Microsoft operates over 100 retail stores across the USA and Canada. They’re not just places to shop — Microsoft Stores will perform basic Windows PC maintenance for you, for free. It doesn’t matter where you bought the PC, as long as it runs Windows.

These are the kinds of services most stores — like Best Buy’s Geek Squad — will charge you a premium for. Microsoft Stores are more than just places to buy a clean, malware-free laptop.

No, this isn’t an advertisement for Microsoft and their stores. This is a way to get some free service from Microsoft for the Windows PC you already own. It’s about time Microsoft provided more support for all those Windows PCs they made their fortune on.

Is There a Microsoft Store Near You?

This is obviously only useful if there’s a Microsoft Store location near you. There are locations in most US states and some major urban centers across Canada. Microsoft is opening more and more stores each year, so you may have one near you soon if you don’t already. View an up-to-date list of Microsoft Store locations on Microsoft’s website.

What You Can Get For Free

This service is a part of Microsoft’s in-store “Answer Desk” service. Think of it a bit like the Genius Bar at an Apple Store — yes, those Microsoft Stores feel very modelled on Apple Stores.

The Answer Desk website allows you to choose a nearby store and make a free appointment. Drop in and a “Service Advisor” will offer some free services for any Windows laptop, no matter where you purchased it.

Free services include “extended diagnostics,” “software repair or support,” “virus and malware removal,” and “PC tune-ups.” For comparison, just the “Virus and spyware removal” costs $199.99 if you go to Best Buy’s Geek Squad instead.

We recommend against using the Geek Squad, obviously. You can service your computer on your own. But, if you do want some professional help, you can get it for free. And, if you have relatives you live near a Microsoft Store and they ask you to help remove malware from their PCs and make it run faster, you can tell them to take it to a Microsoft Store and have Microsoft do the work so you can avoid the frustration and save your own time.

Beware the Upsells

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There’s always a catch. Microsoft Stores are retail stores where they want to make money, not service locations operated only for the benefit of their customers. They do offer some paid services, and you may be offered these if you go into a store.

To be fair to Microsoft, these services aren’t priced absurdly — at $49 each, they’re much cheaper than comparable Geek Squad services, for example. Data recovery services are understandably more expensive.

Those $49 paid services range from the potentially useful, like a “Warranty concierge” service where Microsoft Store employees will deal with your PC’s manufacturer to get it fixed under warranty so you don’t have to fight them, to the absurd, like “OneDrive setup” that consists of installing OneDrive apps on all your devices and signing in with the same account.

“Hardware upgrade/install,” free with purchase of a hardware upgrade in-store, is an understandable service if you’re not comfortable doing this on your own, while “App install” — which seems to consist of installing apps — is something every PC user should just get comfortable with on their own.

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This is a simple tip, but Microsoft Stores haven’t been around for very long — the first one opened in 2009. This service may exist to draw you into Microsoft’s own stores, but it’s also an attempt to compete with Apple at providing a single place you can go to get answers and support. If you need help, it’s worth a try.

But, if you do go — or if you advise a relative or friend to go — be sure to tell them not to get sucked in by the $49 OneDrive setup service and other questionable services.

If you have experience using these services at a Microsoft Store, feel free to chime in and share them. We’ve heard some good things, and these services don’t seem like they’re designed to upsell every single person who walks in the door.

There are plenty of downsides to jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad. You’ll be behind on iOS updates and forced to jailbreak each new version of iOS you want to use. More importantly, leaked security documents show jailbroken iPhones are more vulnerable to attack.

Jailbreaking has become less useful over time, too. More and more features that once required jailbreaking on iOS have become built-in as Apple added background apps, widgets, and other configurability to iOS.

Keeping Up With the Jailbreaks is Hard

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All jailbreaks rely on security holes in the iOS operating system used on iPhones and iPads. When an intrepid hacker finds a security hole, they can use it to escape the usual protected environment on iOS and take control over the entire operating system. This exploit is then packaged into a jailbreaking tool people can download and use on their own devices.

