Cheap Hotels with Top Ratings The Brompton Hotel
A 1-minute walk from South Kensington Tube Station, The Brompton Hotel provides well-appointed accommodation in this popular district of London.
Latitude 51.4936583005441, Longitude -0.175437462635045, zip SW7 3DL, County United Kingdom, City London, Address 30-32 Old Brompton Road
Deep Discounts on Hotels Swiss Cottage One
Featuring free WiFi throughout the property, Swiss Cottage One is situated in London, 100 metres from Hampstead Theatre. Lord's Cricket Ground is 1.6 km from the property. All units include a flat-screen TV.
Latitude 51.5438682162365, Longitude -0.175445969311568, zip NW3 6JG, County United Kingdom, City London, Address 137 Finchley Road
Windows 8 has changed the way we navigate the desktop, so it’s not surprising that Microsoft has a pair of new wireless mice designed specifically for Windows 8 (they’re also compatible with Windows 7 and the Mac OS X OS).
Microsoft’s Sculpt Mobile Mouse will fit into the tightest backpack or pocket while you’re on the go, and it will keep you from swearing at your notebook’s annoying trackpad or touchscreen when you reach your destination.
MicrosoftThe Sculpt Mobile Mouse is compact enough to fit into the tightest pocket on the go. The mouse is very small—in fact, it’s almost as long as it is wide. As such, the mouse isn’t the most comfortable to grip if you have large hands: Your palm will drag over the surface, but the high arc will keep your fingers resting happily. Those with smaller paws will appreciate its ambidextrous design and the rubber sides that provide a good grip.
The mouse uses Microsoft’s BlueTrack laser technology, which enables it to track over any almost any surface (except for clear glass or mirrored surfaces). When you’re on the road, the only available mouse pad might be the fabric covering your leg, and the Sculpt Mobile works just fine in that scenario.
MicrosoftThe Sculpt Mobile Mouse can track over almost any surface except clear glass or mirrors. The only real standout functionality of the mouse is the single Windows logo button right behind the scroll wheel. Pressing it while using Windows 8 will take you directly to the Start screen. Press it again and you return to the app you used last. If you’re using Windows 7, the button opens the Start Menu. The button is particularly convenient for Windows 8 users who don’t have a touchscreen display or who just prefer to keep their hands on the mouse and keyboard.
The mouse has a four-way scroll wheel that’s useful for navigating screens (whether they be websites, documents, or the Windows 8 Start page) on mobile devices with small screens. Spinning the wheel to and fro scrolls the page up and down, while pushing it left or right pans the page back and forth across the display.
MicrosoftThe four-way scroll wheel can spin to and fro or push left and right for navigation. The Sculpt Mobile connects to the host PC via a tiny wireless USB dongle, which you can stow in a socket on the bottom of the mouse while you’re traveling so it doesn’t snag while sliding in and out of your bag. This mouse is a good candidate for frequent travelers, but the single-function Windows button isn’t a compelling reason to upgrade.
Microsoft’s Sculpt Comfort Mouse is the desktop alternative to the Sculpt Mobile, and it makes a great companion to the Sculpt Comfort keyboard that Microsoft shipped last fall. This model dispenses with the USB dongle in favor of Bluetooth wireless connectivity, making it the better choice for tablets such as Microsoft’s Surface that lack USB ports to accommodate a wireless dongle. And in place of the single-function button behind the scroll wheel, there’s a blue touch-sensitive button on the left side, dubbed the “Windows touch tab,” where your right thumb comes to rest (southpaws won’t cotton to this one).
MicrosoftThe Sculpt Comfort Mouse has a blue touch-sensitive button on the side for right-handed mousers (lefties are out of luck). Pressing the touch tab calls up the Windows 8 Start screen (or the Windows 7 Start menu, as the case may be), and a second press takes you to the most recent application you used. Each time you slide your thumb up the tab, Windows 8 will cycle through your open applications. Swipe your thumb down, and Windows 8 will display all your open apps so you can select the one you wish to use. If you’re using Windows 7, you can use the touch-sensitive surface to open and then move up and down the Start menu.
MicrosoftThe rubber sides and indentation make the Sculpt Comfort Mouse more comfortable to grip. The Sculpt Comfort’s smooth, glossy-black finish is comfortable for your two resting index and middle clicking fingers, and the rubber sides and indentation for your thumb provides a comfortable grip that won’t slip. A four-way scroll wheel performs the same functions as the one on the smaller Sculpt Mobile.
