Insider tips, how-to, best security practices, and more

Digital photography gives us the freedom to take hundreds of photos and videos of places and people, at very little expense — so many images, that family and friends might be blasé at best about your latest efforts. But three little-known apps from Microsoft can put some unexpected novelty back into your images.

For Windows users who manage their own system updates, the patching process is a bit like going to the dentist — you really hope it’ll be pain-free. For making that twice-monthly chore a little easier, here are some simple tips and tricks to avoid patching woes.

Windows has a long and honorable history of including advanced tools and options that help unlock the operating system’s full potential. In this first installment of a series of articles on these tools, you’ll see how a few easy tweaks can give you two-click access to hundreds of Windows’ most powerful features.

DNSChanger virus spells ‘Internet Doomsday’ … The end is nigh, according to the FBI … ‘Internet doomsday’ will strike us all on July 9 … That’s what a couple of popular websites had to say about the DNSChanger virus. What a crock!

Microsoft just released details on the versions of Windows 8 it’ll offer when the OS ships — most likely sometime in October. Although the company will simplify the current huge array of Windows versions with Win8, the choices are really not any simpler at all.

We include pictures in everything — from blog posts to annual reports to letters to Grandma. But easy as it is to insert pictures into a doc, we’re often flummoxed by how to keep them exactly where we want them. This article explores a few of the maddening Word picture-placement issues our readers (and editors) have faced.

It was a typical winter day in Seattle — gray, rainy, and raw — when I visited Windows Secrets reader Gary Nobel. Gary’s system would occasionally slow “to a crawl.” I was there to find out why.