That jailbroken iPhone or iPad will remain jailbroken until it upgrades to the next version of iOS. When you upgrade to the next version, your device will no longer be jailbroken — and Apple will have closed the hole, making hackers search for another one before the new version of iOS can be jailbroken. This may take months. It’s becoming harder and taking longer for hackers to find holes in iOS as Apple tightens security.

This means that, if you jailbreak, you won’t be able to install new versions of iOS immediately when they’re released. You’ll have to wait for hackers to find a new security hole and jailbreak. After you do upgrade, you’ll have to run the latest jailbreak tool — and you’ll remain stuck on that version of iOS until the process repeats itself. There’s no way around it — this is just inconvenient and more work. It’s not just a one-time process.

Jailbroken iPhones Are *Much* More Vulnerable to Attack

“Hacking Team” is an Italian security firm that was recently hacked, itself. Hacking Team sells hacking tools to governments around the world, including repressive ones. Leaked documents from Hacking Team indicate that its tools can compromise jailbroken iPhones, but not iPhones that haven’t yet been jailbroken. This means that attacks exist against jailbroken iPhones, but not non-jailbroken iPhones. Sure, it’s possible that another attack might exist somewhere, but almost all malware for iPhones has been limited to jailbroken devices.

This actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Those jailbroken iPhones were jailbroken using an exploit, and that exploit becomes public knowledge once the jailbreak tool is released. It wouldn’t be too hard for these iPhone exploits to be incorporated into a hacking tool and used to compromise iPhones for malicious purposes. That’s just speculation, of course — we’re not sure exactly how this is done.

Users who want to keep their jailbreak have to stay on the vulnerable version of iOS, while users who don’t care about jailbreaking are free to upgrade to the latest version of iOS with the security hole closed and no possibility of jailbreaking.

If you care about the security of your phone — and you should — avoid jailbreaks and stay on the latest version of Apple’s iOS.

Instability

Jailbreaks can potentially be unstable, too. The jailbreak itself may cause issues on your phone, or tweaks you install — which mess with iOS in ways normally not possible — may cause problems with your system and cause apps to crash or the phone to reboot more often.

You may need to restore your iPhone or iPad if you mess something up. That means more time spent messing with your phone or tablet.

Why Bother?

And honestly, why even bother jailbreaking? Yes, we know that there are tons of tweaks out there and ways you can extend iOS in ways that Apple usually won’t let you. However, realistically, jailbreaking has become less and less compelling.

Features like widgets, the ability for apps to run in the background, sharing data between apps, and multiple apps on-screen on the iPad have already been added or are being added in iOS 9.

iOS has become a mature operating system, and jailbreaking is less and less necessary — just like rooting has become less necessary on Android phones.

Don’t jailbreak just to jailbreak or use a little tweak. Sure, you might want to do it if there’s something you’re really passionate about — but know what you’re getting into and realize how much you’ve giving up for it.

Maybe You Should Just Get an Android Phone If You Want to Tweak

Many things that aren’t normally possible on an iPhone are possible on Android even without rooting. Rooting your Android phone or tablet is often easier than jailbreaking and iPhone or iPad, and you could even install a third-party custom ROM like CyanogenMod and have it stay rooted while also receiving the latest security updates.If you desperately want a phone that lets you install apps from outside the app store and do powerful things that wouldn’t normally be possible, you may just want to skip iPhones and get an Android phone next time.

No, we’re not saying that all iPhone users should look at an Android phone. We’re just saying that an Android phone is probably a better choice for tweaking enthusiasts than a jailbroken iPhone.

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There are some solid arguments against bypassing an Android device’s security protections, too. Using a device with an unlocked bootloader means anyone who gets their hands on it can gain access to your device. It’s often a good idea to lock your bootloader again after installing a custom firmware of your choice.

Rooting your device means a malicious app breaking out of the security sandbox could run wild in a way it normally couldn’t. That’s why Android phones don’t come rooted.

One of the improvements implemented in iOS 9 was a new style touch keyboard that easily allows users to tell the difference between upper and lower-case mode. If you prefer the old style touch keyboard however, here is how to re-enable it.