This mouse is large enough for average-sized hands, but you could still throw into a laptop bag with your computer or tablet.
Mice are often overlooked as computer accessories, even though they're one of the primary ways we interact with our computers. These new mice from Microsoft take a big step up from ordinary with their comfortable designs and useful navigation features, tailor-made, of course, for Windows 8.
Alex covers desktops, everything from fancy to practical. He's also an avid (addicted) gamer and loves following the industry.
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The dead are a problem. Whether they are the walking or evil varieties, their predilection for eating flesh is proving to be a problem for those who prefer to keep their organs intact. That’s the basis for Zombies!!!, a new game of post-apocalyptic survival from Babaroga. It’s based on a popular board game from Twilight Creations in which players compete to escape from a town infested with brain-biters.
You can help or hinder your fellow players with Event cards. In this Windows 8 version, up to four players vie to be the first to reach a heliport, where there is one empty seat on the last flight out of zombietown (population: lots, and they are all hungry for brains). Alternatively, you can win by double-tapping 25 zombies. While searching for the heliport, you can explore locations such as hardware stores and houses to find useful things, such as chainsaws or bullets, but there are also zombies waiting for you in there.
You can also use event cards to slow other players (such as the claustrophobia card, which makes them run out of buildings) or speed your own journey (such as the alternate food source card, where the zombies find something else to eat and don’t bother you). In each turn, you also get to move some of the zombies, so you can point them in the direction of a tasty snack, such as another player. As you progress through the map, it becomes a tactical game: Do you use your cards to speed yourself, or block other users? Does it make sense to move the zombies out of your way, or direct them to your competitors? There is also a survival mode, which drops you into zombieville to see how long you can last.
Combat is based on the role of a dice, modified by the cards in play. The graphics are very cartoony, which makes the gun and chainsaw-related violence a little more abstract than in most zombie TV shows. The game ran smoothly on the low-end tablet that I tried it on, so it should run well on most systems, and the sound and graphics added well to the atmosphere.
Because it is based on a card game, Zombies!!! uses a turn-based approach and favors strategy. The combat is based on the roll of a dice and the cards in play, not the speed of your reactions. This means that those looking for a gore-filled twitch fest will be disappointed, but those who like to think before they tap will appreciate the strategic and competitive angle of the game.
Darn, dead again. Fortunately, being eaten just puts you back at the starting point with a reduced score. Zombies!!! is an amusing (if blood-soaked) game, and the computer version retains much of the charm of the card game, while enhancing it with cartoonish sound effects and visuals. The game carries a teen rating, and that’s appropriate: Although the violence is strictly for comic effect, younger children might find some of the death scenes a little unsettling. But, as the old saying goes, the family that slays together, stays together, and Zombies!!! could be a cute, creepy addition to a game night.
Note: The Download button takes you to the Windows 8 store, where you can download the latest version of the software.
Richard Baguley has been writing about, testing and breaking technology for the past 20 years. He has written for Wired, Macworld, USA Today, Amiga Format and many others
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Seagate is a dominant company in the hard-drive sector, but it has played only in the enterprise space when it comes to solid state storage. That changed with the introduction of the 600, an SSD aimed squarely at the broader consumer base.
One of the first SSDs to feature Toshiba's new 19nm MLC NAND, the 600 also leverages the Link-A-Media LM87800 controller that Corsair has employed with great success in its Neutron series. The 600 is available in both 7- and 5mm profiles, which makes them particularly suited for thin form-factor computing. We reviewed the 7mm version (Seagate model number ST480HM000. If you want the 5mm variant, look for Seagate's model number ST480HM001.
Foxit Software's PhantomPDF (in both Standard and Business editions) make a good choice for basic office needs, but it suffers from an identity crisis once you get to the high-end features. Foxit's download page makes the bold claim that it is "Better than Adobe Reader and Acrobat," but a more accurate statement would be that it might be better, in very specific circumstances that may or may not apply to you.
Many years (and jobs) ago, I was a Tier 2 technician supporting Adobe Acrobat. I am an Adobe Certified Expert in Acrobat 6.0 Professional. What I want you to take away from this is that I am a veteran in dealing with both Acrobat and PDF files, and that I understand that the #1 question people want answered is, "Will this $130 software do what I would normally have to spend $299 or $449 to do with Acrobat?" The answer depends entirely on what you would use Acrobat for. I've formed my opinion comparing Foxit PhantomPDF against Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.5.
