Much to the disappointment of many Windows casual gamers, Windows 8 entirely removed all classic games from the OS and expected everyone to migrate to the Store versions. The Store versions lack many features and customizations of the classic Windows versions but are still playable, especially with the upcoming Windows 8.1 Update 1 which will show these on the Taskbar so they are not full screen. Here are 40 free games in the Windows Store, some of them classics.
Author: Gaurav Kale
Gaurav is a software enthusiast from India and Classic Shell tester & UX consultant. He started with Windows 95 and is good at software usability testing. He firmly believes that user experience is just as important as software code quality and architecture for software to be successful.
Minimize apps to system tray (notification area) with TrayIt!
Do you know that you can minimize desktop apps in Windows to the notification area (system tray) since Windows 95? Even if the feature isn't exposed in the Windows user interface, it's been possible and there have been dozens of tools written to minimize programs to the notification area. One of the best ones is TrayIt! Let's see what makes TrayIt! so cool.
Queue copy and move operations in Windows with PerigeeCopy
The copy function in Windows has evolved over time to add useful features but one feature it still doesn't have is the ability to automatically queue multiple copy jobs so they don't run simultaneously, that is, when one copy operation is running, another shouldn't start before the first one finishes to avoid slowing down both and the overall speed of copying too. A third party freeware called PerigeeCopy offers this feature along with a host of other cool features. Let's see what it's got to offer.
Customize the right click Win+X power users menu in Windows 8.1 and Windows 8
In all versions of Microsoft Windows, hot corners are used to do useful actions or access important system functions. In Windows 8, Microsoft introduced a feature for mouse users to access with the right click - the Win+X menu. When you right click the bottom left hot corner of the screen or when you right click the Start button in Windows 8,1, this menu pops up. Although it is far from being a Start Menu replacement, it does have shortcuts to useful administrative tools and system functions. In this article, we will see how to add our own shortcuts to the Win+X menu.
Adobe Flash Player direct download links
Adobe's Flash Player is something that you need to update constantly. Just 2 days ago, Adobe released an emergency update for Flash Player to fix a critical remote code execution vulnerability that hackers on the web are actively exploiting. However, even if Flash Player's installer has automatic update checking and the ability to update automatically, you may want to download the full Flash Player installer to update multiple machines quickly. Here are direct download links for it.
How to remove the Lock icon on files and folders in Windows 7
In Windows 7, some of your personal folders and files may have a padlock overlay icon on them and you might be wondering what it indicates and how to get rid of it. The Lock icon indicates that the file or folder is shared with nobody but you, and that your account alone has the permission to access it (besides the SYSTEM and admin accounts). This icon is shown only when some item that was shared previously with other users was made private. It is easy to remove this icon if you find it unwanted.
Translate text to and from other languages offline using Bing Translator app for Windows
If you have a business need to translate text in international languages regularly, there are plenty of free online services today as well as paid app solutions for desktop and mobile. Google Translate is one of the most popular ones and also has Android and iOS apps. Microsoft Translator has also been long available. For Windows 8, Microsoft has an app called Bing Translator. I explored some of its features.
Get the classic Open With dialog on Windows 8.1 and Windows 8 using OpenWith Enhanced
In Windows, when you double click a file, it opens in the default program which is registered to handle it. But you can right click that file and choose Open With to choose another program to open it with. Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 made some changes to the Open With dialog and turned it into a floating Metro style window. Let us see how we can get the Windows 7 style classic Open With dialog back.
Always on Top tool for Windows (Alternative to PowerMenu)
Windows has always had the ability to make any window the topmost one ever since Windows 3.0. Once you make a window the topmost one, other overlapping windows will always show below that window in the Z-order. It is possible to make a window the topmost one programmatically but Microsoft felt that if this control was given to end users, then application developers would misuse it to make their programs always on top. Still, third party tools can easily use the Windows API function to change this. Let's look at two ways to make a window on top.
How to change the font or font size in Classic Shell Start Menu
If you use the Classic Shell Start Menu, you are not restricted like other Start Menus to a limited number of customization options. Classic Shell was built for letting you customize every aspect of it. While most settings in Classic Shell are present in the graphical settings user interface, some settings are part of the Skin files. One of them is the Start Menu font and font size. As screen resolutions and pixels per inch increase, there is a need to make the font larger if the default size is too small for you at 1080p and higher resolutions. While the Skin options in Classic Shell allow you to make the font size larger at 1 pt, if you want to make it still larger or completely replace the font with your own favorite font or change its formatting such as Bold, Italics, follow this guide.
