecting via a router, he
tells us. However, he then saw a
large drop in speed from up to
10Mbps to around 1.2Mbps.
Virgin has been voted the fastest
ISP in the UK for two years running.
But with ADSL services the speed of
your connection depends on how
far from the telephone exchange
you are and when we checked
Pauls connection it turned out he
was well over two miles from his
local exchange.
Given his circumstances, we
advised Paul to switch to mobile
broadband. Hes now using a
Three Mobile (www.three.co.uk)
Hero of the month

SAM CRAWFORD
WWW.SAMKNOWS.COM
Sam Crawford started his resource site in
2003, oering tools for checking broadband
enabled telephone exchanges along with news on
ADSL roll out. Ten years on and the sites a more
ocial enterprise, with valuable tools for testing
exchange distances, nding out what services are
available in your area and more. Great for advice
on all aspects of broadband.
WHO KNEW?
SamKnows has
grown from a
simple news site
to a trusted
source for testing
broadband dongle to connect to

the internet. The cost is 7.50 a
month and hes getting consistent
speeds of around 3.6Mbps. The
download allowance of 1GB a
month is perfectly fine for casual
browsing and email.
STATUS: CASE CLOSED
Pauls download speeds are now
fast enough for his needs, but video
and music downloaders would have
to seek out other solutions. Q
With ADSL services, the speed of your broadband

connection depends on how far from the
telephone exchange you are
Feel like youre

being ripped off?
Let us know...
If youre experiencing
problems and want
us to help, or want to
nominate a Hero of
the Month, get in
touch by emailing
windowsmagazine@
futurenet.com with
the subject Watchdog
Jargon buster!
OCR
Stands for Optical Character
Recognition, and is the process
of converting a (usually
scanned) image full of text into
recognisable characters that
can then be read and edited in
a word processing program.
to text
3 Convert
A preview window appears if youre
results
4 Review
A second pane appears at the bottom
happy, click Continue and the text should

appear clear and legible in the main window.
Click the Convert to text button and wait
while the image is scanned thoroughly and
the text extracted.
with the editable text shown. If its gibberish,

tweak your settings and try again; if its
reasonably legible, you can go through it
correcting misspelled words. Once complete,
save your document.
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Services
Low-level programs that
are designed to run in the
background without any
intervention from the user.
Help & Advice |
65
WorldMags.net
NEW HARDWARE
ESSENTIAL ACCESSORIES
LATEST GAMES
Welcome
The days of your

computer being a
grey box on your
desk are long gone.
You can now take
your PC with you everywhere
you go, ready for whenever you
want to type out a report or
relax with a game.
This month, we bring you our
pick of the best set-top boxes
on the market from catching
up on your favourite shows to
streaming content, were sure
youll find one that suits you.
We also get hands on the
sleek new Ultrabook from
Samsung, the Series 7 Ultra, as
well as the powerful HP Envy
TouchSmart 23 d090ea and the
portable gaming monster that
is the Dell Alienware 14.
Nick Odantzis Deputy editor
nick.odantzis@futurenet.com
68 Set-top boxes
70 Acer Aspire P3
90 Saints Row IV
Record live TV, download shows and never

miss your favourite soap again with the best
and brightest set-top boxes you can buy.
Wherever you are, you can enjoy the best

gaming experiences with the power of the
formidable Alienware 14 laptop from Dell.
The new Aspire P3 from Acer is a budgetminded tablet thats perfect for those
looking for a simple, portable workstation.
Return to the streets of Steelport and paint

the town purple all over again. Become the
president and defeat some aliens, too!
Our review guarantee
Our awards
Only the very
nest products
receive our Best
On Test Award.
These will have
excellent marks
for quality.
We use only acknowledged experts to review products, so you can use

our ratings with full confidence to make your buying decision
How we review
One of the key tenets of our

review philosophy is that
hardware should be compared
against like products wherever
possible. It is only when you pit
the nest products of a certain
type against one another at
the same time that you can
really come up with a denitive
RATING EXPLAINED
66
verdict as to which is the very

best in that category. The pace
of development in computer
hardware means that it is very
difcult to compare scores
from today with those from,
say, six months ago. Magazines
and websites that review a new
product on its own run the risk
of confusing or misleading.
Superb
Very good
We guarantee to test every

piece of hardware rigorously
and thoroughly, using only
acknowledged experts to
establish the worth of a
product. We always review
from the viewpoint of our
readers; the day-to-day
practicality and quality of
a product is paramount.
Good
WorldMags.net
Our Best Value

Award is given
to products that
quite simply
represent the
best value for
your money.
Disappointing
Poor
Upgrade
WorldMags.net
76 Samsung Series 7 Ultra:
Whats inside
a great Ultrabook with a
crisp Full HD screen
68 Mini test: set-top boxes

70 Acer Aspire P3
74 Samsung Series 7 Ultra
78 HP Envy TouchSmart 23 d090ea
90 Play this: 6DLQWV5RZ,9
94 Play this: Magrunner: Dark Pulse
96 Play this: 6KDGRZUXQ5HWXUQV
97 Play this: 7HOHJOLWFK'0(GLWLRQ
78 HP Envy
TouchSmart: an
all-in-one media
centre thatll suit
any family need
0DJUXQQHU'DUN3XOVHLVDUVWSHUVRQ
3RUWDODOLNHWKDWUHSODFHVWKHXVHRISRUWDOVZLWK
WKHWHPSUDPHQWDOSRZHURIPDJQHWLVP
7 WSD
Our promise to you
Well introduce you to new stuff
The Upgrade section is your key to finding out about the latest
products, all designed to help you get more from your PC
You can trust our reviews
Our expert reviewers are 100 per cent

independent, with years of experience
in the world of computing. Our rigorous
testing procedures mean that only
genuine, high-quality products are
awarded high star ratings. Further, very
few are handed our Best Value or Best
on Test Awards. If you see an item of
hardware bearing one of these marks,
you can be condent that it is an excellent
product. Always check when the award
was given, to ensure it is still up-to-date.
We choose the best products
Thousands of new products for your

computer are released every year and
choosing between them can sometimes be
an impossible task. Our experts select only
the best hardware and software to feature
in this magazine, making your decision on
which one to choose easier. Even better,
our awards and star rating system make it
simple to nd the best products for your
needs, with our recommended products
section giving you a fast, trustworthy guide
to a wide range of hardware and software.
WorldMags.net
Wherever we can, we review new

hardware comparatively, pitching
it head-to-head against other similar
products. (Full details of our policy can be
found in the opposite page, under Our
review guarantee.) Of course, this isnt
always possible with new products and
part of our duty to you is to introduce you
a wide range of fascinating new hardware,
software, services and games.
The reviews of standalone hardware
and software are just as thorough as our
comparative reviews. However, we do not
allocate scores to them because this can
often be misleading. The only exception to
this rule is on our games reviews, where
the pace of change is a lot slower and
single scores can be genuinely useful.
December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
67
WorldMags.net
Panasonic
DMR-BWT720
Price 400 | $na (www.panasonic.com)

This box of tricks is a Blu-ray player/recorder and
Freeview HD PVR in one, with a whopping 1TB
hard drive for storing up to 259 hours of HD telly.
On-demand services are well catered for, with BBC
iPlayer, YouTube and Netflix pre-loaded.
Like many modern set-top boxes, it has built-in
Wi-Fi for streaming files direct from your PC, too.
SET-TOP
BOXING
MATCH
Catch-up TV, downloads
and streaming the
days of the VCR
are truly over
WD TV Live
Price 71 | $100 (www.wdc.com)

Petite but powerful, the WD TV Live offers a rich source of streamed
content from iPlayer, Netflix, YouTube and Vimeo. Spotify music is
available with a subscription.
The WD TV Live also plays a huge array of video and audio
file formats, whether via USB or the integrated Wi-Fi. Itll even
aggregate downloads and search movie, TV and music databases
to create a metadata-rich library of personalised content.
68
WorldMags.net
Upgrade
Set-top boxes
WorldMags.net
Pure Avalon 300R Connect