The claim is hiding in the title bar, but it's there. At a glance, Foxit PhantomPDF more or less has feature parity with older versions of Acrobat: They both have basic annotation tools, interactivity elements such as links and buttons and forms, and basic editing features like adding/removing pages. There are minor differences in how some of the features work, but the differences really aren't that interesting, nor are they so one-sided as to make one a vastly superior experience over the other.
Where things get dicey is when you get to the advanced feature set. Foxit seems to have added a number of features that are only available in the Pro edition of Adobe Acrobat as a marketing tactic, rather than as a holistic design decision, which ironically makes it harder to recommend based on those features.
The advanced editor looks fancy, but isn't all that functional. The most prominent example of this has to do with working with standards-compliant PDF documents. PhantomPDF can recognize and validate PDF/A (archival), PDF/X (press), and PDF/E (engineering) documents. But it can't createthem. There is an automatic conversion option, but if you don't like the result there is no way to fix it. The best the PhantomPDF printer driver can offer is PDF/A1-b support, but forget about CMYK or image resolution controls. The PDF/E conversion option is especially puzzling, considering that PhantomPDF doesn't support embedding the 3d models or dynamic content that the PDF/E format was created for in the first place.
Another example is the "Advanced Editing" mode. At first glance, this seems like something that might be useful if you need to fix a PDF right now, you don't have the original document, and it was due at the printer yesterday. However, the advanced editor is very difficult to use with precision, it cannot create CMYK objects, nor can it convert RGB objects to CMYK. This makes its current incarnation more of a novelty than a useful tool.
Watch the second line of text in the paragraph, and the kerning on the letters. The PhantomPDF printer driver has other quirks on its own. Documents that use common typefaces such as Times New Roman tend to look worse because Adobe's software substitutes their high-end version of Times for the comparatively low-end version that is pre-installed in Windows. Line spacing can vary significantly, which could prove frustrating when precise layout is important, such as a template or newsletter. Character spacing was very subtly different, but didn't affect anything significant like line breaks in my tests.
To put it another way: The areas that PhantomPDF overlaps with Acrobat are about even. PhantomPDF doesn't do anything that Acrobat doesn't cover. If you're trying to get high-end Adobe Acrobat features at a low-end price, it's a good idea to download the 30-day free trial of Foxit PhantomPDF and perform a formal analysis to make sure the software does everything you need for your business.
Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.
Nathanael is a freelance writer who lives with his family in Caldwell, Idaho. Besides writing about software, he also specializes in eBook conversions.
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The Livescribe Sky pen marries old-school pen-and-ink with the cloud. If paper remains a core part of your workflow, this is the best pen of its kind on the market. You can save notes and audio recordings to your Evernote account via Wi-Fi, or you can plug in a Micro-USB cable and save your work to a PC or Mac.
The pen is fairly bulky, but it's pretty comfortable to hold. It would stick out from inside a pocket but it slips easily into a travel bag. The pen cap is easy to lose and hard to put on, so I usually left it off (and the tip didn't suffer from the exposure). Livescribe makes smart use of its tiny LCD screen, displaying Wi-Fi and battery indicators as well as the time and date. Dive deeper and you can play with the display: Use your handwriting and the interactive "buttons" in its supported paper notebooks to play simple games, run equations on a calculator, and translate words. There's even an ecosystem of apps, including dictionaries.
Other smart pens, such as the Adapx Capturx, let you write on any type of paper, but I've found those better for paper-form input versus freehand writing. Livescribe requires special (and pricey) paper, with tiny dots on the page that track your writing with precision.
The Livescribe Sky pen is designed to be paired with Evernote, so it won't be of much interest if you don't use that app. It's a plus, though, if you enjoy Evernote's productivity features (and you get an Evernote Premium account for a year). Use tidy penmanship with your Livescribe pen, and Evernote's optical character recognition can translate that into digital text.
Do you need the Livescribe Sky pen? For most people, that's an easy no. For example, you can always take a picture of handwritten notes from your smartphone and send it to Evernote, so why pay between $120 to $250 for a smart pen? One reason is that Livescribe does cool stuff other devices can't, including syncing audio recordings and written notes. This makes it a great tool for journalists covering events. Students and teachers could benefit, too. An instructor could share "pencasts" that explain trigonometry ratios, for instance, while students take interactive notes to spell out the formulas and shapes during class.
