Table of contents for Issue 1 in Windows Advisor

M icrosoft wants you to use Windows 10’s inking talents in your everyday work life, and that’s why it’s offering two new features: a custom collection of pens that will roam with you from device to device, and coming later, the Whiteboard collaborative app. Both build upon new inking capabilities Microsoft has incrementally added to its hardware and its Windows oS, as well as office. one of the features of the new Surface Pro (2017), for example, is a more sensitive Surface Pen with tilt capabilities and an almost unnoticeable pen latency, to make digital ink feel smooth and seamless. Beginning in June, Microsoft will allow office 365 subscribers to ‘save’ a gallery of pen inks that will roam across devices as well as the Microsoft excel, PowerPoint and Word…

T he Surface Laptop stole the show at Microsoft’s recent event. The focus may have been on education, Windows 10 S, and affordable laptops for classroom use, but the oohs and aahs went to the Surface Laptop for its beautiful display and Alcantara- clad keyboard, not to mention its light weight and long battery life. College kids are the Surface Laptop’s purported target user, but a lot of regular folks are intrigued by this new addition to Microsoft’s premium Surface family – and, frankly, many students won’t be able to afford it anyway. Interested? You’ve come to the right place. Here’s everything you need to know about the Surface Laptop. We have the pricing and release date, answers to your most burning questions. Release date and price At the time…

For the past 20 years, retro gaming enthusiasts have dreamed of building a ‘universal game console’ capable of playing games from dozens of different systems. Their ideal was inexpensive, easy to control with a gamepad, and capable of hooking into a TV set. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi 3 hobbyist platform and the RetroPie software distribution (retropie.org.uk), that dream is finally possible. For under £100, you can build a very nice emulation system that can play tens of thousands of retro games for systems such as the NeS, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Super NeS, Game Boy, and even the PlayStation. All you need to do is buy a handful of components, put them together, and configure some software. You’ll also have to provide the games, but we’ll talk about that…

W indows 10 is software just like its predecessors, so from time to time things go wrong. It happens remarkably infrequenty in our experience but we’ve put together this short guide to help you get back up and running if you ever see the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSoD). There’s no magic bullet solution that fixes all ills, but if you work through the following tips you should be able to diagnose, and hopefully fix, your particular issue. We think that Windows 10 is an excellent version of the oS, with a lot to offer – especially now there’s the Creators Update, which is another free update. Back up before you start We store many important files on our computers – from family pictures and videos, to important business…

Two things will immediately strike you about the new Surface Laptop: it’s amazingly light and sturdy, and it borrows a lot of its look and feel from the Surface Pro 4. Think of the Surface Laptop as Microsoft’s answer to the MacBook Air: pricey, thin and with battery life that goes on and on and on. It’s not a Chromebook competitor, but a far more premium experience. It does, however, run the new Windows 10 S: essentially Windows 10, but limited to apps from the Windows Store. Microsoft’s Surface Laptop is available to buy from fave.co/2tagfhF. Prices are as follows: £949: 128GB SSD, Intel Core i5, 4GB RAM £1,249: 256GB SSD, Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM £1,549: 256GB SSD, Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM £2,149: 512GB SSD, Intel Core i7,…

M icrosoft may be using Windows 10 Insider Build 16199 to flesh out its My People experience for Windows 10, but chances are you’ll find a few of the new Settings to be the more useful features. Like other Settings, the new additions – the updated System Health listings, new tips videos, and a more comprehensive Storage Sense – won’t be called out, and you’ll have to know where to look for them. Another improvement, a notification that will pop up on your screen when your Android phone receives a call, is part of the new cross-device connectivity built into the upcoming Fall Creators Update. Some useful new Windows 10 Settings one of the issues with any product, really, is a lack of good documentation. (There’s a reason that we…

M icrosoft is taking aim at Chromebooks and MacBooks alike with Windows 10 S, a new version of Windows 10 designed foremost for educational use. But schools alone aren’t the firm’s target audience, and while the new operating system shares the same underlying bones as the standard version of Windows 10, there are some stark differences too. over the following pages we reveal everything you need to know. What’s the S for? Windows chief Terry Myerson claims it stands for four different aspects of the operating system: • Secure • Superior performance • Streamlined for simplicity • “The soul of Windows 10” And sure, those all apply. even the last one. But really, the S could stand for ‘Store’. What is the difference between Windows 10 and Windows 10 S?…

M icrosoft’s Surface Pro line-up has remained largely unchanged for the past two generations. Now you can make that three: the new Surface Pro (2017) – no, not the Surface Pro 5 – features substantial internal improvements, but otherwise refuses to mess with a good thing. Ranging in price from just £799 to a whopping £2,699, the Surface Pro is slightly more expensive than its Surface Pro 4 predecessor, which has been discounted from £749 to £636 at fave.co/2rkruqb. The new Surface Pros are available to purchase from fave.co/2swwDMH now. Perhaps the biggest change is semantic: Microsoft has decided to call the Surface Pro a ‘laptop’ rather than a 2-in-1. The firm isn’t abandoning the idea of a ‘tablet that can replace your laptop’, but it believes that users now…

Digging deep into Windows 10 Windows 10, Microsoft’s back-to-basics re-embracing of the PC, is brimming with handy new features, and with all the new goodies come a legion of new tweaks and tricks – some of which unlock powerful functionality hidden to everyday users. others simply let you mould some of Windows 10’s new features into the shape you see fit. Here are some of the most useful tweaks, tricks, and tips we’ve found, including a spate of fresh finds from this spring’s mammoth Windows 10 Creators Update. 1. Game Bar If you’re into playing around on your PC, the Game Bar – summoned by pressing Windows + G in-game – holds all sorts of nifty extras. It’s always been able to take screenshots or videos of gameplay clips, but…

W e’ve all been there. You read about a great little traditional desktop application or utility that you think will be a great help. once it’s downloaded Windows 10 blocks it thanks to Windows Defender SmartScreen, a feature that prevents unrecognized apps from running. It’s a helpful security feature that can sometimes be annoying. Here’s how to get past it. Are you sure you want to do this? Before we go any further, keep in mind that the SmartScreen is there for your protection. It is designed to restrict any programs that are known to be malicious or aren’t commonly downloaded. For that reason, anything experimental or outside the norm is not trusted by Windows. Nevertheless, if you trust the creator of the program that you want to install, here’s…