What to do if your keyboard on the screen. And if there are dozens of screens: At CES, the Russian design Art Lebedev, the company shows upcoming Optimus Aux Optimus popularis keyboard with a mini and a series of six unique keyboard for data input devices on the key to the home screen.
Windows hasn't changed a ton in the past few years (at least, the desktop hasn't) but there's always a dark corner to explore, tweak, and improve. Here are 10 things every Windows users should do with their system.SOkay, let's get the most controversial stuff out of the way first. Sure, Windows 8 puts a big focus on touch screen devices, and if you have a Windows 8 PC you can always downgrade it—but Windows 8 really doesn't deserve all the hate its gotten. Sure, the Start menu is gone, but even the most tech unsavvy user can bring it back with a bunch of different apps. Furthermore, contrary to what you've heard, it does have useful new features for desktop users: better performance, enhanced security, a new Windows Explorer (which, even if you don't love the ribbon, is more useful than the old one), a much improved task manager, the ability to Reset & Refresh your PC, the well-designed File History backup tool, and more. Even if you have a few annoyances, they're easy to fix. Plus, it even has a few secret features of its own, which leads us to...Both Windows 7 and 8 have a number of features that go largely unsung, but they can be really handy if you know where they are. From the smallest geeky tricks to the big features you've forgotten are there, a little exploration can go a long way into making Windows more productive. Most of those secret features should work just as well on Windows 8 too—plus, Windows 8 users have their own secret features to try out.Windows often gets criticized for getting slow and bloated over time, but you don't actually need to reinstall Windows regularly—as long as you're careful about what you install, you shouldn't run into that problem. Of course, if you've already reached that point, you can easily clean up and speed up your PC with a little maintenance. Make sure you don't fall for the big maintenance myths out there, or you'll have problems. While you're at it, you might try speeding up that boot time a bit too.Speaking of speeding up your boot time, have you upgraded to a solid state drive yet? If not, you should consider it—it's probably the best upgrade you can possibly make to your computer. Upgrading is easy, too—you just need to move a bit of your data around, since you'll likely be using two drives (one for your OS and programs, and another for all your files). Check out our guide to migrating to an SSD for more information.SChances are, with everything you do in a day, there are ways to do those things faster. The easiest way to speed up your tasks in Windows? Keyboard shortcuts. I'm still discovering shortcuts I never knew about and even the simplest shortcut can make a daily task so much easier. Check out our master list of Windows 7 shortcuts, which should work in Windows 8 as well. And, if you're a Windows 8 user, we have a cheat sheet with all the newly added shortcuts for you too.Okay, so this list is all about Windows, but even Windows users might need another OS once in awhile. If you occasionally need to boot into Linux, for example, you can dual boot Windows and Ubuntu in perfect harmony. If you want to try Windows 8 but don't want to upgrade just yet, you can dual boot it too. Heck, you can even dual boot and virtualize the same partition, which is really handy. If you need OS X, you'll need Hackintosh-compatible hardware to dual boot—or you could just install OS X in VirtualBox on Windows. There is some crappy Windows software out there, and a lot of it is extremely popular—like Adobe Reader, Internet Explorer, and almost any commercial CD burning software. Don't you deserve something better? Check out our Lifehacker Pack for the essential apps every Windows user should have, our App Directory for the best apps in every category, and the 50 free apps we're thankful for for everything else you could possibly imagine.Budding power users have no doubt encountered some of Windows' most confusing and cryptic tools, like the registry, DLL files, User Account Control, and other features. If you still aren't exactly sure what those tools do (or what you can do with them), we've got a guide that teaches you all the basics. With the right knowledge of Windows' advanced tools, you can do some really cool stuff, and customize Windows more than ever before.Okay, so you've discovered some of Windows' best features, but what about all those features you don't want? Or, what about the extra apps and tweaks you want on every version of Windows you install? You may not have known this, but you can actually create a custom Windows installation with all your favorite tweaks, updates, features, and apps in tow, so you don't have to redo them all every time. Of course, that's most useful if you reinstall Windows often—if you're just doing it once, you can also do a clean install without losing all your apps and tweaks using just a few simple tricks instead. Photo remixed from Fer Gregory (Shutterstock).Windows is a great operating system, but it isn't perfect. With the right apps and tweaks, though, you can add all the features you want and make its built-in offerings much better. For example: out of the box, Windows Search doesn't work incredibly well. But, with a few settings tweaks, it can be a million times more useful. Similarly, jump lists are cool, but it'd be nice if they were customizable—enter Jumplist Extender. Check out our top 10 downloads that enhance Windows' built-in features for more.Similarly, if you're tired of Windows updates ignoring the features you want the most, maybe you should spend that money on a few good apps instead—like Fences, for organizing your desktop, or Xplorer2 for a much better file manager. And, while we don't want to start a flam war, let's be realistic and admit that OS X has some pretty good features too—with the right apps, you can bring OS X's best tools to Windows as well. With the right apps and tweaks, anything's possible.