Of all the improvements Apple made to iOS from version 8 to version 9 is the ability to see the lower-case letters on the keyboard when it is in lower-case mode. Before this, all the letters, regardless of mode appeared as upper-case, which caused a great deal of grousing among users and critics.

As we see in the following image, you will note the shift button is off, which is the only indicator (other than actually typing a message) that the keyboard is in lower-case mode. While this isn’t a make-or-break situation, visually, it is very confusing.

In this image, you can see that the “Shift” button is off and the keyboard is seen in lower-case mode, and it is immediately apparent visually what kind of result you should expect when you type.

That said, if you want to change your keyboard back to the former style found in iOS 8, then open the “Settings” on your iPhone or iPad and tap “General”.

In the General settings, tap the the “Accessibility” settings and then tap open the “Keyboard” settings.

In the Keyboard settings, now tap off “Show Lowercase Keys” and the keyboard will revert to the old iOS 8 style.

That’s all there is to it. From now on whenever you use your keyboard with the lowercase keys off, it will appear as follows.

While it isn’t immediately apparent from a casual glance that the keyboard is in lowercase mode (other than the gray “Shift” key), if you prefer this style, then there you have it.

Personally, we think the new keyboard in iOS 9 makes a lot more sense from a usability standpoint and is likely to please quite a few users who’ve found the uppercase-only style keyboard confusing.

We hope you found this article useful, and if you have any questions or comments you would like to contribute, then please leave your feedback in our discussion forum.

If you have a large spreadsheet in Excel, you may want to add page numbers. Doing so is easy, and you can even add them in the format of “Page X of Y”. Read on to find out how.

To begin, click the “Insert” tab.

In the “Text” section, click “Header & Footer”.

The “Design” tab under “Header & Footer Tools” displays. In the “Header & Footer Elements” section, click the “Page Number” button. A header is added to the spreadsheet and the cursor is put inside the header.

The code for the page number is inserted. Make sure the cursor is after the “&[Page]” text and add the word “of”, as shown below.

To add a code that inserts the total number of pages in the document, click “Number of Pages” in the “Header & Footer Elements” section of the “Design” tab.

You can also insert “Page X of Y” into the header by clicking the “Header” button in the “Header & Footer” section of the “Design” tab. Select “Page 1 of ?” from the drop-down menu.

The “Page X of Y” text is inserted into the header and the main spreadsheet automatically becomes active again.

Here we showed how to insert “Page X of Y” into the header, but the procedure is the same for the footer.

Windows 8 offered support for restoring Windows 7 backups, but Microsoft removed this feature in Windows 8.1. There’s still a way to restore your files from Windows 7 backups on Windows 8.1 or 10, but it’ll take a bit more work.

Windows 8.1 does offer support for restoring system image backups, but that won’t help if you’ve just used Windows Backup on Windows 7 to create backup copies of your important files.Backups can be complicated on Windows.

(If you have a Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC lying around, you can also connect that drive to the computer running an older copy of Windows and restore the important files from the backup, placing them on an external drive and carrying them to your new PC.)

Locate the Backups

First, connect the drive containing your Windows 7 backups to your Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 PC. You’ll see a file folder with the name of the PC the backups are from alongside a “MediaID.bin” file. Double-click the file folder with the name of your Windows 7 PC to open it.

You’ll see one or more folders named “Backup Set YEAR-MM-DD ######”. Each “Backup Set” folder is a separate backup. Locate the one with the date and time you want to restore your files from. If you just want to restore from the last backup, choose the most recent folder.

You’ll then see one or more folders named “Backup Files YEAR-MM-DD ######” alongside a “Catalogs” folder. Each “Backup Files” folder is an incremental backup of the same overall backup. For example, the oldest Backup Files folder here is the first backup you performed. The second “Backup Files” folder contains only the changes made from between the time you ran the first and second backups.

Extract the Backups

Inside each separate “Backup Files” folder, you’ll see multiple “Backup files #.zip” archives containing your backed up files. If you feel particularly masochistic, you can open each zip file one by one, examine it to see if it contains the file you want, and hopefully extract that file. But there’s no good way of telling exactly which .zip file contains the file you want, and you probably want more than one file anyway.

