Windows 8 In Depth

Following this exercise, I took the screen capture shown above. By sorting on network, I was able to quickly compare network bandwidth utilization for recently used apps. Is startup performance important to you? From this view you can see a summary of startup performance, and tune startup behavior all in one place.

When you right click on one of the items you can easily disable the item which removes it from the active startup path. One of the interesting new capabilities in the details tab shows up when you right click on an item:. This is a great capability that allows you to easily determine if a non-responsive application is waiting on another process as seen here:. In this scenario, I printed from Outlook to an application and then invoked the analyze wait chain dialog while Outlook was waiting on the target application to complete the printing process.

Had the target application hung, I could have terminated the target application from this dialog. This is a great capability because it allows you to avoid terminating dependent applications Outlook in this case in some circumstances. The details tab in the Windows 8 Task Manager also supports many new column options so that you can view more information about running processes.

One notable improvement is the ability to right click on a service and easily search for information on the internet related to the service. Before Windows 8 I would open a search window, manually type in the name of the service, and then sift through the results. Now this information is just a right-click away:. Search online is supported for certain items on the processes tab, startup tab, details tab, and services tab. Want to see more tips, tricks, and new features in the Windows 8 Task Manager?

Check out this video walkthrough I created:. Please leave a comment! Skip to Content Skip to Footer. By default, the weather app in our build came in the largest-possible size, and we ultimately decided to keep it that way; shrink Weather down and all you get is a sun icon. But blow it up and you get two days of weather forecasts, complete with high and low temperatures and a brief summary of what to expect e.

Much more useful that way. As for the small icons, Microsoft says you might want to use that option to condense a large cluster of programs, like Adobe Creative Suite. That's a fair point; though we'd also add that it comes in handy for apps you just don't use that often. You only occasionally take photos with your tablet? Just shrink down the camera icon so that it doesn't take up precious Start Screen space. And as silly as it sounds, we also spent a good few minutes organizing and re-organizing our apps.

It's hard to believe, but until now you could only view the master apps list in alphabetical order. Now you've got several other choices: To each his own, but we have a soft spot for the category option: Another decision you'll have to make for yourself: Maybe you think you'll need a shortcut for every app. As for us, we liked how little clutter there was on the Start Screen compared to the master apps list, but again, don't let us dissuade you from pinning things. It's sort of a shame Microsoft gave reviewers a Surface Pro to try out Windows 8.

Until now, you could snap just two windows side by side. Now, depending on the resolution of your screen, you can add more. Microsoft says it partially comes down to how many horizontal pixels you have and how many pixel-wide windows it'll accommodate. The problem is, even if you have a high-res screen, a high dpi rating can keep you from adding as many windows as you might like. On the Surface Pro, for instance, you can still only snap in two windows, despite the fact that it has a 1, x 1, screen.

Stay ahead with the world's most comprehensive technology and business learning platform.

Get yourself a Toshiba Kirabook with a inch, 2, x 1, display and you're up to four side-by-side windows. Even if you are stuck with just two windows, though, you at least have more flexibility in how you actually arrange them. As you'd expect, resizing a window just means grabbing the windowpane with your mouse or finger, and then sliding it either right or left. Additionally, it's pretty clear when you've exhausted your window limit; your PC simply won't let you snap anything else into place. Specifically, if you've run out of open slots, you'll get a visual cue prompting you to replace one of the currently filled Snap windows.

Makes sense to us. The only thing you might not get right away is maximizing windows: Not difficult, but not intuitive either. Search works differently in Windows 8. First off, let's talk about what happens when you use the Search charm. Whereas before you'd just see links to files, settings and apps, here you get more actionable results, like a specific settings option "Sk" will lead to "SkyDrive storage space," for instance.

All told, too, the results come not just from settings, apps and files, but from the web as well. You can even play music from the search results, so long as you search for an artist or album already in your Xbox Music collection. Do that, and a small music player will pop up onscreen, but it won't eclipse whatever screen it was you were looking at before you did the search.

That's a big part of the story, that built-in search now works more efficiently. But it's often a different visual experience too. Depending on what you search for, you'll get a so-called Search Hero, an app-like layout with results that include photos, web results and deep links to apps you may already have installed, like Maps or Wikipedia. They look stunning and offer all the information you might need and even some things you might not, like photos you can filter by color.

The only thing we found confusing is that Windows doesn't appear to make a Hero for everything; it seems to be dependent on the subject matter.

You have to try it to believe it. When Microsoft first showed us all the new keyboard shortcuts on Windows 8, we were skeptical: Well, believe us when we say the new and improved keyboard works as promised. First of all, when you see pop-up spelling suggestions, you can swipe from side to side on the space bar to cycle through them, and then you can tap the space bar when you've highlighted the one you want.

The idea being, you don't have to take your fingers off the keyboard to pick the right word. In any case, this gesture works like a charm, even on the first try, and it comes with a pleasing sound effect to match, so that you get a little audio feedback. Though we tried this several times, we never once created a space in the text by accident; the keyboard always seemed to recognize we were trying to select one of the word suggestions.

Similarly, you can hold down certain keys like the question mark, which doubles as the exclamation key. From there, you'll see those other functions pop up nearby, always in the same place. The exclamation point always appears right above the question mark, for instance.

• The Protector: The Dream Reborn.
• Windows 8 in detail.
• Navigating the Windows 8 Folder Windows - Windows 8 In Depth [Book].
• Windows 8 on a laptop in-depth preview (video).
• Windows 8 Release Preview – in-depth review | Technology | The Guardian.

What's cool is that once you memorize the different locations, you don't even need to do a long-press; you can just swipe up on the question mark to make an exclamation point. Almost every time, anyway. To continue with that question mark example, we usually got the exclamation point if that's what we meant to do. Sometimes, though, we ended up just tapping the question mark.

It's a subtle difference between tapping and tap-swiping. Sort of like pawing the key with your finger. If you've ever used a fingerprint reader, you might know what we're talking about. In any case, it's pretty reliable, and we never, ever hit the surrounding keys, which is something we were concerned about when we first saw this demoed last month. It's tempting to just lump SkyDrive in with all the other apps we're discussing here, but we're calling it out separately because it's so pervasive in Windows 8.

SkyDrive is much more deeply integrated here, with your files roaming from one device to another. Likewise, the SkyDrive app auto-refreshes with new files, even if you uploaded new material from another device.

1. Alfonso Ribeiro sues Epic for using the Carlton dance in 'Fortnite'.
2. Das Geburtstagsgeschenk (detebe) (German Edition);
3. Ford's noise-cancelling doghouse keeps pups calm during fireworks;
4. Love, Lust and the Longing for God.
5. Question Info!

Even if you don't have SkyDrive open, it'll still stay up to date with the latest files and versions. And it's pretty instantaneous too: As we described in our initial preview, the Windows Store has received a big facelift in Windows 8. In general, Microsoft has attempted to flatten the design, with pertinent info like stars and the number of reviews visible even on the main page. Open a download page and you'll see everything laid out from left to right: Perhaps most importantly, though, Microsoft has also added a recommendation engine so that whatever app you're looking at, you'll see similar picks promoted alongside it.

That's good news for users, who might not know how to discover new apps, but it's even better news for developers, who could use the extra promotion. Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.

My win 10 pro defaults to 8-bit color depth and for the life of me I cant find where to change it

How satisfied are you with this response? StefanZiem Replied on August 11, In reply to Andre Da Costa's post on June 2, I am having the same problem but my AMD graphic drivers are all bang up to date! JerryWang Replied on October 16, I got the same problem with intel hd latest driver.