Price 350 | $na (www.pure.com)
A no-nonsense 1TB Freeview HD, dual-tuner PVR, infinitely improved by Pures

simplified, easy to navigate eight-day programme guide and user interface.
The PowerVR graphics engine provides channel transition effects and animated
menus that will impress any viewer, but avoid coming across as too gimmicky.
All in all, its a great device to use.
Humax HDR-S100s
Price 249 | $na (www.humaxdigital.com)
We havent heard much from Freesat lately

but now its back with its own smart TV guide,
Freetime. Freetime is a backwards-looking EPG
that gathers catch-up services into one location.
BBC iPlayer and ITV Player are already available,
with 4oD and Demand 5 coming soon.
It has a 500GB hard drive, and a 1TB version
is also available. Local and network file support
is excellent, covering all popular file types.
Crystal Acoustics
MM-Box2
Price 55 | $75 (www.crystalaudio.com)
If you have no TV tuner and get your entire

TV and film fix from internet downloads as
many do these days all you need is a file
player like the MM-Box2.
Its credit-card sized (not to scale here) and
can be hidden neatly out of the way behind
your TV. It uses the Realtek 1055 chipset to
play any video file format with ease, also
delivering full 5.1 surround sound.
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
69
WorldMags.net
Acer Aspire P3
529 | $600 www.acer.com
Does Acers two-in-one oer enough to justify replacing your laptop?
indows 8 is great for

both work and play, but
nding the balance
between portability
and usability hasnt always been
easy. However, things are changing
and theres a host of new devices
hitting the market that are much
thinner and faster.
Sadly, the Acer Aspire P3 uses
none of this cutting edge gadgetry.
The Intel Core i3 3229Y powering
this tablet is a previous generation
70
dual-core chip clocked at a

mediocre 1.4GHz. Its one of the
lowest-powered Intel Core
processors, but the result is a tablet
thats half the price of its rivals.
Despite the bargain price, the
Aspire P3 tablet is very well-made.
Its great for working at a desk and
we even enjoyed surng the web
on the sofa, if only in short bursts.
The aluminium build looks
professional and stylish, despite its
relative thickness to other tablets.
WorldMags.net
We werent ashamed to use it in

public, although the same cant be
said for the faux-leather case.
Heavy metal
At 900g (1.25kg with the keyboard
attachment), its certainly heavier
than many other tablets on the
market, but you get USB and HDMI
connectors, a robust build and
some really great looks. However,
Samsung boasts that its ATIV Tab
features the latest generation
processor in a case thats 33 per
cent smaller and lighter, so the
Aspire P3s only real advantage is
its attractive price point.
The lacklustre specications
sheet continues unabated with
just 2GB of RAM (which is the
minimum youd need for a decent
experience). Graphics are handled
Upgrade
WorldMags.netTech reviews
by the onboard Intel HD 4000,

which is the norm for hybrid tablets
or Ultrabooks.
The 11.6-inch screen is also
mediocre, with a 1,344 x 768
resolution. Many competing tablets
now boast full HD 1,920 x 1,080
displays. In some cases this doesnt
matter, but when the display is over
11 inches you do notice the
dierence. As well as clarity and
picture detail, the Acers panel also
lacks vibrancy, and colours look
pale and washed out, although the
high 400nit brightness does help. If
you want to use your tablet for
movies or picture editing, you
might want to consider parting
with a little more money.
The 60GB SSD supplied is also
meagre, and raises questions about
whether the Aspire P3 could be
used as a primary machine for your

business or family. With no SD card
slot and only one USB 3.0 port,
theres little opportunity for
expanding the storage, and when
we started the Aspire P3 up for the
rst time, Windows 8 informed us
that only 21GB was available a
perilously small amount of space.
The price is right, but Acer hasnt
done a great job with the dock.
While many keyboard accessories
connect to the laptop physically
and even work as an extra battery
to aid longevity, the Acer Aspire
P3s keyboard case is simply built
into the case and works using
Bluetooth, and its not a triumph.
Firstly, it turns the sleek looking
aluminium tablet into the dullest of
corporate notebooks. The thin base
exes even on hard surfaces and
often mis-registers key presses.

Its not comfortable to type on and
anything longer than an email is
hard work. It props the screen up
at a steep angle, oering no way
to adjust and its more than a little
dicult to balance it on your lap.
A lack of cores
The Aspire P3s Intel Core processor
was never going to set any records
in our testing labs, and a score of
just 1.11pts in Cinebench sadly
backed this theory up. This is one of
the lowest scores weve seen from
an Intel Core based chip, and its
a direct result of both the lack of
cores (dual-core is very 2009) and
the considerably low clock speed
oered by this Asus machine. These
two factors combine to make for
disappointing performance.
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
71
WorldMags.net
Screen
The display is bright
enough to somewhat
improve its low 1,366 x
768 resolution, which
unsurprisingly pales
in comparison to its
pricier competitors.
Connectivity
Theres no SD card slot
to speak of, but you do
get a single USB 3.0
port and a micro HDMI
for connecting to
external displays.
Keyboard
While most Windows 8
tablet keyboards add
some extra battery life,
the Aspire P3s has a
separate battery that
will need to be charged
up via USB.
72
Build
The tablet weighs in at
a substantial 900g
without its keyboard
dock, and a bulky
1.25kg in total sadly
this is fairly normal for
most Ultrabooks.
WorldMags.net
Upgrade
Benchmarks mean little without

real-world testing, but we did
notice the lack of raw speed in the
performance of everyday
computing tasks. Theres a general
lethargy across the whole
operating system, which regularly
keeps you waiting in frustration
while a program or app struggles
to load. Apps take a long time to
launch and menus often sit for a
couple of seconds before springing
into life.
No frills, no thrills
Graphics power on the Acer Aspire
P3 is pretty much non-existent. All
of the pixel-pushing is left to the
on-board Intel chip, which has
barely enough power to keep
things running smoothly. Still, for
most people, it will be sucient.
Games from the Windows Store
still play well, and 1080p video
doesnt miss a beat during
extensive playback. A light
smattering of app-based games
and the occasional movie or TV
show rented from the Windows
Store is all most people will need.
Low power often comes with
good battery life, and this is one
area where the P3 triumphs. A
single charge lasted 250 minutes in
our tests, which involve looping HD
video and simulating oce tasks.
This is the kind of battery life wed
expect from newer Intel laptops, so

to nd it on this tablet is a pleasant
surprise. It also means youre
getting next generation longevity
for less, but it comes at the price of
raw speed.
Overall the Acer Aspire P3 is a
decent Windows 8 tablet that will
suce for those looking for a
portable tablet that runs Oce and
can support external displays and
USB devices.
However, with its bulky build,
poor keyboard and mediocre
performance its neither suited to
replacing your existing laptop or
useful in providing an exciting
entertainment experience that
might rival Microsofts Surface. That
said, if the benets of Windows 8
are what youre looking for in a
secondary device, the solid build
and good price make the Aspire P3
worth consideration. Q
An aordable Windows tablet

that sacrices a great deal to
meet the low price point
Microsoft
Wedge Mobile
Keyboard
80 | $80
If Acers own keyboard
isnt quite for you, then
Microsofts Wedge has a
useful addition of a tablet
stand that also doubles as
a handy little protective
cover. Originally designed
for use with the Microsoft
Surface tablet, this will
also work great with your
very own Aspire P3.
www.microsoft.com
Creative WP-450
120 | $150
These good over-ear
headphones oer a few
nifty features and
impressive sound quality,
which could make them
your wireless cans of
choice. There are handy
buttons on the ear cups
themselves for controlling
your tunes and theyre
comfortable, too.
www.creative.com
Tumi x DJ Vice Brief Pack

68 | $125
This bag features a nice LED-rimmed
compartment to make searching for
your Windows tablet a doddle. Theres
also a Hypalon bottom to avoid any
water damage, and plenty of
pouches for all your kit. Theres
even a built-in tracker so youll
never lose your tablet again.
www.tumi.com
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
73
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Samsung Series 7 Ultra