Instead, we recommend using a file-extraction program like 7-Zip. Once you’ve installed it, you can select all the .zip files, right-click them, and select 7-Zip > Extract files. 7-Zip will extract all the files from the archives you selected, getting all the files backed up when you performed that backup.

Extract them to a specific folder, such as a folder named “Windows 7 Backups” on your desktop.

Repeat this process for each individual Backup Files folder. Remember that each Backup Files folder is an incremental backup. So, when you extract the .zip files from the first folder, you’re getting all the files that existed when you first backed up, at the state they were in that backup. When you extract the files from the second backup file folder, you’re getting all the new or changed files.

Consider extracting each set of incremental backups to the same folder, from oldest to newest, overwriting any duplicate files. As long as you do this in the correct order, you should end up with a single folder structure containing only the most recent versions of your files.

Dig Through Your Backups

You’ll still have to dig through the backups afterwards, deleting any files you no longer want, as deleted files will still be present. You’ll be able to extract your important files from the backups afterwards.

To do this, head to the folder you extracted the backups to and dig in. The folder structure is obvious — there will likely be a C folder representing your C drive, a Users folder representing your Users folder, and folders for each Windows user account you backed up from. if you backed up from other folders on your Windows 7 PC, you’ll find folders representing them as well.

Dig through your files, grabbing any personal files and other data you think is important. Delete any files you no longer need — depending on your backups, you may have lots of old deleted files lying around. Be sure not to get rid of your Windows 7 backup drive before you’ve verified you have all the important files you need and that they’re all the most recent, current versions.

When you’re done, consider getting rid of the Windows 7 backups and setting up File History, the new backup system used by Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

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This process can be a bit tedious because there’s no fancy interface for restoring files. Windows 7’s restore utility normally uses the extra metadata files here to restore your backups in a more intelligent way. However, all your files are thankfully stored inside standard .zip files so you can extract them manually if you need to. You should only have to do this once, when moving from Windows 7 to a Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 PC.

As a bonus, you can also restore Windows 7 backups on a Mac or Linux PC in a similar way — plug it in and extract the backup files from the .zip files.

Android 6.0’s big hallmark feature is Google Now on Tap. Part of Google Now, Now on Tap allows Google to scan the screen whenever you open it, automatically guessing what you want to search for and providing you with more information.

Aside from user-manageable app permissions — something Apple has offered from day one with the iPhone — this is the most important and interesting new  feature in Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

What is Now on Tap?

Google Now has been creeping further and further into Android with each release. On modern Android devices — at least the ones using the Google Now launcher, which you can install on any device from Google Play — you can access Google Now by swiping to the right on the home screen. Google Now provides you with information it thinks you might want to see — everything from package and airline tracking details based on the emails you’ve received to the weather in your area and directions to home or work, depending on the time of the day. You might also see directions to a location you’ve recently searched for or the latest scores from sports teams you’ve searched for.

This is essentially Google’s competitor to Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana. Google puts a high value on providing information before you have to ask for it, something Microsoft is doing with Cortana and Apple is only now beginning to do with Siri in iOS 9.

Now on Tap extends that even further. Android apps can expose their data to Now on Tap. When you open Now on Tap, it scans the screen for information you might want to know more about and suggests relevant “cards.”

For example, let’s say you’re listening to a song in an app. Pulling up Now on Tap might present you with more information about the artist. Or, let’s say you’re having text conversation and someone mentions a restaurant. Pulling up Now on Tap will show you a card about the restaurant so you can see reviews and directions.

That’s the goal here — rather than manually performing a search for the person, location, or something else of interest, you pull up Now on Tap and it automatically searches for what you want. Of course, it isn’t perfect, especially in its first release.

How to Use Now on Tap

To use Now on Tap, just press the Home button and hold it down. This shortcut previously opened Google Now, but it now goes straight to Now on Tap. The first time you do this, you’ll be asked to turn this feature on.

