desktops

Before taking the plunge into Windows 8, there are a few questions you should ask yourself. We've summarized some of most useful ones here, and by going down this checklist, you'll end up with a much better idea about the right path for upgrading existing hardware versus buying a new machine, and figuring out all the new styles of tablets and touch-screen hybrids hitting store shelves alongside Windows 8.

Do you want to stick with Windows at all, or would another OS work better for you? Microsoft has two new operating systems, Windows 8 and Windows RT. For … Read more

Do you like my new desktop background?

If you have 2 minutes to spare, you can create such a background, too. From Stamen Design, a San Francisco-based design and technology studio, comes Map-->Image. It's a free Web utility that lets you create an image from an area on a map.

Plug in a city and state or zip code in the Find a Place box, choose a map style, set the image size, and click the Make button. Once you have found a place, you can use the "+" and "-" buttons on the … Read more

Dropbox for Mac is a Web-based storage location that syncs with specified files or folders on your Mac, allowing you to access them from anywhere. If you have two or more machines using the same Dropbox, changes to a Dropbox-tagged file will be synced on the other devices. Working across Mac, Linux, and Windows, Dropbox for Mac lets you access files even when miles away from your main machine (and even when its off).

To use Dropbox for Mac you need an account, although setting one up is easy. A free account is available that lets you sync 2GB. The … Read more

A little over 36 years ago, Apple launched the Apple I, a hobbyist 1MHz computer often remembered for the classic picture of it housed in a humble wooden computer case with a carved "Apple Computer" logo.

Apple's designs slowly evolved from bulky plastic towers to rounded and colorful products, then solidified themselves in a place where ultrathin components and catchy colors co-exist.

In the below gallery by our friends at CBSNews.com highlighting Apple designs over the years, you may be able to spot when the collaboration between Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive really kicked off. … Read more

Start8 brings back the familiar start button to make your transition to Windows 8 a little bit easier. The first thing you'll notice when firing up your new Windows 8 PC is the lack of a Start button. For design reasons, Microsoft has removed the old Start menu in favor of the new Metro Start screen. Start8 aims to bring it back and help you make your move to the new Windows without compromising productivity.

The installation is light and fast, and setting up takes almost no time at all. Setup will ask whether you prefer the original Windows … Read more

Feeling lost in Windows 8's Desktop mode? Not sure how to get back to the Start screen? It's simpler than you think. We've got three ways to get you back home to the colorful safety of Metro's tiles.

Use the Charms, Luke. Open the Charms bar, Windows 8's new superpowered sidebar. If you're on a touch screen, you can do this by swiping in from the right edge. If you've got a mouse, move the cursor to the upper-right-hand corner of your screen. Wait a moment, and the Charms will appear. Move the … Read more

Fences 2.0 doesn't mess with what worked in the first version, which we loved when we looked at it three years ago. You get the same easy functionality of creating shaded areas (aka fences) on your desktop for organizing your files and folders. It lets you create rules, as you could with the old Fences Pro version, which automatically direct certain types of files to particular fences. Fences 2.0 introduces two new and useful features -- Folder Portals and Desktop Pages -- but before we get to them, let's quickly go over how the app works.… Read more

I don't want to alarm you, but the clock is ticking.

The Windows clock, I mean. Microsoft's new operating system debuts October 26. This means that very soon thereafter, any new Windows laptop or desktop you want to buy will come with Windows 8.

Let me be blunt: As a desktop operating system, Windows 8 blows. It's completely unintuitive. It forces you to relearn the simplest tasks, like how to shut down your PC. (No, seriously; there's no more Start menu, so to shut down, you have to venture into the Settings menu. Seriously.) And from … Read more

Microsoft Word is the No. 1 word processing program, but not everyone has it. That can be a problem if you need to submit something as a Word document (DOC format), but it's hardly insurmountable, thanks to tools like Free PDF to Word Doc Converter. It takes your PDFs, extracts and converts the data, and saves it in a DOC file that can be opened and edited with Word. It handles multiple pages, and it can reproduce images or remove them, depending on which suits your needs.

Free file converters tend to have simple GUIs, and Free PDF to … Read more