Table of contents for October 2016 in Windows Help & Advice

How are you enjoying the brand-new Windows 10 Anniversary Update, which was released on August 2nd? It should have come through as a regular system update, so it’ll already be there if you have Windows 10. Here at Windows Help & Advice headquarters we’re loving it and we’ve been excitedly discovering all the new features in the Start menu and Taskbar, and, in particular, the new abilities given to Cortana and the Edge browser. You can find out all about them in the magazine this month and catch some hidden secrets too – check out our guide starting on page 30 . To make sure you’re getting the most out of your PC we’ve commissioned a special guide to supercharging your Windows experience. Turn to…

Your guide Gary Marshall says…“The Windows 10 Anniversary Update gives the impressive Cortana all kinds of new abilities” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 MUSIC ICON Click here to make Cortana listen to the background noise and identify what song is currently playing where you are. NOTEBOOK ICON Everything Cortana knows about you goes here, in the Notebook. Click the icon to adjust the topics it covers. TRIPLE DOTS The triple-dot pattern enables you to customise what Cortana shows in this panel. Just click on it to see the options. MICROPHONE ICON If you haven’t enabled “hey Cortana”, you can use voice commands by clicking on this icon to make Cortana listen. CORTANA WINDOW This…

Your guide Rob Mead-Green says…“Find out how easy it is to turn your favourite pictures into an engaging video slideshow” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 RIBBON This is where of most of Movie Maker’s controls are kept. The tools you see here will change depending on what mode you’re in. PREVIEW Clicking on the playback controls enables you to see how your movie is progressing. Click the ‘Full Screen’ option to go large. AUTOMOVIE THEMES Select one of these options to make Movie Maker do all the hard work for you – adding titles, transitions and more. MAIN WINDOW This is where you can see the running order of your movie, displaying its photos,…

Your guide Nick Peers says…“Find out how to transform your holiday snaps into picture-perfect postcards with a free app” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 8 CHOOSE PICS Can’t decide on a template? Click this, select your pictures and let El Collagero decide for you. COLLAGE TOOLS All the tools you need to design, edit and tweak your collage are found via this series of buttons. SAVE OR SHARE When your collage is complete, you can save it to disc or share via another app to show off to others. EDIT PHOTOS Click ‘+’ to change the photo, or click on the photo to reframe it or access flip and rotate tools. CHANGE TEMPLATE Select ‘Templates’…

Q I wish to move my notes from Evernote to another note-taking tool. What do you recommend, and how do I do it? Kevin Wilson Mayank’s solution The simplest option is to go for Microsoft’s free OneNote tool, which you can install as both a desktop app or Windows Store app (see www.onenote.com/download). It’s recently added a tool for importing data from Evernote – here’s how to use it. 1 Get importer Browse to www.onenote.com/ import-evernote-to-onenote and click ‘Download the importer . One downloaded, double-click StartOneNoteImporter.exe. Tick to accept the licence agreement and click ‘Get Started’ to start the process. 2 Select Evernote data You’ll need to have the Evernote Windows desktop client installed and synced, or your files exported from Evernote in .enex format. By default all notes…

START MENU The Anniversary Update has revamped the Start menu completely. EDGE The Edge browser has powerful new features in the Anniversary Update. See page 32 for more details. CORTANA Your personal assistant, ask it for anything and it’ll see if it can help, or just search the internet for an answer. ACTION CENTRE Click the Notifications icon at the bottom right of the screen to launch the Action Centre, which gives you lots of quick links. TASKBAR The Taskbar has new features in the Anniversary Update. Click here to see what it has to offer (especially Hidden items). QUICK LINKS If you want to quickly connect to a WiFi network, launch Tablet Mode or even dim your screen using the quick links here. TIME TAKEN 20 minutes When getting…

You can trust our reviews Our reviewers are 100 per cent independent, with years of experience in the world of computing. Our rigorous testing procedures mean that only genuine, high-quality products are awarded high star ratings. If you see an item of hardware bearing a high score, you can be confident that it is an excellent product. We choose the best products Thousands of new PC products are released every year and choosing between them can be an impossible task. Our experts select only the best hardware and software to feature in this magazine. Even better, our star rating system makes it simple to find the best products, giving you a fast, trustworthy guide. How we review Our expert reviewers guarantee to test every piece of hardware rigorously and thoroughly,…

