New versions of Windows often add new text-to-speech voices. Windows Vista added Anna which was retained up to Windows 7. Windows 8 also had new voices, David, Zira and Hazel. Windows 10 features a set of additional voices in Technical Preview. In the current build 9879 of Windows 10, enthusiasts have discovered the following new voices in the US English version : Microsoft Mark Mobile and Microsoft Eva Mobile, and a special test voice designed for Cortana. The older Windows 8 voices are also present. It is possible to unlock the "Eva" voice and check it out if you're interested. Here is how.
Get free disk space back after upgrading to Windows 10
If you installed Windows 10 over a previous Windows version like Windows 8 or Windows 7, you might have noticed that free disk space on your disk drive was considerably reduced. This is nothing new. For modern versions of Windows it is the default behavior. When you do an in-place upgrade from a previous version of Windows, setup saves a lot of files from the earlier installed OS during the upgrade and fills your hard drive with files that you might never need again if your upgrade is successful. The reason setup saves these files is so that if something goes wrong during setup, it can safely rollback to the earlier version of Windows. However, if your upgrade was successful and you've got everything working perfectly, then there's no need to keep these files. You can reclaim all the wasted disk space by following these simple instructions.
Download Microsoft Eva voice for Windows 10
Microsoft Eva voice for Windows 10.
A tweak to unlock Microsoft Eva voice for Windows 10 TP3
Move tabs and address bar in Firefox to the bottom with Bottom UI
Some time ago I covered a trick which allows you to move tabs to the bottom in Mozilla Firefox. In that article, I used the awesome Classic Theme Restorer add-on. I was a fan of the classic Opera browser which had a fully customizable UI and I appreciate having the same ability in Firefox to be able to modify its look with the help of add-ons. One such addon is Bottom UI. It is a very interesting extension for Firefox. Let's take a look at what it offers to the end user.
Windows 10 adds system compression to Disk cleanup
Disk Cleanup is an essential Windows system tool which allows you to delete various unnecessary files created by the OS to save space on your disk drive. By default, it works in a simpler mode which allows you to delete only the files related to your current user account. You can switch it to the extended mode, which allows you to delete more unused files such as the ones used by Windows Updates, or service packs and so on. In Windows 10, the extended mode was updated to add one more feature. Now it provides a System compression option. Let's explore what it is about.
Enable hidden secret Search box in Windows 10 build 9879
The latest Windows 10 Technical Preview build 9879 allows you to turn the search icon in the taskbar into a search box. This feature is disabled by default, but here is how you can unlock it and get an idea of what is planned for future builds of Windows 10. The search box in the Taskbar is a nice idea. In fact, with Windows Search for XP, you had a similar search box in the taskbar. Read the rest of the article to learn how to switch between the search icon and the search box in the taskbar on Windows 10.
Download Taskbar search box tweak for Windows 10
Taskbar search box tweak for Windows 10.
Taskbar Search box tweak for Windows 10.
Windows 10 setup.exe command line switches
The Windows 10 Setup program, or setup.exe which is part of the installation media, supports a set of command line arguments. Using those arguments, you can modify the behavior of Windows installation. In this article we will review command line switches available for setup.exe in Windows 10.
Move notification toasts to top or bottom of the screen in Windows 10
In Windows 10, all kinds of notifications were replaced with Windows 8-like toasts which appear in the bottom right corner of the screen. Regardless of the event for which the notification is being shown e.g. AutoPlay, driver installation or new email - you will only see the Metro-like toast notifications. While we recently covered how to restore balloon notifications, many people prefer toast notifications, but would like to see them in the top right corner of the screen instead of bottom right. Here is how they can be moved to the bottom or to the top.
Enable secret hidden Continuum UI (new Start screen) in Windows 10 TP3
As you might have noticed from screenshots circulating on the Internet, Windows 10 Technical Preview 3 (Build 9879) comes with a secret, hidden Start Screen feature, known as the Continuum UI. In this article, we will enable it with a simple registry tweak. Continuum is the improved version of Metro. It's about seamlessly switching between the touch UI and the mouse/keyboard centric UI depending on which peripherals are attached to your PC/tablet and whether it is docked or undocked.
