October 2015

There are numerous posts on the Internet where users report issues with activating Windows 10 either on a fresh install of the operating system or after upgrading from an existing version of Windows.

TaskLayout is a program for Windows that enables you to save and load programs and their layout on the screen with a single hotkey.

I use several applications whenever I research and write articles for ComTek4u. I run Firefox and Chrome, the password manager KeePass, the screenshot taking tool SnagIt and Mozilla Thunderbird.

Until now I have loaded all of these programs individually which worked well but was somewhat repetitive.

Microsoft has pushed out a new Windows 10 Insider build to Fast Ring users that upgrade the operating system to build 10565 and with it come much needed improvements that include saving apps to different locations or synchronization support in Microsoft Edge.

New Windows 10 Insider builds get released regularly by Microsoft as part of the company's new update strategy for the operating system.

The main idea behind it is to deliver updates to a wider range of user systems before it is rolled out via Windows Update and other updating services.

Some Windows programs don't need to open their program windows at all on launch. This is for instance the case when they run in the background or if you don't use the interface at all to interact with them or need to access information they display in it.

A prime example is the screenshot taking tool SnagIt which I run minimized on start as I control its functionality solely through keyboard shortcuts.

ProxMate is a popular browser extension for Firefox and Google Chrome that adds VPN-like capabilities to the browser to access content on the Internet that is geo-restricted.

Verisign Public DNS is a free DNS service that promises better connection times, stability, security, and privacy when compared to the majority of public DNS services available on today's Internet.

The DNS services that Internet providers offer are often not the fastest, and it is easy enough to verify that by running programs like DNS Benchmark which test the performance of multiple DNS servers on the host system to find out which performs the best.

Audio indicators and muting is without doubt one of the better usability improvements that have been implemented in popular browsers such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or Mozilla Firefox in recent time.

Google announced Brotli, a new compression algorithm for the Internet in September.

The compression algorithm promises between 20% to 26% higher compression ratios over Zopfli, a compression algorithm that Google introduced in 2013, and came out first in compression tests that Google ran against commonly used compression algorithms on the Internet.

Windows Update MiniTool is a free third-party client for searching for, installing and blocking updates for the Windows operating system.

When it comes to updates for Windows, most devices running the Windows operating system are most likely updated through some form of first-party update service such as Windows Update.

While it is comfortable to work with most of the time, some users may want better management options when it comes to updates for Windows.

Copyfish is not the first OCR extension for the Google Chrome browser -- that honor would fall to Project Naptha -- but it expands on the concept and introduces new options that Project Naptha does not offer.

Probably the biggest feature addition that Copyfish ships with is that it enables you to select text from videos and pdf documents displayed in Chrome as well as text from images. As you may recall, Project Naptha is limited to images only.