Monsters are found in real-world locations that have to be travelled to You might have spotted many folk paying closer-than-usual attention to their phones while wandering aimlessly around and not talking to anyone. If so, it could be they’re playing the augmented reality game Pokémon Go, which projects the famous Japanese ‘pocket monsters’ over the phone’s camera view, ready for catching, collecting and eventual battling. The reason there’s so much walking around involved is the monsters are found in real-world locations, which have to be physically travelled to using the phone’s GPS to ‘prove’ you’re there. Pokémon are divided into types, and you’re more likely to discover grass-type monsters in a park, water-type by the sea, and nocturnal creatures if you’re out at night. To complicate things further, you can…

Defragging still exists It’s a no-no with SSDs, but if your PC has a mechanical hard drive then a good defrag can improve performance… sometimes. As a drive is used, data is overwritten many times and can end up stored across different sectors of the disc instead of sequentially, slowing down access times. Defragmentation is the process of putting it all back together again. Pop up the Start menu, type defrag, and click on the app that appears. It’ll take a long time to complete if your disc is badly fragmented, and might not make that much of a difference apart from improving startup time if it can. Far better to swap that drive out for an SSD instead. Factory reset Windows 10 If you want to sell your PC,…

1 What is the name of Windows’ new pen interface? A. Microsoft Pencil B. Microsoft Ink C. Windows Ink 2 Which version is Microsoft DirectX now at? A. 7 B. 9 C. 12 3 What is Windows’ new user-recognition system called? A. Windows Hello B. Windows Who? C. Windows Face 4 And what kind of data does it use? A. Biometric B. Astrological C. Smell 5 What is the name of Microsoft’s latest web browser? A. Edge B. Hedge C. Wedge 6 What was the name of the old one? A. Internet Exploder B. Internet Explorer C. Internet Exposer…

Whether you’re stuck for inspiration or want to become a master of your Windows computer, our Explore section is the place to come. Each month we pack in tutorials covering a range of subjects suitable for all levels of expertise. This month we get creative by making a collage out of your holiday snaps, then show you how to turn photos into a video slideshow. For system tweakers we’ve got a great tutorial on freeing up hard drive space and demonstrate how to make your PC more secure. It’s all here!…

Your guide Gary Marshall says…“Edge has finally been given the care and attention it deserves. It’s a much better browser” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 PINNED TABS Pinning a tab in Edge turns it into an icon you can use to get one-click access to your favourite sites and services. TOP SITES Edge automatically recommends the sites it thinks you might want to see. You can remove any ones that you don’t want. NEWS FEED Microsoft’s MSN news service provides an up-to-date feed of the day’s top stories. It’s like the MSN start page of old. FAVOURITES FOLDER Use Edge’s tree view to expand and collapse folders of Favourites – handy for bookmarks. ACTION…

Your guide Nick Peers says…“Publish your own books professionally without breaking the bank with this great tool” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 NAVIGATION PANE Work on your cover and page background – namely numbering and colouring – from here, plus switch to page view. PAGE THUMBNAILS Click these to jump to a different part of the book, or to select pages you’d like to apply a specific layout to. PAGE ELEMENTS This section is where you switch between adding photos and text to your library and selecting layouts for your pages. VIEW GUIDES Use the buttons next to the zoom slider to reveal where your book’s safe margins are, plus show or hide guides…

Your guide Christian Hall says…“Windows isn’t great at showing you how things are organised on your hard drive, so make TreeSize your first port of call if you’re struggling for space” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 CHRISTIAN’S BEST TIP Start TreeSize Free as an admin to calculate the size of all folders – even ones you don’t usually have access to. Storage has never been cheaper, but instead of splashing out on an extra hard drive when you need more room, you could just find out what’s hogging space on your computer. TreeSize Free (from the website www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/) is a fantastic tool for finding out what’s really going on with files on your PC.…

Windows 10 was released over a year ago now, and to celebrate, Microsoft has released the Anniversary Update. This month, we discover the new features and see what else is on offer. If you turn to page 28, we look at the new Anniversary features in Cortana, then on page 32 we take a peek at what’s changed in the Edge browser. These are the two big updates, but lots of little things have changed elsewhere on your system, so take a trip with us now through your new-look PC, and let us know how you’re getting on by email! www.facebook.com/windowsmag…