1,005 | $1,100 www.samsung.com
A stylish laptop that works hard to justify its hefty price tag
retty much everything about

the 13-inch Samsung Series 7
Ultra shouts premium. And so
it should take a look at that
price! The cost alone butts it up
against rivals such as the Asus
Zenbook, Dell XPS 13 and Apple
MacBook Air remember that the
latter model, while running Apples
74
OS X straight out of the box, can

have Windows 7 or Windows 8
installed on it should you wish. The
Series 7 Ultra runs Windows 8 Pro.
The main reason for the price is
the presence of so many premium
features, chief among them that
Samsung has taken the rather
unusual Ultrabook step of popping
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an AMD Radeon HD 8500M

graphics chip inside this laptop,
alongside the 1.8GHz Intel Core i5
processor. That means that its one
of the most capable 13-inch laptops
around, thanks to the extra
graphical grunt. Youll have no
issues playing all but the very latest
games on this machine and the
AMD-powered graphics ensure the
pin-sharp 1,920 x 1,080 HD touch
display is more than adequately
supported. The touch is superbly
accurate, but like any other
Windows 8 machine, using the
touchscreen in desktop mode
is somewhat of a letdown. Still, for
ipping through pictures and
Upgrade
zipping around the Windows 8

Start screen, the display is terric
and we absolutely adored the
superbly vibrant and crisp colours
that it delivered.
Slim and sharp

The overall design of the Series 7
Ultra is slim and sharp and is typical
Samsung, with a lovely brushed
metal nish everywhere but the
bezel of the touchscreen, which is a
rather ugly black. At a mere 1.9cm
thick, this is a thin device and the
ports have been designed
accordingly. The two-tone lower
chassis is designed to hide them
away, and theres a pull-down
vanity ap for the Ethernet port,
too. You get a fair amount of
connectivity, with mini Display Port
alongside a full-size HDMI jack,
switchable headphone/mic port
and three USBs but only one of
these is USB 3.0. It does seem
strange that the extra cost of more
USB 3.0 tech is such a problem for a
premium notebook like this. Theres
an SD card slot, but its hidden
away under a ddly and plasticky

ap we reckon this will easily
shear o unless youre careful. The
on-board speakers are also given a
nice little boost thanks to JBL
sound technology.
The only specication that
disappoints is the size of the
storage. 128GB isnt unusual for an
SSD inside an Ultrabook at this
price point, but its still rather
limiting if you want to use the
Series 7 Ultra as your main machine.
The display is terric, and

we adored the vibrant and
crisp colours that it delivered
If you have a lot of music or photos
you will want to get hold of an
external hard drive and possibly
make plenty of use of cloud
storage. We cant wait until bigger
SSDs start arriving at this price
point. The reason SSDs are used is,
of course, speed the Series 7 Ultra
zips along thanks to the drive as
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well as the 1.8 GHz Core i5 of

course. And we think its a good
idea that Samsung didnt decide
to use a tiny ash drive in tandem
with a larger hard drive, which
its done with several models,
including as the Series 5.
The battery life is decent, too
we got six hours in normal use
and even managed to eke it out to
eight hours by changing the screen
brightness and other options.
Unfortunately, it doesnt match
up to some other laptops in this
particular class, notably the new
13-inch MacBook Air, which can
handle eight hours fairly easily.
Signicant weight
Another drawback of the Series 7
Ultra is the weight, which is
surprisingly signicant at 1.6KG
thats several hundred grams
heavier than some rivals like the
XPS 13, and its a whole half
kilogram weightier than ultra-light
Ultrabooks, such as the stablemate
Samsung 900X3C. We did nd the
keyboard ever so slightly spongy to
December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
75
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Full HD display
We loved the clear and
crisp Full HD screen on
this machine and the
touch capability works
great, especially with
the Start screen.
Keyboard
and trackpad
Sadly, we werent that
impressed with the
keyboard and trackpad
layout on the Series 7
Ultra from Samsung.
Brushed
aluminium
The Series 7 Ultra is one
of the best looking
Ultrabooks on the
market, with a design
that extends to the
whole laptop.
use, but its something you soon

get used to with this Samsung
machine. The trackpad is a little
irritating, mainly because the
trackpad buttons are just too easy
to click for our liking and we found
ourselves easily making erroneous
moves when clicking and dragging
or performing other complex
trackpad manoeuvres.
There are plenty of Samsung
apps already pre-installed, and
although they were mostly quite
innocuous, we were rather irritated
by the Norton security software
that was included. There are also
pop-ups everywhere to begin with
and even though we didnt accept
76
Dedicated
graphics
The addition of an AMD
chip gives this laptop
graphics power that has
been missing from
many Ultrabooks so far.
the trial, the browser and other

areas of the desktop were still
littered with its detritus.
We think there are two
compelling reasons to buy the
Samsung Series 7 Ultra: the rst is
the Full HD screen and the second
is the extra graphics support from
AMD. This is what really sets this
Ultrabook apart from the pack,
but its also responsible for the
premium price point. Still, if
portability is what you value over
everything else, we think youre
better o looking elsewhere. While
the Series 7 Ultra doesnt have an
issue with power, it does have a
slight weight problem. Q
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A little too high in price, but

you do benet from some really
superb graphical support
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HP Envy TouchSmart 23 d090ea

949 | 1,296 www.hp.com
This powerful PC tries to do it all, but can it really pull it o?
he Envy line is HPs

showpiece its a statement
to the world about how
good it can make higherend PCs. Ultra-thin laptops,
powerful gaming desktops the
idea is to match the very best out
there in one fell swoop. However,
the TouchSmart 23 is a bit dierent,
because it doesnt have such an
obvious purpose as to be purely
for gaming, or for travelling light.
78
Its an all-in-one PC that aims to

be a do-everything-in-one PC as
well, oering a powerful quad-core
processor for working, a dedicated
graphics card for gaming, a
TV tuner and Blu-ray drive for
entertainment, and a big 1080p
screen for making everything you
do look great.
On closer inspection, the Envy
TouchSmart 23 is a balancing act
thats tilted slightly o-centre.
WorldMags.net
The quad-core Intel processor is

more than capable, and its also
accompanied by 6GB of RAM,
meaning that it can easily handle
video or photo-based editing,
and any other intensive media
applications. The AMD graphics
card is actually much weaker than
youd think, though, only just
matching up to the integrated Intel
HD 4000 Ivy Bridge graphics you
get in other all-in-one machines.
Upgrade
The particular processor used in

the TouchSmart 23 is strong when
it comes to CPU power, but it has a
weedier graphics chip than Intel
usually includes, presumably
because its intended to be paired
with a powerful GPU. HP has only
included what might be considered
the minimum necessary graphics
card to bring it up to par with
all-in-ones, such as the Dell XPS 18.
It all means that the TouchSmart 23
isnt so great for gaming, with
weaker titles running okay, but
anything new or intensive really
struggling (even at a lower
resolution than the lovely Full HD
screen oers). Certainly, it would
have been possible for HP to
include a lower-end processor and
more powerful graphics for the
price, but it obviously decided to

prioritise CPU performance over
gaming. It seems like an odd
decision to us for an entertainmentfocused machine, but if you can live
without the gaming prowess, its
easily powerful enough.
screen. Its good to have a Blu-ray

drive to perhaps mitigate this,
though the tray is worryingly
wobbly and brittle. It comes with a
media remote, which worked ne
with the supplied TV player
software, but doesnt work properly
with things like the Netix app
its half functional, but seeing as
this is just as important a way to
watch television as live TV for many
people, it needs to work better
than that to be really useful.
Theres a 2TB hard drive in the
HP Envy TouchSmart 23, which is
great for recording shows from the
digital tuner, and for storing digital
HD content from online stores,
but unlike most machines these
days, its not paired with a small
SSD to speed up those boot and
Digital TV options
Its a similar story when it comes
to some of the entertainment
features. The TV tuner on the back
means that you can easily turn the
TouchSmart 23 into, say, a bedroom
or kitchen TV (it has a touchscreen,
so you could keep the supplied
mouse and keyboard hidden, too).
However, the tuner will only receive
standard-denition digital TV
channels, so most shows wont look
great scaled up to 1080p on the big
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December 2013 |
Help & Advice |
79
WorldMags.net
TV tuner
The digital TV tuner is
part of the media centre
credentials here, but a
lack of any Freeview HD
features makes it seem
a bit tacked on.
Remote control
The remote control
would be great if it was
universally useful, but
with a Media Centre
button that does
nothing, its a weak
addition at best.
Blu-ray drive
The 1080p screen can
produce great images,
so give it a good
workout with the
high-quality video from
your Blu-ray collection.
wake times. We thought this was

another odd omission, but actually
the TouchSmart 23 is still
impressively fast to wake up.
Beats Audio
speakers
There are some superb
speakers in the Envy
TouchSmart, capable of
rich, detailed sound and
some really impressive
stereo separation.
Crisp and detailed

