Posted on Oct 31, 2016 in Newsletter, Welcome | 0 comments

TWT Newsletter NG – Issue 41 – Halloween spooktacular, will there be a Surface phone? and more

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What’s new at Top-Windows-Tutorials.com?

Last month we published two more updated tutorials for the Windows 10 Anniversary update.

Windows 10 Anniversary update – Two new tutorials

Microsoft continue to tweak and refine Windows 10, much to the frustration of many users! Last month we updated the following two tutorials for the latest update.

Windows 10 Tutorial 8 – Touch Multitasking

Windows 10 Tutorial 13 – Cortana

More updates are due over the following months.

Windows 10 Superguide Anniversary Update Update!

Unfortunately we’re a little behind schedule with the Windows 10 Superguide update. There were far more tutorials to re-record than we anticipated. We’re still optimistic for a launch before Christmas. Remember, we’re going to launch this as a free update so there’s no need to hold of buying a Windows 10 Superguide if you need one.

Time for our yearly October spooktacular!

At this time of year, with Halloween rapidly approaching, we love to look at some ways that your Windows PC can make the spooky season even more fun. Rather than break with tradition, that’s what we’ve decided to do again this year, so here comes our regular October TWT spooktacular!

Colouring Colouring Colouring! – Yes I know, we spell it weird here in the UK, but colouring games on the PC are a great way to keep excited kids occupied. Last year we told you all about Tux Paint, a child-friendly paint package that works on all versions of Windows. We’d still highly recommend this program and you can try this site for some Halloween themed colouring pages. If you want to add those to Tuxpaint, we made this quick tutorial to show you how.

If you’re running Windows 10 and have older children, you should definitely check out Fresh Paint too. This is more like a “grown ups” painting package, but it’s still lots of fun and works great on Windows tablets, particularly those with stylus pens.

Spooky games! – We love games here at TWT HQ and a Windows PC is the best place to play games anywhere. There are so many spooky games that are ideal for Halloween, just remember to check if they are appropriate for your PC and appropriate for the audience! A lot of horror games available on the PC are definitely not suitable for younger audiences.

Best Halloween game for adults – Alien Isolation – Alien Isolation is a first-person perspective game. Unlike most games of this type, you don’t play a space marine or soldier armed to the teeth with weaponry. Instead, you’re stalked by a single, powerful alien creature that you cannot kill. You will need to outwit the creature by hiding and running and staying one step ahead. A very frightening experience. You can get Alien Isolation on the popular Steam distribution platform here.

Best Halloween game for teens – Camp Keepalive – When Camp Keepalive is invaded by monsters, it’s not the dim-witted campers who fight back. No, that’s left to the unlucky camp councillors. Hey, the kids parents are paying us well, so keep them all alive! Camp Keepalive is a turn-based strategy game set in a camp straight out of an 80’s horror movie. Save the helpless and dull-witted campers from an onslaught of monsters with a team of councillors, each with a special power. You can get the game (and a demo) directly from the authors here or through Desura here.

Best Halloween game for kids – Costume Quest (generally suitable for all kids age 10+, contains some comic/cartoon violence) – If the best thing about Halloween for you is the dressing up, then you’ll love this Halloween adventure/role playing game from Double Fine Productions. In the game you will choose your hero and go trick-or-treating through three different environments. You can complete quests and collect new costumes along the way that allow you to transform into powerful champions and take down the evil Repugians! You can get Costume Quest on the popular Steam distribution network here.

Worried about child safety this Halloween? – Millions of kids will go trick or treating this year and just like every other year 99% of them will come back safe and well. If you’re worried about your child wondering off, why not treat them to a smart watch with a built in GPS tracker? That way, you can track their whereabouts on your PC using a web browser or via your smartphone. Some watches even let you make calls to your kids, just like Michael Night in Night Rider! (like any child will know who that is). LGs GizmoPal 2 comes in kid friendly colours that most little trick or treaters will love to wear.

We hope you all have fun this year and don’t eat too much candy or too many sweet treats!

Tip of the Month – Use quadrant snap in Windows 10 to work with four apps!

Snap is a really useful feature in Windows 7, 8 and 10, but Windows 10 takes it a step further than previous versions. If you’re unfamiliar with it, Snap is a way you can quickly organise windows on your desktop. You do this by dragging them toward the edge of the screen, this tutorial demonstrates it.

What the video doesn’t show, however, is that in Windows 10 you can snap windows to a quarter of the screen not just a half. To do that, simply drag the window you want to work with to a corner and let go as soon as the transparent box appears.

Now you can work with four apps at once, get you, the super multi-tasker!

Free Utility of the Month – HwiNFO

If you want to try out a new game, send information about your PC to a helpful friend or family member or if you’re simply curious, you can use this powerful tool to find out about all the hardware lurking inside your PC. You can see everything, right down to who manufactured the memory modules in your machine. What’s more, you can monitor temperatures to make sure things aren’t getting too hot.

Grab your free copy of HwiNFO by visiting this link.

Windows Store App of the Month – NextGen Reader

RSS was supposed to change the way we used the web, by giving us a way to subscribe to the news feed of any popular web site. While it’s used by power users, it never caught on so much with regular users, though the standard is still around and easy to take advantage of.

If you have a lot of news sites you like to check frequently, you can now harness the power of RSS with this super reader, designed specifically for Windows tablet. Browse and read your favourite news sites quickly and easily, without needing to fire up your browser and visit each one individually.

Get your copy of NextGen Reader by visiting this link

Will there be a Surface Phone?

While Microsoft Surface tablets haven’t overtaken their competitors in terms of sales, they have been well received by mobile professionals and “road warriors” around the world and are widely regarded as the only tablet that can truly replace a laptop. Now, Microsoft may be planning to take the Surface line to high end smartphone devices too.

Windows 10 phones are nothing new, but Microsoft’s efforts so far have fallen a little short of expectations. It’s not that Windows 10 phones are bad, it’s just that there’s a lack of apps. It’s frustrating to need a specific app that’s not available on a Windows phone and even if you aren’t a heavy user of apps it is nice to have the choice. Windows phones cannot run desktop apps in any capacity, so that limits the choice of software even more.

If rumours are to be believed, it seems Microsoft isn’t giving up on Windows phones just yet. A Surface phone could launch as soon as 2017 and would undoubtedly include “Continuum”, Continuum allows you to connect your phone to an external monitor and keyboard and effectively turn it into a full PC, in theory this means you only need pack a keyboard and mouse, rather than a full laptop, when you’re on the road. Further rumours suggest Intel is apparently involved in the development of the new Surface phone, and is supposedly working with Microsoft to make Windows desktop apps compatible with the new device. That would unquestionably make more apps available for the phone, but exactly how many of them would be useful on such a small screen, outside of Continuum, remains to be seen.

Can Surface Phone turn around Microsoft’s fortunes in the mobile market? We’re not certain, but the phone could certainly find a niche with mobile professionals and businesses.

That concludes our newsletter for October. On behalf of the team here at TWT, I’d like to say thank you to all our readers, new and old for your continued support. The TWT Newsletter will return on the 10th November 2016 for more tips, tricks and techniques to help you get the best out of your PC, be it Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10. We hope that you found this newsletter informative and useful. If you did not then please let us know why, you can contact us by visiting this page. If you have enjoyed this newsletter, feel free to pass it on to all your friends and family, or better still encourage them to sign up for their own copy. Until next month, keep checking Top-Windows-Tutorials.com and enjoy happy, safe and stress-free computing!