The Sky pen is also more portable than even a tablet with a supported pen. While serious artists will need Wacom-level sensitivity, Livescribe's pen is good enough for casual sketches. Its battery lasted for weeks as long as I remembered to turn it off regularly.
The Livescribe Sky pens cost $170 for 2GB (200 hours recording), $200 for 4GB (400 hours) and $250 for 800GB (800 hours). The Sky pen's wired predecessor, the 2GB Echo smart pen ($120), is also still available. Hook it up to a Mac or a PC, and you can upload notes to Google Drive, Facebook, Evernote and OneNote.
Elsa likes tools that help small businesses save money, work smarter and reduce waste.
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You may be too concerned about privacy and security to leave naked files lying around on a remote server. That's completely fair, but don't let it keep you from using the cloud. BoxCryptor is a free Windows desktop app that creates an encrypted folder that can be placed inside your cloud storage folder.
Once you create the folder and assign a password, simply drag and drop the files you want protected into that folder. BoxCryptor instantly encrypts and protects them using the AES-256 standard. To unlock the folder and view your files, simply run BoxCryptor, navigate to the encrypted folder and enter your password. For more details, see "How to encrypt your cloud storage for free."
BoxCryptor works with Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, SugarSync, or any other cloud storage provider. If someone attempts to open the files without the password, an error message will show. However, only the file contents are hidden: The file name and file format are still in plain sight. So for super-duper extra security, change the file name to something innocuous.
It's worth pointing out that once you set the password for the encrypted folder, it can never be retrieved or reset. If you forget the password, the files inside the folder are lost forever. When choosing a password, choose something complex but unforgettable.
Developer Secomba offers editions for Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, and Windows RT as well. The free license is limited to one drive (and unlimited devices), but the $45 Unlimited Personal and $100 Unlimited Business licenses let you use as many computers and devices as you like. Secomba's comparison chart shows the differences between the different licenses.
Expatriate Scotsman now living in Wurzburg, Germany, freelance writer, frustrated future bestselling author, obsessed bibliophile. Other interests include trying to understand The Architect in the Matrix movies, decrypting codes and ciphers, and trying to persuade my landlord and my wife to let me have a Highland Cow for a pet.
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FreeSpace 2 $10.00 A true classic, FreeSpace 2 bred several open-source modifications, but the even the original, unmodded game is still fun to play if you don't mind the dated graphics.Download Now Even great game franchises fall prey to mergers, acquisitions, and the vagaries of the game business. Such was the fate of FreeSpace 2, a space simulator originally released in 1999 to great critical acclaim, as part of the Descent and FreeSpace franchise. Due to business circumstances, it was the last in the series—but it can still be played today for the price of $10. and its source code, released in 2002, has been adopted by an active community of coders and modders.
The FreeSpace 2 mission selection screen looks like the set of a Sci-Fi epic. The original game remains commercially available to this day through GOG, a service specializing in old-time games. While the original FreeSpace 2 offered very impressive graphics for its time, it can't hope to match modern space-sim games in the visauls department.
Fortunately, it has a lot to offer in terms of gameplay and depth. Cockpit and HUD controls are intricate and well thought out, from subsystem targeting, through automatic speed matching, to smart indicators on your HUD showing a target's distance and bearing even when it's out of your field of view. FreeSpace 2 also makes good use of the keyboard, with an interface that expects you to memorize many keys.
FreeSpace 2 helps you master the complex controls interactively, using tutorials. If you enjoy FreeSpace 2's detailed gameplay and only wish for some updated graphics, you're in luck: Open-source, free mods dress FreeSpace 2 in updated graphics from franchises you probably already know, and include new storylines and game mechanics to boot. I tried Diaspora, a mod based on the Battlestar Galactica 2004 remake, and was impressed by its slick graphics. It was nice to find myself in the pilot's seat of a Viper, trying to prove myself as a nugget (and badly failing).
The FreeSpace 2 story only serves to show that a great simulator will likely live on, business circumstances notwithstanding.
Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.
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I have been using Gmail as my sole email client for years now, and I'm a big fan. But there's one key thing I need my email client to do that Gmail doesn't offer: Follow-ups. When I send an email, I often want to be reminded if the recipient hasn't replied within a few days, so I can resend my message or find out what happened. To me, this is absolutely crucial, which is why I was so happy to find Right Inbox for Gmail.