Its something of a looker from the
front, all glossy black and silver. Its
dominated by the 23-inch Full HD
display, which is bright and oers
fairly good viewing angles, though
it does darken and colour shift
slightly. HD movies look crisp and
detailed, though colours seemed a
tad less vibrant than some of the
best screens out there, but its still
a great screen overall. The Beats
Audio speakers are even more
impressive. Theyre loud, clear and
pleasingly rich, and oer a truly
impressive degree of stereo
separation. Put simply, these are
among the best built-in PC
speakers weve ever heard.
The TouchSmarts chunky frame
probably helps with its audio
prowess; its thicker than a lot of
all-in-ones, but doesnt have a
much larger footprint in real terms.
Some of the build quality is a little
creakier than wed like for the
80
money, but since you rarely lift a

machine like this, we doubt youll
mind too much. The keyboard and
mouse are similarly ne to use,
but are really tacky and cheap
considering the cost of the
machine. Theyre comfortable
enough, although the keyboards
keys are a bit on the soft side when
pressed down.
The HP Envy TouchSmart is a
striking machine, and it seems like
itd be worthy of the Envy brand
at rst blush. However, we came
to really ponder a couple of the
design decisions, with the weak
gaming performance and standarddenition TV tuner feeling more
like paying lip service to the
concept of being an entertainment
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centre than really committing to

the idea it also feels distinctly
budget in a lot of places. We
wonder if the Envy is perhaps
better suited to work than play, but
as long youre aware of that, its not
a bad option at all. Q
This is a decent entertainment

centre for the whole family, but
its let down by a few issues
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Dell Alienware 14
1,600 | $na www.dell.com
Powerful and pricey, this is a laptop designed for serious gaming
he Alienware 14 is a huge
laptop. Its been designed
specically for serious
gamers and their LAN
parties, it has a roster of specs to
die for and a price to match.
This is an attempt to create a
serious but portable gaming
laptop. Alienware is owned by Dell,
82
and the gaming brand has

beneted from the latters prowess
in building robust laptops, as well
as its buying power.
As youd hope, theres a full HD
WLED FHD anti-glare screen with
superb viewing angles. The colours
on the Windows 8 Start screen still
look awesome when viewed from
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an extremely acute angle. The

anti-glare coating can make pale
colours look a little grainy at rst
glance, but games look superb on
it. Unfortunately for gesture fans,
its not a touchscreen.
The model weve tested here
slots in as the third most powerful
of four Alienware 14 models on
oer in the UK (the selection is
slightly dierent in the US). The
next model up has a slightly faster
processor the 3.7GHz Core
i7-4800MQ rather than the 3.4GHz
Core i7-4700MQ seen here and
costs 200 more. It has the same
2GB Nvidia GTX 765M graphics. The
lower two models have a lower-end
Upgrade
graphics card (the 1GB Nvidia GT

750M) and the very lowest model
swaps the 1080p display for a 720p
one. The top two models
including this one boast a
whopping 16GB of memory, while
the lower two models have 8GB
(which is still not to be snied at).
Weighty matters
There is one crucial thing you need
to know about this laptop: at
2.77kg, its surprisingly heavy. When
we say its a portable, we mean in
gaming terms rather than the
standard set by most notebooks.
After all, this is around the weight
of two Ultrabooks.
It certainly looks the part,
though. There are lights
everywhere, from the logo to the
touchpad to the lid. As youd
expect, its all customisable via the
Alienware Command Center, so you
can have whatever colour youd like
whenever you want, anywhere on
the device. The chassis does tend to
get warm when the machine is

working hard, but not hot, and it
has a smooth matte nish thatll
easily resist sweat.
Alienware has really drawn on
Dells expertise with its most recent
laptops, and while its unmistakably
dierent from, say, a Dell XPS 15,
the Alienware 14 is still a perfectly
usable notebook when youre not
gaming. The keyboard feels a little
slippery, but the trackpad is
excellent and wont let you down.
As well as HDMI, DisplayPort and
full mic and headset ports, theres
also an SD card slot, two USB 3.0
ports and rather unusually these
days an optical drive. Its a Blu-ray
player too, which is perfect if you
want to connect up a large display
and enjoy a good movie.
All the Intel processors used in
the Dell Alienware 14 series are
from the latest generation,
launched this summer. In our tests,
the processor and gaming
performance easily outgunned
near rivals. Thats the real raison

dtre here: serious power and
performance that can be taken
from one location to another. Its a
machine designed for gamers, but
its also great for those who need a
high end laptop for applications
such as video editing, but who
want the look and feel of a
consumer laptop rather than a
business-oriented workstation. In
other words, the fact the Alienware
14 is heavy doesnt really matter
its all about what it can do. Q
A top laptop for power-intense

gaming, but it falls down when
it comes to true portability
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December 2013 |
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83
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TOP OF THE RANGE
Gigabyte U2442T
920 | $1,319 Gigabyte packs value and
style into its 14-inch touchscreen notebook
Theres no shortage of slender
laptops that run Windows 8 well
and give you a touchscreen for
easy access to your favourite apps.
However, few come with the
Weight
gaming-class graphics and massive
1.7kg
storage that Gigabyte (perhaps better
known for its range of motherboards)
has packed into the 14-inch U2442T.
The Core i5 and 8GB of memory
Battery
would be swift enough on their own,
297
but you also get an Nvidia GeForce
mins
graphics adapter that kicks in when
youre playing more demanding games, or
running hefty image and video processing
tools. This is a lot more power than youll
nd in most Ultrabooks, and you get it
without sacricing too much battery life;
we managed ve hours on a single charge.
If you need more disk space you can add a
1TB hard drive alongside the speedy 128GB
SSD that has it starting up in under eight
seconds. Along with a smattering of handy
ports and a decent screen, its hard to really
fault the Gigabyte U2442T.
www.gigabyte.com
Screen
14in
Screen
The standard screen
resolution is 1,366 x 768,
so if you want more
detail go for the HD+
resolution version,
which is 1,600 x 900.
Solid case and solid

performance, plus all the
ports you could want
Connections
Theres a full set of ports,
including HDMI and an
SD card slot. There are
also two fast USB 3.0
connections, plus two
USB 2.0 ports.
84
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WorldMags.netBuying guide
Hardware
TOP ALTERNATIVES
Theres already a lot of

power underneath the
hood, but if you want a
little more space you
can always add a 1TB
hard drive at a later date.
Screen
15.6in
Weight
2.5kg
Battery
327 mins
Samsung Series 7 Chronos

1,299 | $1,550
For those of us who want power, performance
and comfort, this smart looking Ultrabook is
ideal. Theres an Intel Core i7 3635QM processor,
8GB of RAM, and an AMD Radeon HD 8800M
graphics chip for improved gaming performance,
too. The Chronos also has a full-sized keyboard and
a Full HD screen. Battery life is shorter than average
though, and its heavy at 2.5kg.
www.samsung.com
Control
The extra large trackpad
supports Windows 8
gestures, so you can
swipe and scroll easily
without having to reach
up to the screen.
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Help & Advice |
85
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The 12.5-inch
Gorilla Glass
screen is the
main draw
of the Twist
REVOLUTIONARY
The digital pen

is great for
taking notes
or sketching
ideas out
WINDOWS 8 PRO
Lenovo Thinkpad Twist
Microsoft Surface Pro
850 | $990 The classic convertible tablet design

is back, and its better than ever
719 | $899 You can take it all with you if you pick up
the worlds best tablet PC
It might not be the sexiest hybrid laptop weve ever

seen, but Lenovos Thinkpad Twist is a very versatile
machine. The screen can be rotated so it faces away
from the keyboard, making it ideal for using as a
tablet, or when giving presentations.
Weight
The 12.5-inch Gorilla Glass screen is the main
1.6kg
draw of the Twist, and boasts a standard resolution
of 1,366 x 768. Its good for movies, but what makes
the Twist even better is that its ideal for more
Battery
practical tasks, thanks to the roomy keyboard and
219
versatile options for mouse control, including a
mins
touchpad and TrackPoint inputs. And its a
touchscreen, of course.
A Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and a speedy 500GB
hard drive round o the hardware side of things a treat.
www.lenovo.com
TOP ALTERNATIVES
Screen
12.5in
touch
Screen
11.6in
touch
Weight
1.3kg
Battery
197 mins
86
Asus Taichi 1,000 | $1,290

