Sudeep D'Souza

By default the Windows 8 operating system does not come with the hibernate option. When you close the lid the computer sleeps by default. This is how I left my system for the first couple of days but what I quickly realized that even though I was doing nothing - my computer was just sleeping and so was I, my battery would be drained by morning. There would be absolutely no charge left by the time I put on the laptop in the morning.  Thankfully Microsoft has not removed the hibernate option in Windows 8 - you just have to search for it under the many menus and you will find it or just follow the steps in this article and you will be there in a minute - http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/how-to-enable-windows-8-hibernate-option/ The option to find the menu to hibernate is quite hidden and a pain to do each time so what I have done is configured the sleep button to hibernate. Now I have no issues with my battery and my laptop does not feel like a heater each time I put it...

Being a person who watches a lot of downloaded content I was trying to figure out a way to stream content directly from my laptop to the TV. Since I have an XBox 360 I wanted to do it through that. In the past I have used Boxee but that meant having another computer connected to the TV. Windows 7 + Windows Media Center + XBox 360 When I had Windows 7 on my laptop I installed Windows Media Center and then connected that to the XBox 360 and streamed movies. The connection was a bit convoluted and painful. And I suffered from the following problems It would not reliably connect every time. Sometimes it connected with no issues sometimes it would just not behave. Its not a router issue as both the XBox and the laptop had wired connections into the same router.  Not all kinds of downloads played. The WMC software would play it on the laptop if the codecs were installed but the same would not play on the TV.  Windows 8 + XBox 360 I then went on to install Windows 8 ...

Getting my Galaxy S phone connected to Windows 8 laptop has really ruined my weekend. Usually I just connect my Galaxy S phone to my laptop and it all works fine with the device showing up in Windows Explorer but after installing Windows 8 on my laptop I try it and nothing happens. So I turn to my best friend in need "Google". After Googling for a bit I ended up with some interesting solutions 1. Reinstall some drivers - Did not work. Told me all my drivers were upto date. 2. Change some registry values - could not find the values to change. 3. Open the config file of Kies (software used to connect the Samsung phone to the desktop) and make some changes in it. Could not save the changes as some program or the other was using it. 4. Finally found a blogpost on the Samsung asking me to install Kies Mini which is another version of Kies and some operators of Samsung specifically block the phone from connecting to Kies. Its easy to find content on Google if one is patient ...

About 3 weeks ago I took the plunge to install Windows 8 and office 2013 on my 4 year old laptop that was crawling. It was a spur of the moment decision due to the frustration of my laptop just not responding to me. Now I don't regret that decision at all. My laptop has got a new lease of life. Its much faster and very responsive, the UI looks modern and sleek and all the software that I had on my Windows 7 OS works like a charm. I did not do an upgrade, I did a complete rebuild of my laptop with Windows 8. So that kind of cleaned out 4 years of junk that I had accumulated and I started off with a clean machine. The whole transition from Windows 7 to Windows 8 including backup and restore of my data and installing all the applications I needed took me less than half a day. This is my fastest OS build ever since I started using Windows since way back in 1992. What do I like about Windows 8 1. As mentioned already its fast and responsive. All the applications open so much more...