What's New

Rainmeter 4.0 has been released on January 1, 2017. The new version of the popular desktop customization suite ships with new features and options, but also some changes that will affect part of the program's user base.

First, the bad news; Rainmeter 4.0 is no longer compatible with Windows XP or Windows Vista. The Rainmeter team asks users who work with the now-unsupported operating systems to stick to the previous release Rainmeter 3.3.2 instead.

Additionally, Windows 7 systems need to have the Service Pack 1 and the Platform Update installed to run Rainmeter 4.0.

2016 was an interesting year for Microsoft and its Windows 10 operating system. The company ended the free for all buffet in the first half of 2016, but not before pushing the free offer way to aggressively to the PCs of its customers.

Task Manager DeLuxe is a free portable task manager alternative for Microsoft Windows that gives you more information and addition system controls.

The Windows Task Manager is not necessarily a bad program, but it lacks options and information that users may find useful at times.

It is great for quickly killing a process and other basic tasks, but once you need to dive deeper, for instance by analyzing process dependencies, it reaches the end of its usefulness.

Now that we have made it successfully into 2017, even with that leap second scare and all, it seems like a good time to run maintenance related tasks on your PC to cut excess fat, free up storage, make it faster, and just make sure everything is in working order.

While many of you have probably a good understanding of the tools and processes involved in giving a Windows PC a thorough maintenance job, knowing something and doing it are not necessarily the same things.

Support for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system will end on April 11, 2017; Microsoft won't publish public security patches anymore for Windows Vista after the Patch Tuesday in April 2017.

Windows Vista is currently in the so-called extended support phase. Microsoft divides the support period of its operating systems into mainstream and extended support phases.

Network Meter is a free portable software program for devices running Microsoft Windows that displays network statistics in its interface.

The program is designed as a basic tool to monitor network traffic. While it does offer a history function, it is not a full blown network monitor as it keeps to the basics.

The program opens with a near-blank screen which can be quite confusing on first start. You need to select one of the available network adapters under the Monitor menu to start monitoring traffic.

Mozilla announced some time ago that it would move away from the add-on system that played a role in making Firefox the browser it is today, to WebExtensions.

I have to admit that I'm not a big gamer on mobile. While I did try a couple of free to play games on various Android smartphones that I owned over the years, I never really enjoyed the tiny screen experience that much.

This has not really changed all that much. I guess it would be different if I would own an Android tablet, but I don't.

Dopamine 1.2 is the latest version of the popular audio player and music management software for the Windows operating system.

The new version of the program is offered as a portable version and installer on the official project website. Please note that Dopamine requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1 or higher, and that it is officially only compatible with Windows 7 and newer versions of the Windows operating system.

Microsoft stated recently on the official Microsoft Edge Twitter channel that the company's Edge web browser was the only browser that supported a pin & preview feature for tabs.

Most web browsers support pinning of tabs. This is a useful feature to keep sites that you visit regularly open all the time and at the beginning of the tab bar for quick access.