The Asus Taichi is just 3mm thick at its thinnest
and weighs 1.3kg, but whats really amazing is
that it has two 11.6-inch Full HD
touchscreens packed into
the lid front and
back. It also has a
brilliant sound
system from Danish
audio expert Bang
and Olufsen ideal
for music and
movies alike.
www.asus.com
If youre familiar with the original Surface RT, the

Surface Pro has almost all of its advantages and
more. It has the same sturdy but sleek case and an
even better screen; the details are crisp and the
1,920 by 1,080 resolution is ideal for enjoying
Weight
movies. The resolution could even be a bit too high
910g
for Windows 8s desktop view but, cleverly, software
and web pages on the desktop are magnied
automatically. The screen responds quickly and
Battery
accurately to touch input, and you can also tap with
158
up to 10 ngers at once in games or apps, and write
mins
with the digital pen. The Surface Pro can run
Windows Store apps and normal PC software, as
well as any peripherals you need. Its also powerful, but
battery life suers a little.
www.microsoft.com
Screen
10.6in
Screen
10.1in
touch
Acer Iconia W510 549 | $750
The W510 is a great Windows 8

tablet that slots neatly in between
the current choices, with an
Weight
Intel Atom processor, which
1.26kg
offers a good amount of
power and battery life. Its a well
built device thats versatile, too.
Battery
310 mins
We wouldnt recommend it
over a full-size laptop
for serious tasks, but it
would make a great
companion to your main
PC in the home.
www.acer.com
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Upgrade
NEW
ENTRY
Theres a vibrant
touchscreen
display and an
AMD dual-core
processor
Sport headphones
Pioneer SE-E721
40 | $67
These hooked phones
clamp around your ears securely, but are
comfy at the same time. With a bassy sound
theyre ideal for up-tempo workout music.
Visually extreme, but perfect for a park jog.
www.pioneerelectronics.com
Weight
6.5g
Length
1.2m
Ereader
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite
109 | $119
EVERYDAY COMPUTING
HP Pavilion TS Sleekbook
450 | $550 Can the aordable TS Sleekbook 15 really
cut it against its mainstream rivals?
The HP Pavilion TS Sleekbook 15 gives you a lot
of laptop for you money. Sure, youd hardly call
it slender (at just over 2cm thick) or portable (it
weighs 2.1kg), and it doesnt have an optical drive,
but what the Sleekbook does have is a vibrant
Weight
touchscreen display, a decent AMD dual-core
2.1kg
processor with some gaming capabilities and a
whopping 8GB of RAM.
You also get a generous 1TB hard drive to store
Battery
all your les. The Altec Lansing speakers are very
462
impressive for movies and music, too.
mins
Battery life in the region of ve to seven hours
is certainly not to be snied at, and connectivity is
very well represented too, with two fast USB 3.0 ports, an
HDMI output and more.
www.hp.com
The Kindles e-ink touchscreen is the nest

around, though you might miss physical
buttons for page turning when reading
one-handed. This model includes an
adjustable backlight for bedtime reading.
www.amazon.com
Pixels
222ppi
Weight
213g
Screen
15.6in
Screen
11.6in
Weight
1.4kg
Battery
462 mins
Bridge camera
Nikon 1 J3 538 | $697
The third generation Nikon 1 J has had its
resolution boosted from 10.1MP to 14.2MP.
The J3 is slim, but packed with features. These
include a Slow View mode, which lets you
replay a short scene in slow motion, then
capture a still image at the optimum moment.
www.nikon.com
Quality
14.2MP
Weight
244g
HP Envy X2 699 | $649

The HP Envy X2 isnt the most
powerful of laptops, and its
better to think of it as an
11.6-inch tablet with an
added keyboard. The 64GB
of ash storage means
theres no moving hard
drive to add noise and
weight. Battery life is
excellent and the keyboard
and trackpad are great,
making it easy to use on
the move.
www.hp.com
Wireless speaker
JBL Flip 110 | $100
This speaker delivers a nely-tuned, crisp
sound that belies its tiny size. The speaker
can be oriented horizontally or vertically so it
doesnt take up much space at all. You can
even make and receive calls via Bluetooth as
long as your phone remains connected.
www.jbl.com
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Weight
350g
Battery
5 hours
Help & Advice |
87
WorldMags.net
Multimedia
powerhouse
thats much
more than a
gaming PC
BIG SCREEN LAPTOP
The fantastic
design means it
turns a room
into a slick
oce space
STYLISH DESKTOP
Toshiba Qosmio X870
Acer Aspire 5600U
1,430 | $1,500 Monster laptop with impressive

gaming credentials and a nifty 3D display to boot
849 | $1,497 With a sleek design and a great display,

this is a true family media centre
You dont need to be a serious gamer in order to

fully appreciate the impressive specication sheet of
the latest big-hitting Qosmio. Toshiba has created a
monster laptop that fully lives up to the tag of
desktop replacement.
Weight
The 17.3-inch, Full HD, 3D display is perfect not
3.4kg
only for high-octane gaming, but also for watching
Blu-ray movies or editing your high-resolution
images. On the media front it also helps that theres
Battery
a stereo speaker setup from audio expert Harman
41
Kardon on board.
mins
Storing your digital data shouldnt prove tricky
either, as theres a whopping 1TB of hard drive space
on oer, along with a 128GB SSD drive for super-fast boot
up times and extra-quick access to those essential les.
www.toshiba.com
TOP ALTERNATIVES
Screen
17.3in
Screen
17.3in
Weight
3kg
Battery
195 mins
88
Samsung 5 550P 670 | $940

Quad-core Intel Core power, a vivid 1080p display,
impressive audio via the JBL stereo speaker and
Max Boost subwoofer setup and Nvidia
graphics make this one of the
best pound for pound
laptops weve seen. It
looks pretty swish as
well, and the isolated
keyboard is one of
the best weve seen.
A genuinely tidy little
package from Samsung.
www.samsung.com
This is a slim machine that has more in common

with a modern TV than a traditional desktop PC.
The screen measures 23 inches, has an HDMI input
for your DVD player or games console and, crucially,
looks great when playing HD content.
Weight
Theres a DVD drive, 4GB of RAM and 500GB of
13kg
storage, which is more typical of an entry-level
laptop than a desktop computer. The i3 processor
isnt suitable for gaming, and it will struggle with
Battery
any demanding creative software.
N/A
At this price youd expect twice as much RAM and
a Blu-ray player the storage is more than enough
for most needs. The pay-o for the steep price is the
excellent design, and the Acer could easily be either an
oce PC or a small TV in the corner of a room.
www.acer.com
Screen
23in
touch
Screen
27in
touch
Weight
11.6kg
Battery
N/A
Lenovo IdeaCentre A720 1,399 | $1,799

The A720 is slim and has a frameless 27-inch
touchscreen, with an integrated Blu-ray drive and
1TB of hard disk space. Power comes courtesy of
a quad-core i7
processor, 8GB of
RAM and Nvidia
graphics. The A720
is equally good as a
high-performance
workstation, as it
is as a stylish living
room media centre.
www.lenevo.com
WorldMags.net
Upgrade
The sensor and