Right Inbox is just one option in a highly competitive market of email reminder and follow-up services: There's Boomerang, which is pretty costly if you're using Google Apps ($15 per month). There's Followup.cc which is great, and client-agnostic, but that also means it doesn't integrate into Gmail. The list goes on, but my current favorite is Right Inbox, thanks to its seamless integration with Gmail and affordable price. This $5-month service adds a couple of new buttons that blend in well with Gmail's native ones, and presto: You can now follow-up and track emails.
Right Inbox makes it easy to specify when you want to be reminded of an email, and whether or not it should be tracked. When composing a new email, you need only click the new Remind Me button, and specify when you want Right Inbox to remind you of this thread so you can check up on it. Right Inbox for Gmail offers several preconfigured times, ranging from hours to tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. You can't configure your own favorite intervals (one of the service's few annoyances), but you can pick other intervals using a calendar pop-up.
When a recipient opens a tracked email, Right Inbox for Gmail will send you a detailed report including their location and IP address. Right Inbox for Gmail also offers delayed email sending: For example, you could author an email during the weekend, and have it automatically sent out first thing Monday morning. Finally, you can also enable email tracking, a feature that lets you know when you recipient opened the email. Tracking uses a small, invisible image embedded into the email, so it only works if the recipient opts to display images included with the email (many email clients don't display images by default).
Note: The Download button takes you to the Chrome Web store, where you can install the latest version directly into your Chrome browser.
Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
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Strike Suit Zero $20.00 Strike Suit Zero breathes new life into an old genre, and introduces an engaging innovation in space combat: A space fighter that transforms into a mech.Download Now FreeSpace 2 and other space combat classics kept the genre alive, albeit on the back burner, for years Then indie game studio Born Ready Games came along and decided to create a modern space combat simulator: Strike Suit Zero ($20).
Strike Suit Zero's simple interface delivers a fluid gameplay experience. Developing the game was not without its difficulties: When funding ran out midway through the project, Born Ready Games turned to Kickstarter for extra funding. The crowdsourcing website doesn't always work out, but in this case it did: Born Ready raised almost double their original $100,000 goal, and carried on to release the game as planned.
The end result is a game with thoroughly modern, gorgeous looks, and simple, intuitive controls that puts you in the cockpit of a space fighter. While the game's controls and HUD are simpler than those of FreeSpace 2, it innovates in the spacecraft department in a big way: You get to fly a giant robot.
When lighting the afterburner in Strike Suit Zero, everything blurs out of sight. You're moving that fast. Most of the time, Strike Suit Zero looks and maneuvers like a typical space fighter. But hit a button on your controller, and it instantly transforms into a hulking mech, armed to the teeth and capable of hairpin turns and aerobatics that just don't make sense in a fighter.
Transforming into a robot makes the game feel almost like a first-person shooter...in space. It's a throwback to the old Descent series, the same one FreeSpace 2 eventually evolved from. For example, in one of the early missions you have to destroy a series of storage platforms containing enemy supplies. You can fly at a platform at breakneck speeds, afterburners ablaze, only to transform at the very last moment and find yourself hovering in front of the platform as a fully armored mech, ready to obliterate everything in sight. This makes for a very engaging, cinematic gameplay.
As a mech, you have immense firepower and excellent maneuverability. Strike Suit Zero is an unforgiving game. Although each mission has a number of checkpoints, they are often spaced quite far apart. To make progress, I had to keep going through missions again and again. Dying often means replaying a 10-minute sequence, trying to do better than the last time. It does get frustrating, but it's also fun to see your skill improving from one run to the next.
Acquiring targets is easy and fast in Strike Suit Zero. Strike Suit Zero keeps things simple: there is no multiplayer mode, no radar on your HUD, and no complicated key mappings to remember. It is easy to pick up, beautiful to play, and challenging to master.
Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.
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Daemon Tools' disreputable younger days as a hacking tool seem a speck in the rearview mirror now. Arriving at what appears to be the new top of the pyramid for single users is the $45 Daemon Tools Ultra, but there's more, and less, here than meets the eye.
Disk Soft wants you to feel special, so the installation procedure is packed with golden moments like this. You've got to imagine the word "Diversification" is mentioned frequently over at Disc Soft Ltd these days. After years of static prices and singular release schedules, they've gathered an armful of new products under the Daemon Tools banner and have their market segmentation tuned finely enough to impress a Toyota executive. A cursory glance turns up 10 titles on the products page, some with prices close to $250 for corporate site licenses.