In the last few months, Feedly has been working tirelessly to please the Google Reader crowd. If you haven't looked at Feedly in a while, there are some changes you might have missed.To be clear, Feedly probably won't entirely replace Google Reader for everyone. In fact, nothing will. Google Reader was a special app and it occupied a unique place for each person. However, the internet has exploded recently with attempts to fill the RSS void. We've already covered the best alternatives, but as Feedly starts to occupy the center of the playing field, it's worth a closer look. Here's what you might have missed in just the last few months.This is the big one. The one concern that trumped all the others when it came to Google Reader's closing was that while other RSS apps existed, nothing provided the backbone that an entire ecosystem of apps could plug in to. Very recently, Feedly announced the Feedly Cloud. So far, apps like gReader, Press, and Reeder have already built on top of it and, if it works well, we can likely expect to see more developers adopt this before too long if they want syncing features to continue after Google Reader shuts down.Previously, if you wanted to try out Feedly, you had to do so in an app or by downloading a browser extension. That works for some, but if you want to pull up your feeds on someone else's machine or if you don't like installing things, it's problematic. Now, you can head straight to cloud.feedly.com and go over your feeds on any computer with internet access.One of the biggest advantages of Google Reader is its ability to manage hundreds of articles easily. In what was referred to as a gift to Google Reader users, Feedly introduced a title-only view to make scanning feeds easier. One of the biggest problems with all the replacement apps has been that they aren't always great at professional-level reading. This doesn't fix it entirely, but it helps. There are also a bunch of viewing preferences that you can adjust here that can allow the power user to tweak the interface as they see fit.Not everything is a huge headlining feature, but the little things matter to. Over the course of the last few months, Feedly has added a bunch of new hardware to make sure its syncing service is fast, keyboard shortcuts that should be familiar to Google users, and even IFTTT support. The loss of Google Reader has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. However, as of right now, the Feedly team has already expressed plans to improve in-app search, group sharing, and Windows Phone/Windows 8 apps. Given that this list of planned features written at the beginning of the month includes at least one that has already come to fruition ("pure web access") it seems reasonable to think that the company can deliver on the others. When Google closes the doors on Reader next week, RSS aficionados will probably still be able to look forward to green pastures. In fact, it might be better than ever.Feedly has positioned itself as the new centerpiece of the RSS world. While there are plenty of other great apps out there that are worth looking into (again, you can check those out here), Feedly has taken an early lead in the ecosystem competition, which has much bigger stakes. Chances are that as we look at any new apps coming down the pipe, some form of cloud sync will be expected. Whether you end up using Feedly as your daily driver app, you'll probably still be affected by these changes in some way. All eyes are on Feedly to see if it can handle its predecessor's mantle.
SOkay, let's get the most controversial stuff out of the way first. Sure, Windows 8 puts a big focus on touch screen devices, and if you have a Windows 8 PC you can always downgrade it—but Windows 8 really doesn't deserve all the hate its gotten. Sure, the Start menu is gone, but even the most tech unsavvy user can bring it back with a bunch of different apps. Furthermore, contrary to what you've heard, it does have useful new features for desktop users: better performance, enhanced security, a new Windows Explorer (which, even if you don't love the ribbon, is more useful than the old one), a much improved task manager, the ability to Reset & Refresh your PC, the well-designed File History backup tool, and more. Even if you have a few annoyances, they're easy to fix. Plus, it even has a few secret features of its own, which leads us to...
One of the biggest advantages of Google Reader is its ability to manage hundreds of articles easily. In what was referred to as a gift to Google Reader users, Feedly introduced a title-only view to make scanning feeds easier. One of the biggest problems with all the replacement apps has been that they aren't always great at professional-level reading. This doesn't fix it entirely, but it helps. There are also a bunch of viewing preferences that you can adjust here that can allow the power user to tweak the interface as they see fit.