Carl Zeiss lens
make your
photos look
really amazing
Action camera
Sony HDRAS15
187 | $268
Sonys action camera is inexpensive,
but doesnt skimp on features. It uses
SteadyShot and an Exmor sensor to ensure
smooth lming at HD quality. Theres Wi-Fi
too, letting you control it via your phone.
www.sony.com
Weight
65g
Quality
1080p
Internet radio
Logitech UE Smart
Radio 150 | $180
Logitechs radio is stunningly versatile: it can
link to loads of internet music services,
including last.fm and Spotify, and its
room-lling sound is every bit as good as
radios twice the price.
www.logitech.com
SMARTPHONE
Nokia Lumia 920
Length
22cm
Height
12.8 cm
419 | $450 A great screen and camera combine

to make Nokias big phone a winner
Nokias agship phone is one heck of a thing to
hold. With a 4.5-inch display and weighing 186g,
it wont sit unnoticed in your pocket.
The screen is an absolute beauty, however, with a
bright and colourful display and the ability to take
Weight
knocks thanks to its tough Gorilla Glass.
186g
It also has a fantastic eight-megapixel Carl Zeiss
camera, which makes photographing life on the
move a pleasure the results are amazing.
Battery
The real win here is the ability to charge wirelessly
N/A
with an optional dock, so theres no need to attach a
cable when the juice is low.
The 920 comes in red, yellow, white and black,
and you can get accessories such as headphones, wireless
charging stations and speakers in matching colours.
www.nokia.co.uk
Screen
4.5in
touch
Screen
4.0in
touch
Weight
113g
Battery
310 mins
HD streamer
Asus O!Play Mini Plus
96 | $120
The O!Play Mini Plus from Asus lets you stream
HD images and video with Dolby surround
sound quality. Youll nd an e-SATA port for
connecting to hard drives, and it comes with
YouTube connectivity.
www.asus.com
Weight
175g
Power
10W
HTC 8S 229 | $430

The HTC 8S cuts down on size and
power for people who want a
phone rst and a web browser and
digital camera second.
The handset is slim and has a
vibrant, edgy design. The
four-inch screen is lacking a little
and the ve-megapixel camera is
a little below par, but it does
come with Dr Dres Beats Audio
integrated, which boosts music
and gives it better clarity.
www.htc.com
Workout watch
Garmin Forerunner 610
225 | $400
This is the perfect timepiece for going on
runs, working out at the gym or riding your
bike, with a load of features for keeping track
of your various activities. Its easy to use
interface makes it a perfect tness buddy.
www.garmin.com
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Weight
72g
Battery
8 hours
Help & Advice |
89
WorldMags.net
Youre in no position
to talk, mate. At least
Ive got trousers on
Saints Row IV
Super powers? A presidential seat of power? Welcome to Steelport

Price 40
Developer Volition
Publisher Deep Silver
Multiplayer Up to 10
DRM Steam Web www.saintsrow.com
Recommended specs i5 CPU, Geforce 560GT,
4GB RAM
Saints Row IV is the

only game weve ever
had to pause because
we were laughing too
much to play it. We want to
tell you about the exact
section that caused us to
crease up with laughter.
We want to sit you down,
wave our arms, do accents and
voices, and perform a poor
90
recreation of the setup

and payo to the whole thing.
And we want you to know
about the other hundred-odd
moments that contorted our
real-life faces into real-life grins
or our real-life mouths into
real-life laughs.
We wont tell you about all
of them because that would
spoil them, but we want you
to know because theyre so

gleeful, so joyful, so playful,
that they turn the fourth
sequel to what was an average
Grand Theft Auto clone into
one of the most fun
videogames on the market.
Saints Row IV is still set in
the city of Steelport. Except it
technically isnt; the game
starts with an alien attack on
WorldMags.net
Earth, with you as president of

the United States. Except it
technically doesnt do that,
either. The game actually
starts once youve inltrated a
terrorist base to nd a nuclear
missile, attached yourself to
the side before launch, and
clambered up, yanking vital
bits of wiring out as
Aerosmiths I Dont Wanna Miss
A Thing blares. The missile
explodes, and you fall to Earth
and crash through the ceiling
of the oval oce.
Congratulations, youre a hero!
Maximum face
Were including this precise
description because it sets
Saints Row IVs tone early, and
better than we could with
words like madcap or
anarchic or what?! This tone
continues throughout the
subsequent alien invasion,
throughout your incarceration
WorldMags.net
Upgrade
Play this
Does my bum look

big in this? Yes? Good
Romance options are available

as a homage to Mass Eect.
This is not one of them
Virtual Steelport is
prone to glitches
Most problems can be

solved with a good suplex
That never happened

in The West Wing.
in a Matrix-esque simulation of
Steelport (see why it
technically isnt the same
place?) all the way through
the 10-hour campaign and
20-plus hours of side missions.
Its even present in the
character creator. Long ago,
we developed the concept of
maximum face: mutants
produced by pushing every
slider on an avatar creation
screen to full. The overweight,

hollow-cheeked, elf-eared
weirdo you see in these
screenshots is a product of
that. For the rst three hours
of the game, simply seeing his
face kicked us into giggles.
We played our Saints Row IV
hero for laughs, dressing him
in a towel, then in Lara Croft
hot pants, then as a giant
foam hotdog. But youre also
free to play him straight a
man in a suit in an imperfect
simulation of an already mad
city. Or youre free to play as a
her. Or as a him with a her
voice, or a her with a him
voice, or a her with a her voice
pitch-shifted to 100 per cent,
or even as a him with Nolan
Norths voice. Or, if you really
fancy, you can choose to play
as a white hovering toilet.
We created a monster with
an ageing wrestlers body, a
pencil moustache and giant
buggly eyes, and gave

him a cockney voice
pitch-shifted to 60 per
cent. He talked like Jason
Statham hung a birthday
party full of helium balloons
and loomed out of the screen
like a childs drawing of a
nightmare made esh. By the
end of the game, we loved
him. Were not quite sure how
that happened, but weve got
an idea. Saints Row IV is
surprisingly inclusive. It trades
on ridiculousness you can
play as a toilet but unlike
Grand Theft Auto, its never
sneering or cruel, preferring to
invite the target of its ribbing
in on the joke.
Easy does it
Where GTA lauds movies and
music as cultural touchstones,
Saints Row IV takes games, and
Mass Eect is one of its most
visible targets. The Steelport
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
Simulation is run by aliens: the

muscular, bipedal Zin, headed
by pantomime villain Zinyak.
Punching out of that sim for
the rst time, we were given
access to a ship with cabins for
a crew Id later rescue.
Press [E] on a crewmate and
you can talk to them. Press [R]
and youll romance them.
Theres no convoluted
conversational mineeld to
unlock fade-to-black frolics
here, though. These romance
options are pastiches of
BioWares relationship vending
machines feed enough in
and collect your companion
below but theyre also
indicative of Saints Row IVs
desire to simplify.
That desire is pervasive and
is the best thing about the
game, with options unfurling
as you play. Steelport is a city
full of cars, and, as in GTA
before it, any of them can be
Help & Advice |
91
WorldMags.net
Im an aront to nature, and this is
my favourite store on the Citadel!
You can play as an average Joe

if you like, but we prefer the
burlesque wrestler look
Has anyone seen any birds?

Preferably angry ones?
hijacked and driven. Theyre

almost all nippy and handle
well. They felt good, but other
cars will sometimes crash into
you and knock you o course.
Half an hour into the game,
we unlocked nitrous boosts
for all vehicles. Our alreadyquick cars went faster, and cars
in our path were destroyed by
turbo-charged collisions. They
felt great. An hour in, we also
unlocked the power of super
jumps. Holding [Space] would
power up a leap thatd get our
costumed terror halfway up a
tower-block. It felt fantastic.
Two hours in, we unlocked
super speed. We could run
faster than cars. It felt
awesome, being able to get
anywhere in Steelport, across
three big islands, in a minute
or two. Three hours in, wed
unlocked a glide move that let
me oat between objectives
92
like a disgusting ying squirrel.