GENERAL PRIVACY Click here to see general privacy settings. From here you can change how Windows 10 tracks you for advertising, or how it views the way you type and write. LOCATION Click here to change how Windows 10 monitors your location. If you regularly use apps such as Maps and Weather, you can still use them with location tracking off, though you will need to enter in the postcode of your location first. SPEECH, INKING & TYPING This is where the settings for configuring how Cortana (the virtual assistant) learns about how you use your computer. It can be a useful feature, but if you’re concerned for your privacy, you can turn it off right here. FIND A SETTING This search box is useful if you are faced with…

Robotic vacuum cleaners (along with their weaponised cousin, the lawnmower), have been out for a while, but they’ve often been underpowered and a bit disappointing unless you live in a perfectly flat minimalist loft. To put it bluntly: they suck. But not enough. Dyson decided to get in on the act with an eye-wateringly expensive (£800) robot of its own back in 2014, and the 360 Eye is finally available to buy. Claiming twice the suction of other autonomous models, it might be time to put GPS on your cat.…

http://downloads.techradar.com/ downloads/paint-net If you’ve used the Paint program that comes with Windows, then you’ll know it doesn’t do much beyond crop, resize, rotate, scribble and save. If you need to edit a photo or create a complex image, you need software that has a more to it.Paint.NET was designed as a substitute for Microsoft Paint. It has since evolved into a powerful, easy-to-use image editor. For example, Paint.NET features layers, enabling you to edit specific areas of your image, selectively edit, colour it, or build up an image from different layers. Every change you make to a graphic is recorded in the software’s history log. This makes it easier to undo any alterations that were made to an image.…

There’s no getting away from it – Windows needs almost constant attention. Take your eye off the ball, and it’ll clog up with unwanted files, thanks to a pile of software you thought was interesting at the time, but have since abandoned. Obviously, keeping your PC in good shape is a key part of making it perform well, but while Windows 10 is ahead of its predecessors in terms of keeping its demands on your processor, RAM, and other components quite low, there’s still lots you can do to fine-tune it, discovering tweaks and settings that ensure it’s running at optimum efficiency and speed. In this feature, we reveal plenty of tips and tricks for making the most of Win 10. We start by giving your PC an efficiency drive…

Packed with informative tutorials Every issue, we guarantee to pack the magazine with great tutorials teaching you you can your PC. Each article features step-by-step instructions to make learning new skills fast and enjoyable. Get more from your favourite websites We all have our list of favourite sites but often we miss out on great features because they’re difficult to use or hidden from sight. We’ll show you how to do more online, for a more satisfying web life. Customise Windows to work your way We getting the most from Windows isn’t easy. Our system means you get the very best tips and tricks for all versions of Windows. Discover new programs with our help From speed-up and security software to superb photo apps, there’s always something new to try…

Your guide Cat Ellis says…“This free software stops thieves tracking you online, or stealing your login details” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 CAT ’S BEST TIP If your connection through Tunnelbear is too slow, try connecting via another country – the geographical distance between you, the tunnel and the website you’re accessing can make a noticeable difference . When you use the internet, there are many potential weak points where the information you send could be intercepted by would-be thieves. This is even more of an issue if you’re using a public Wi-Fi network in a café or hotel where you can’t secure the router yourself. Protecting your IP address is also a concern.…

Your guide Matt Hanson says…“Windows Hello makes logging into Windows 10 easier – and more secure – than ever before” At a glance Skill level… Anyone can do it Straightforward Tricky in parts Suitable for… Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 7 Locking your device with a password not only keeps your data secure in case you lose your PC, but protects you if you’re signed into various services, such as the Windows Store. Remember anyone who has access to your device can also use your account to buy apps and services. However, memorising a secure password, and entering it every time you turn on your PC, can be tedious – this is why Microsoft’s new Windows Hello feature in Windows 10 is such a welcome addition. It uses biometric data…

Windows 10’s Anniversary Update added lots of new features, especially to the Taskbar, which now gets its own section in the Settings app under ‘Personalisation’. The Taskbar clock and calendar are now combined, so click the clock and you’ll see the time and a list of your day’s events. Also, if you have multiple displays set up, then the clock will now appear on all of them. Here we’ll show how to personalise things.…

If you’re looking for the ultimate PC laptop this year then two high-end options are really standing out from the crowd. These are the HP Spectre 13 and the Microsoft Surface Book. They’re both super stylish, and are well under 2cm thin, meaning they’re ultra portable too. The HP Spectre 13 doesn’t have a touchscreen, but it’s a lot cheaper than a Surface Book. But which should you get? See what we thought over on page 90, when we put these two machines head to head against each other. Until next time……