The new interface is commendably clean, except for the ad bar. This can be turned off via the Preferences menu. In the plus column, Disc Soft Ltd has added Virtual Hard Drive support to Daemon Tools Ultra, allowing users to create and access hard disk drive files as if they were physical devices attached the system. Protocol support is expanded as well, including iSCSI implementation for networked image hosts via either Disc Soft's own Daemon Tools Net or other iSCSI compliant hosting solutions. Operation is swift and reliable, with Ultra mounting a wide variety of images during testing and new features working as expected. Popular optical emulation modes perform as robustly as here as in other versions. However, that's not the case with features across the board.
You can add dynamically sized virtual hard disks to the feature list in Ultra. Daemon Tools 5 Pro users will find functionality missing from the Ultra version "upgrade," including the ability to master bootable disks images or discs, USB stick portable execution modes, command line interface scripting and other power user features. Licensing restrictions prevent users with multiple copies from performing selective upgrades. It's either all Ultra, or all older versions. Word from Disc Soft Ltd indicates Ultra is a work in progress:
"This is just first version which introduced new way of mounting. If users will like it, then we may add more features so no functionality will be lost compared to Pro"
And on licensing issues the company says:
"By purchasing an upgrade you will get a license of DAEMON Tools Ultra with a new serial number, that is always available at My Licenses page. Your current license will be blocked.
About Multi-Instance License. Instance is considered as a License copy, which may be installed and used on one operating system. So, there is no ability update 1 instance."
This beta-test approach is ill-advised given the product is commercially themed, has been officially released, and is one of the most expensive in their catalog. Also off-key is the fickle attitude displayed towards future development. All the "may" and "if" language suggests support is likely to be based on popularity rather than any sense of responsibility towards existing, paying customers.
Image format conversion is supported only in Ultra, Net, and Pro versions (not the popular free version), Adding injury to insult are the multiple attempts during installation to insert third party "browser bar" style software nonsense which makes the asked $45 investment feel exploitative. The good ideas and new features on display here don't outweigh this cynical approach. Unless you need VHD and iSCSI support, hang on to your current version until Disc Soft commits. If they won't, why should you?
Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.View the original article here
Seagate is a dominant company in the hard-drive sector, but it has played only in the enterprise space when it comes to solid state storage. That changed with the introduction of the 600, an SSD aimed squarely at the broader consumer base.
One of the first SSDs to feature Toshiba's new 19nm MLC NAND, the 600 also leverages the Link-A-Media LM87800 controller that Corsair has employed with great success in its Neutron series. The 600 is available in both 7- and 5mm profiles, which makes them particularly suited for thin form-factor computing. We reviewed the 7mm version (Seagate model number ST480HM000. If you want the 5mm variant, look for Seagate's model number ST480HM001.
You're away from the office when you get that sinking feeling. Maybe that file you need is locked on your desk PC in London while you're visiting Shanghai. You don't need to sweat, thankfully. Remote desktop apps let you log on to your PC or tablet and access a faraway computer as if you were there in person. Here are 5 options for Windows 8 slates and PCs. Read on to find which app is the best fit for your business.
Remote Desktop lets you see a PC without dialing in via VPN. If you’re looking for a full Windows 8 experience from a remote location, you could do worse than turn to Microsoft’s Remote Desktop app (free, Windows Store). Promising a touch-friendly user interface, Remote Desktop lets you see all your remote connections on the home screen. It even shows your five most recent connections and published resources as Modern-style tiles.
You can switch, copy and paste between RDC sessions, connect to multiple remote desktops, and continue to multi-task with the Windows 8 Snap feature. In addition, you can use the Remote Desktop app (via a Remote Desktop Gateway) to connect to a corporate PC without having to establish a VPN connection.
TeamViewer supports Windows keyboard shortcuts. One of the first remote desktop vendors to jump on the Windows 8 bandwagon was TeamViewer, which rolled out an app of the same name back in October. It’s no surprise that the TeamViewer app is one of the simplest and fastest solutions available, allowing for desktop sharing and file transfer, all while behind any firewall.
You can be up and running with TeamViewer as soon as the is software running on both PCs, with an Internet connection running smoothly on each device. From there, the controls are trouble-free.