Again, it felt amazing and
totally natural as well.
Nice and subtle

Ten hours in, we barely
needed to touch the ground.
Our favourite way to get to a
story mission marker was to
begin with a long sprint to
Steelports central island, nd
the tallest skyscraper, bound
up it while charging an
upgraded tier three super
jump, before leaping o and
gliding toward our new
objective. Fifty storeys above
it, wed hold right-click and
aim the marker that appeared,
turning our creepy hero into a
human missile through an
upgradeable ability and
slamming to the ground with
a powerful shockwave.
Pedestrians and cars would
careen away from our impact
point, and wed saunter

the few feet to our destination
in luminous pink heels. It felt
glorious, to say the least.
Saints Row IV does
everything in its power to
make life easy for you.
We found foot power to be
our favourite means of travel,
but theres a full customisation
system for all the cars in the
game, in addition to pilotable
alien hoverbikes, UFOs, and
attack helicopters. Any minor
inconvenience was stripped
away by an upgrade system
ripped from console cult
favourite Crackdown. Glowing
blue collectibles hidden on
buildings and bridges around
the city let you upgrade your
movement capabilities, as well
as a suite of four powers that
include ice blasts and
telekinesis. We found
ourselves entering mini-
WorldMags.net
trances and collecting these

blue orbs for 10 or 15 minutes
at a time, revelling in the joy of
superpowered movement and
the camp little yelp our
chunky character produced
when he collected one.
Simulated Steelport is also
full of more structured
distractions than you could
shake a hoverbike at. Shops
can be hacked to provide
new clothes and weapon
options, and turn the local
populace to the Saints side.
Towers can be climbed and
turned from angry alien red to
calm blue. These missions are
structured further by your
crew, wholl ask you to
perform certain tasks to
destabilise the simulation.
They know what theyre doing
the mission brieng for one
job reads: Were stretching
out gameplay!
WorldMags.net
Upgrade
Play this
Your arsenal of alien weaponry

includes a dubstep gun. Wub wub
The alien Zin demand respect and order.

Theyre going to be disappointed
However, some of these

missions are noticeably
weak: clearing waves of foes
gets tiresome when they take
too long to turn up, and the
Audiosurf-a-like minigame
where your avatar runs down
a three-lane tunnel collecting
orbs goes on too long. Others
are inspired, particularly the
destruction jobs where youre
given the keys to a tank, and
the insurance fraud schemes,
where you deliberately ragdoll
yourself into trac to earn
some extra cash.
Light entertainment
But its the story missions that
are the strongest, using
characters from the three
previous Saints Row games to
make them bombastic, funny,
and imaginative. The
simulated setting lets Saints
Row IV play where it wants.
The standout for us was a

Metal Gear Solid-style base
inltration that forced us to
shoot every light source in the
facility, and the line That light
had a family. The setting also
enables the game to cast its
violence in an acceptable light.
Enemies, pedestrians, aliens:
all simulations to be suplexed
onto the concrete by way of
one of Saints Row IVs ludicrous
melee moves and left to fade
into imaginary numbers.
Its not the most technically
procient game, but then
again none of the other three
Saints Row titles were either.
Five or six times cutscenes
failed to trigger because we
were mid-animation when
they were due to start
clipping was also a constant
problem and enemies
occasionally got stuck in the
scenery. Fortunately, its not
broken: Steelport, with all its

moving parts, was designed to
push consoles at the end of
their lifespan, but our i5 CPU
and two-year-old graphics
card ran it on high without
trouble. Graphics options that
included v_sync and antialiasing (but no eld of view)
were more than enough to
keep us happy in a city that
never chugged as we glided
through its skies.
Saints Row IV is a game thats
comfortable with itself. Its
solved how to tie callous
violence to a character you
actually want to inhabit by
means of a narrative device,
its solved ddly movement by
an intoxicating set of
movement mechanics, and its
solved the leery, exploitative
tone of previous sequels
through genuine aection for
its cast and equality in player
WorldMags.net
December 2013 |
character man, woman or

toilet, anyone can wield a
giant purple bat. Its a vast,
mechanically joyful game, the
result of chucking all the fun
and freedom of gaming into
the same handy locale.
Saints Row was born of
Grand Theft Auto, but although
they both have open cities and
freeform violence, the two
have diverged. Grand Theft
Auto is desperate to be a lm,
a satire, an experience. Saints
Row IV wants to be a game,
and by showing its love for the
medium, its become
something wonderful. Q
Help & Advice |
93
WorldMags.net
Some magnetic elds are spherical,
some cylindrical. Because shut up, okay?
Ah, this little puzzle looks

remarkably self-explanatory
Magrunner: Dark Pulse

A first-person puzzler that doesnt quite manage to repel or attract
Price 15
Developer Frogwares
Publisher Focus Home Interactive
Multiplayer Yes
DRM Steam Web www.magrunner-thegame.com
Recommended specs 2.4GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, GeForce 8800 / ATI Radeon HD 4800
Magnets! How do they

work?! Inquisitive rap
artists will only be
further confused by
Magrunner: Dark Pulse, a
rst-person Portal-alike in
which the principle puzzle
gimmick magnetising stu
functions in exactly the way
reality doesnt.
In Magrunner, similar
charges attract one another
and opposite charges repel.
You can imbue selected
objects with either polarity
simply by clicking on them,
thanks to a hand-mounted
device that can also re a
magnetised robotic canine
helper, enabling you to shunt
polarised platforms hither and
94
thither, or surf across test

chambers on the back of a
suddenly repelled cube.
These test chambers feature
as part of an improbable space
training program for which
you, a plucky street kid named
Dax, have been selected along
with six others, all decked out
in brightly coloured kneepads,
spunky hair-dos and visors. If
you were told this was the cast
of a 90s Saturday morning
cartoon called Rad Kidz, you
would think nothing of it
after all, you get a robot dog.
But something is amiss.
Something ancient and
deathless with tentacles and
wings and an eternal desire for
domination. The rapidity with
which the plot veers from its

day-glo tween-ction into
Lovecraftian otherness is
brave, but its never quite sure
how seriously to take itself.
Some sights and sounds are
unsettling, but it ultimately
plumps for lots of horror, and a
perplexingly ambivalent nale.
Dark futurism
All the same, this provides an
enticing canvas for
Magrunners talented artists,
who have fun smashing
plasticky futurism into abyssal
nightmares. What you do in
these collapsing arenas,
however, isnt nearly as
otherwordly; playing with
magnets never overturns
WorldMags.net
spatial reality in the

exhilarating way of Portals
wormholes, but it does
manage to create some tricky
problems of procedure as you
identify which mechanisms to
activate rst. One particularly
neat puzzle requires you to
juggle the polarity of a stack of
platforms to shue them ever
further up a shaft. Another has
you alternate charges to set
three platforms spinning on
looped rails, timing the
rotations so that you can leap
between them.
Unfortunately, Magrunner
doesnt always produce the
sort of reliable physics that
these clever puzzles demand.
This is occasionally fatal and,
worse, can lead you to
mistakenly abandon valid lines
of experimentation. Polarised
objects sometimes spring o
at odd angles for no good
reason. Some dont react at all,
and need to be de- and re-
WorldMags.net
Chill out, mate.
Dont get solenoid
Colour blind? The game comes

with alternative colour options
The term chitinous astral
terror is so polarising
We suddenly have a
craving for calamari
magnetised before they wake

up and smell the Lorentz force.
Depending on the puzzle, an
activated magnetic eld might
send blocks rocketing o into
the sky, and at other times just
gently nudge them away. It all
makes the rulebook for
Magrunner hard to interpret.
Even when the physics isnt
on the fritz, massaging
magnetic elds is nicky, and
as the puzzles get larger and
larger, the cost of imprecision
gets tedious to undo. One
exasperating sequence
requires you to coax a chain of
platforms into the sky, rushing
to prop up one end before the
other sags, over and over. Its
exactly as much fun as trying
to pin up several metres of
tinsel with a single piece of
ageing Blu-Tack.
Numerous other puzzles
require you to drag a lift
upwards in frustrating
half-metre increments, and
one ill-advised late-game

invention is to add a time limit
by way of a deadly manytendrilled shoggoth, turning
trial and error into trial and
execution. Its not obvious why
a game designer would want
to subject players to this.
Suer through these
aggravations and youll nd a
game composed of some
disappointingly stolid,
workmanlike conundrums,
wrapped in rather dashing
aesthetics. Magrunner: Dark
Pulse is rarely scintillating, but
conceptually sound an
enigma altogether more
earthly than its rather odd
mythos might suggest. Q
You can toggle the

visibility of magnetic
elds. Handy!
Lovecraft to the max
WorldMags.net
Upgrade
Play this
WorldMags.net
Elves are no strangers
to using lipgloss
Punchgar likes to blend into

