With Mobile World Congress (MWC) kicking off next week, many new Windows Phone, Tablets and PCs are starting to be announced. UK budget manufacture Kazam is bringing no less than 5 new Windows powered devices to the event in Barcelona next week as they enter into the non-Android world for the first time. The company has announced two new Windows Phone 8.1 devices and 3 new Windows 8.1 tablets ranging from 7 to 10 inches in screen size.
Notifications on your tablet or PC are both expected and appreciated by most. Whether it is an email arrival notification or the latest weather information being popped up, I for one have become dependent on these little tidbits of information that come to me throughout the day. There are times however when I’m in the middle of another task and I get a notification and need just a few more seconds to tap it and interact with it. By default Windows 8.1 gives you 5 seconds to either click on the notification (or close it) or it will fade away. There is a way however to make this displaying of notifications longer and in this How To I will show you where this setting is buried within the PC settings on your device.
Security of portable devices such as tablets and laptops is ever more important in this day where our digital lives are literally on them. Microsoft recognized this with Windows 8.1 and enabled a new Device Encryption when they released the update last year. The idea behind Device Encryption is that your device is secure and the recovery key for that encryption is stored on Microsoft’s servers, associated with your Microsoft account (yes, they have access to the key but only access it for law enforcement needs). Should your Windows 8.1 tablet or PC be stolen or lost, the content of that drive is encrypted and unless someone has your PIN or password then the contents of the device will not be something they can access.
In this How To I’m going to show you how you can disable the Device Encryption on your Windows 8.1 tablet or PC. It is easy to disable (and enable) but it is a bit buried in the PC Settings. Now, just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean that you should do a thing. Really, there is no reason to follow this How To and turn off encryption. It is for your own safety and personal data security which is why Microsoft has enabled it by default. If you aren’t comfortable with Microsoft having the recovery key, that’s fine. Follow this How To so you can disable it then re-encrypt with another encryption software.
OneNote has become a serious player in the note taking app space but it is much more than just for notes. OneNote allows you to create everything from lists to notes with embedded photos to being a platform to sync content from Office Lens or other apps on your Windows PC and Windows Phone. In Windows Phone there is a big feature that is often overlooked but can be very handy, particularly for lists or a note you need to continually access. That feature is the ability to pin a note to your Start screen on your Windows Phone. In this How To I will show you just how to do this in OneNote so you can take advantage of it.
The news over the weekend that Apple’s flagship OS’ where more vulnerable to security threats should not come as a surprise to anyone. As one who formerly used OS X and iOS, I knew it was just a matter of time before the two platforms were targeted and it appears in 2014 that happened. Why it shouldn’t come as a surprise is simple and comes down to simple target size for hackers. The key however my fellow Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 users is not to gloat to much. We have been here and know the pain.