After you step through the authentication steps, you can share files and presentations, and even take part in online meetings. As a further bonus, you can use popular Windows 8 commands such as the open Charms sidebar, the Ctrl+Alt+Del hotkeys, and the Windows 8 Snap feature for multitasking during remote access. TeamViewer is free for individuals and available from the company’s website.
Splashtop 2 is available for an array of OSs. Splashtop is a familiar name in remote desktop software that isn’t afraid of tackling a plethora of operating systems. To date, the firm has launched software on Mac, Windows, Android, iOS and even WebOS and MeeGo.
To use Splashtop on Windows 8, you'll download the software onto at least two of the devices from the company’s website, and register for a Splashtop 2 account. Next, the device with which you wish to connect to your host PC displays connected devices that you can control. There are options for minimizing the screen and muting the host PC, for starters. Upgrading to "beta" lets you block people from seeing what you are doing when you remotely control the PC. Splashtop 2, unfortunately, is a real power hog.
PC Monitor lets you control more than one machine from afar. If you’re looking for something that can go beyond a one-to-one remote desktop experience and actually control multiple computers, PC Monitor (free, Windows Store) is worth downloading.
As with TeamViewer, it's free to non-commercial users and it promises to keep an update of up to three computers. PC Monitor can see if the PCs are logged into, view and kill processes, run scheduled tasks, and get granular detail on PC information about memory usage, operating temperature and the CPU.
You can also check and install Windows updates, and monitor the list of installed applications—handy if you want to keep employees on task.
JoinMe is dead simple. LogMeIn’s JoinMe may lack the power and finesse of some of the above applications but it’s a more than just useful for remotely viewing other screens and online meetings.
The Modern-style app (free, Windows Store) supports ARM (for Windows RT devices) and x86-based Windows 8 PCs, including tablets and mobile phones. It's simple to set up. All you need to do is download the app. After that, you'll be able to receive invitations to screen-share from colleagues or friends.
A Pro version costs $19 a month or $149 per year. This adds the capability to customize notes when sending out meeting invites, to view your meeting history, and to schedule follow-up meetings.
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Microsoft Flight Despite its beautiful looks and impressive lineage, Microsoft Flight fails to offer a truly compelling gameplay experience.Download Now Microsoft Flight is the current incarnation of a long and illustrious franchise of games, dating back to 1977. Unlike SimCity, you can start playing Microsoft Flight for free: Simply download the game and embark on a series of missions planned to both teach you the basics of flight, and hook you into buying later missions and additional aircraft. Microsoft Flight is the last of its kind: Microsoft permanently stopped work on the game in July 2012, just a few short months after releasing it.
The futuristic Icon A5 Deluxe is not yet in production, but you can fly it in Microsoft Flight. Microsoft Flight's graphics are gorgeous, and the scenery feels realistic. Hawaii serves as the backdrop for the first introductory missions, in which you get to fly two aircraft bundled with the free download: A thoroughly modern Icon Deluxe light aircraft and a WWII-era Boeing PT-17 Stearman biplane. These missions run you through the rudiments of taking off, controlling the craft in the air, and landing.
Microsoft Flight lets you play several missions in Hawaii for free. You can fly Microsoft Flight with nothing but a game controller. There are realistic touches like preflight checklists, but in the early stages, the game runs through them on its own, checking items off as you look on.
The Icon A5 cockpit feels almost like a car's—and the GPS works. While the introductory missions are interesting and fun to play (especially the landing tutorial) and the graphics were strikingly beautiful, gameplay is marred by having to navigate using landmarks, rather than traditional waypoints. In particular, one of the challenges starts out midflight, and you're supposed to land the plane. The trouble is, it's not clear where the airstrip is. No heading is provided, and there's no clear way to figure out which way to go. The careful narration that leads you through many of the other missions is utterly lacking on this one. Manually switching on the aircraft's GPS map does reveal an airstrip, but after navigating all the way to it and executing a landing, I discovered it wasn't the right airfield and failed the challenge after all.
Another point of frustration is the low number of available missions. Microsoft Flight starts you off with less than ten missions and once you want to make progress, you have to pay up for the DLC.
Microsoft Flight lets you switch between several cameras to get a better look at the action. In other words, the game suffers from the same issues plaguing many other "pay to play" titles, and even its fancy graphics were not able to redeem it. It is easy to understand why Microsoft ceased developing the game.
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