the shadows like a phantom
The rst Shadowrun started out

in 1989 as a pen-and-paper game
Shadowrun Returns
The best game here may well be the one you make yourself
Price 15
Developer Harebrained Schemes
Publisher Steam
Multiplayer None
DRM Steam Web www.shadowrun.com/shadowrun-returns
Recommended specs 1.4GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, DX9 3D card
The world of
Shadowrun is one
where freelance trolls
with dreadlocks punch
trans-dimensional giant
insects to death with their
bare hands. You cant really
dress it up as anything other
than what it is, and the same
goes for Shadowrun Returns.
Its an aectionate adaptation
of the tabletop RPG, built on
a low-tech engine, with a
surprisingly interesting story
(but not much else).
Shadowrun Returns is set in

an alternate future in which
magic returned to the world in
2012, bringing elves, witches
and dragons along with it.
In this world, Shadowrunners
are smugglers, mercenaries,
freelance ghost busters and
hackers for hire, who make
their way between the cracks.
The action takes place in an
isometric world enlivened by
96
turn-based combat and

text-based dialogue trees. You
pick a character from standard
fantasy races such as elves
and orcs, each with strengths
and limitations. Class options
range from powerful spirit
summoners to the selfexplanatory street samurai.
Thrust into this world with
only a thirst for violence and
an 80s action-hero disdain
for authority, our character,
Punchgar the Blooded, found
himself wrapped up in a
mystery wrapped up in a
conspiracy. While the rst two
acts kept our attention with
their slow trickle of clues, the
third overstayed its welcome.
We felt like Jack Bauer in the
latter half of any season of 24,
asking: Okay, whos the real
bad guy? And can I punch
them in the face yet?
Combat is denitely a
strength of Shadowrun Returns.
With a diverse crew, any given

round of combat could see
you summoning a spirit,
throwing a concussion
grenade and unloading with
machine-gun re. All this while
your Decker is in cyberspace,
represented by a completely
dierent map, trying to
complete a combat minigame. Some of the later
encounters are on par with
XCOM: Enemy Unknowns
Classic Mode. Even with the
best party and the best gear,
just a couple of small mistakes
could kill you
.
Do it yourself
Shadowrun Returns also comes

with a game editor that will
feel intuitive to anyone with
a basic understanding of
scripting. The editor, in fact, is
a fair bit more powerful than
the campaign itself would
suggest, oering tools you
WorldMags.net
wouldnt even know existed

from having played through it.
Shadowruns bang-to-buck
ratio will depend on the
quality of content produced
by the developers and the
community after release,
but as it stands today, its a
mostly average RPG running
in a visually underwhelming
engine. Between the varied,
challenging combat
encounters and the somewhat
above-par plot, its worth
the 20-ish hours it will take
to complete. Like the life of
a Shadowrunner, it drags in
places and shines in others. Q
WorldMags.net
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Play this
Die More Edition occasionally lets

you pick your next location.
Theyre all horrible
This is where you always start.

It looks quite cosy and safe
Teleglitch:
Die More Edition
Ammo conservation is
crucial, and your melee
attack is next to useless
With only a few pixels and sound effects, this

low-tech survival game really ramps up the horror
Price 9
Developer Test3 Projects
Publisher Paradox Interactive
Multiplayer None
DRM Steam Web http://diemore.teleglitch.com
Recommended specs Dual core CPU, 1GB RAM, GeForce 6600
rounds of your precious

shotgun pellets on them.
Old familiar
Teleglitch has just
made us pray no,
beg for a tin of
canned meat, the most
covetable item in a harsh,
hateful world. Canned meat
restores 10 hit points, you see
even beyond your initial
limit of 100 but thats not
the best part.
The best part is, once weve

eaten the delicious, healthboosting innards, we can use
the empty can to make metal
plate, which in turn can be
transformed into armour.
Armour that might just help
us survive long enough to
make it to the next can.
This is what the rogue-like
top-down shooter Teleglitch:
Die More Edition has reduced
us to: a pitiful bundle of pixels
pathetically in search of our
next hit of tinned protein.
Were not sure the developer,
Test3 Projects, intended an
item so innocuous to be
quite so lusted over, but it
nonetheless forms part of an
immaculately balanced set of
potential upgrades and items
built from the junk you nd
lying around the Militech
research facility. Teleglitch
might be a shooter, but its
also an arms race. The real
core of the game is keeping
yourself well enough
equipped and upgraded to
hold o the next wave of its
increasingly tough, freakish
foes as you try to reach the
teleporter that will grant you
access to the next section.
Your enemies are fought
o with crisp, taut gunplay
in which ammo conservation
is key. As well as being
astonishingly, horribly deadly
en masse, these creatures like
to avenge generations of their
brethren by circle strang you,
just daring you to waste three
Its tough, then, but reliably

so. Teleglitch, even in this Die
More Edition (which lets you
randomise your starting
loadout) rejects the slotmachine nature of so many
games of this genre (which is
characterised by randomised
levels and no supply of extra
lives if you mess up). The
pleasure of nabbing a jetpack,
compass and shotgun before
youve even left the mines has
no equivalent in Teleglitch.
Test3s algorithm dispenses
the occasional treat, certainly,
but the randomisation here
is more a means of removing
familiarity than a way of
making each run a distinctly
atmospheric experience.
Yet atmospheric it is. Its
low-tech graphics look a bit
drab in screenshots, but clever
distortion eects alongside a
tracking, zooming camera and
dynamic line-of-sight system
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December 2013 |
lend a queasy, hypnotic

motion to the game. Theres
some richly imagined science
ction behind it all too
though pausing to read
text from the many, many
terminals sprinkled about the
place does tend to interrupt
the rhythm of the game.
Theres a kind of purity to
Teleglitch: Die More Edition,
which works hard to conjure
an oppressive atmosphere
around a brutal, punishing
core. In that sense, its more of
a traditional roguelike
than many of the genrehybrids weve seen in recent
years, even if its shooter
heritage means we should
undoubtedly count it among
their growing numbers. Q
Help & Advice |
97
Your disc
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network. Weve brought you a
selection of tools and utilities to
create a network that suits your
every need. We also show you
how to control your PC with a
quick tweet and how to convert
video files with VLC.
30 Call or message your friends

with the Viber for Windows tool
40 Convert a whole host of video

formats with VLC Media Player
Simon Arblaster Disc editor

simon.arblaster@futurenet.com
44 Create your own customised

shortcuts with AutoHotKey
48 Use TweetMyPC to control

your home machine via Twitter
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started
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Place your free disc into your computers disc drive. The
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has happened, click Run OWV.exe to start up the disc interface.
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Read it, then click on I agree to continue.
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the categories
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Click on one of the categories in the menu underneath the
magazine logo to discover all the programs that are contained in

each. Simply click on an apps name to find out more about it.
Full commercial products usually have information about how
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Your disc
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Make the most of it!
FIND THE SOLUTION! How to get your disc to play

If the disc doesnt start automatically, hit the Windows key, then
click Computer. Now double click the DVD drive to get going.
BlueLife Hosts Editor

CloseTheDoor Portable
DNS Jumper
Fast Software Audit
HTTP File Server
inSSIDer
Network Activity
Indicator
Network Stuff
NetWorx
RawCap
Remote RebootX
Simple IP Cong
SoftPerfect WiFi Guard
TamoSoft
Throughput Test
Bad Peggy
FotoMix
Fotor
Hornil StylePix
ImBatch
Paint.NET
PhotoFiltre
PhotoScape
The GIMP
XnRetro
If you have
a problem
the program
3 Install
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or call 01225 822743,
quoting the magazine
name and issue. We are
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software contained on it.
disc brings up another message window to take you through the

installation process. Each one of these is different just follow the
prompts until you get a message telling you that the installation
is complete. Now its time to try out your free apps have fun!
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December 2013 |
Back4Sure
DriverMax
EaseUS Partition
Recovery
EaseUS Todo
Backup Free
Horodruin
Iperius Backup Freeware
Macrium Reect Free
Paragon Backup &
Recovery Free
AutoHotKey
BleachBit
Digsby
Firewall App Blocker
And more!
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