Windows Blue (Windows 8.1) which is coming later in the year, most likely in the fall, may have the option to boot directly to the desktop.  This would make power users who prefer getting straight to the desktop experience happy and not require third party workarounds, though we had previously outlined some easy ways to boot directly to the desktop for the current iteration of Windows 8.

One issue that is run into with Windows 8 is that you can't have Hyper-V enabled and use Vmware Workstation at the same time.  That is, you can use them both at once.  But you can get them to work by creating an extra boot option and rebooting into the proper mode.

Summary

Twitter announces Vine, PlayStation 4 announcement coming soon, Rim renamed Blackberry, we take a look at some Windows 8 Tablets and Hybrids, a new asteroid mining venture is announced, talk about ways of getting to Mars, some fresh new add-ons for FSX and more.

Summary

Twitter announces Vine, PlayStation 4 announcement coming soon, Rim renamed Blackberry, we take a look at some Windows 8 Tablets and Hybrids, a new asteroid mining venture is announced, talk about ways of getting to Mars, some fresh new add-ons for FSX and more.

Summary

We talk about CES 2013 highlights, including the 4K TV from Samsung, the Razer Edge and Nvidia Shield Gaming tablets, is Apple making a low cost iPhone, Amazon AutoRip, billions of Earth size planets in the galaxy and more.

Summary

We talk about CES 2013 highlights, including the 4K TV from Samsung, the Razer Edge and Nvidia Shield Gaming tablets, is Apple making a low cost iPhone, Amazon AutoRip, billions of Earth size planets in the galaxy and more.

Many may have already figured out the secret to backing up or saving your Start Screen with Windows 8.  You spend loads of time getting it just right, but want to make sure that if all is lost you can restore it.  That is done by backing up the appsfolder.itemdata-ms file in your appdata\local\microsoft\windows folder and restoring as need be.  But what if you want to customize it so that every user on the machine sees the same Start Screen.  There is a way...

If you want to see all your Windows 8 settings in one "Control Panel" style view, there is a real simple way to achieve this called the GodMode (windows 7 had a similar trick).  Simply right click anywhere on your desktop or in windows explorer, create a new folder.  Give it the following name:

All Settings .{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Now, when you double click that "folder" you are presented with the all settings view.  You can make a shortcut to this folder and pin it to Start or to the Taskbar as desired.