On some devices, you might need to use another shortcut. You should be able to use whatever shortcut opens Google Now — for example, that may be a double-press of the Home button on some devices. Only Google’s Nexus devices currently have Android 6.0 Marshmallow, so we’re not completely sure how Samsung and other Android device manufacturers will implement this.

Google recommends you try this “with people, places, and movies.” If an app — or even just a web page in Google Chrome — mentions a people, place, or movie, you should be able to see immediate information about it through a long-press of the Home button.

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You can also say “Ok Google” or tap and the mic and ask a questino based on what’s on the screen after opening Now on Tap. For example, while listening to a song in an app, you can open Now on Tap and then  say something like “Ok Google, what’s her real name?” or “Ok Google, how old is he?” Google Now will perform a search based on the information in Now on Tap. In this case, it should see that you’re listening to music by a specific artist and perform a search for that artist’s real name or age and answer your question.

It’s that simple — the shortcut that previously opened Google Now now opens Now on Tap. You can still access the main Google Now screen from your home screen, the Google search app, or notifications that arrive on your Android device. You can also tap the “G” button at the bottom of the Now on Tap screen to go to the Google Now interface.

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This will get much more useful over time as more third-party Android apps opt into this feature and as Google extends Google Now on Tap to understand more types of data. For now, Google’s Now on Tap shows what’s possible with deep integration of Google’s “knowledge graph” into the Android operating system. Android is becoming more and more integrated with Google’s services.

Android now allows you to customize the shortcuts that appear in your Quick Settings panel and the icons that appear on your status bar. This is part of the hidden “System UI Tuner” screen, added in Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

Google will probably add more features to the System UI Tuner in future versions of Android. It’s hidden, so you’ll never find it without someone telling you where it is — just like the Developer Options screen and Android’s hidden Easter egg.

Enable System UI Tuner

To enable the System UI Tuner, pull down the notification shade at the top of your Android smartphone or tablet’s screen. Long-press the gear icon that appears between the battery indicator and your profile image for about five seconds. Just hold it down until it begins to spin. A notification saying “Congrats! System UI Tuner has been added to Settings.”

Access the System UI Tuner

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This is a new settings screen that will appear in Android’s system-wide settings app. To access it, open the app drawer and tap the “Settings” app icon. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen — you’ll see a new “System UI Tuner” option appear under About phone or About tablet. Tap it to access the formerly hidden options.

Open the System UI Tuner screen and Google warns you that these options are “Fun for some but not for all.” As Google puts it, “these experimental features may change, break or disappear in future releases. Proceed with caution.”

In a sense, this is like the chrome://flags interface in Chrome — both on Android and on desktop platforms. While the Developer Options screen hides options intended for developers, the System UI Tuner screen hides options intended for Android power users and tweakers.

Customize Your Quick Settings Tiles and Status Bar Icons

In the System UI Tuner’s initial release in Android 6.0 Marshmallow, there are just a few options here. You can customize the Quick Settings panel that appears along with your notifications when you pull down from the top of the screen, control what appears in the status bar, show battery percentage on the battery icon in the status bar, and enable a “Demo mode.”

The Quick Settings screen allows you to rearrange the tiles that appear here, remove tiles you don’t want to see, and add other tiles. You can also tap the menu button and tap “Reset” to restore the tiles to their default state if you decide you don’t like your customizations.

The Status bar screen allows you to hide certain icons from your status bar. You can choose to hide the Cast, Hotspot, Bluetooth, Do not disturb, Alarm, Work profile, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Cellular data, and Airplane mode icons so they don’t clutter up your status bar.

The “Show embedded battery percentage” option modifies the battery icon that appears in that status bar. When not charging, the current battery percentage will be shown inside the battery icon so you don’t have to guess at it or pull up the notification panel to see the exact percentage.

You can also choose to enable “Demo mode.” In demo mode, the status bar is cleaned up and shows no notifications, a full battery, full Wi-Fi and cellular signal strength, and the time is always set to 6:00. This is just a visual trick — disable demo mode and all your notifications will still be there.

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More options should appear here in the future, and Google may remove some of the current options. It’s a bit like about:flags in Chrome, but Google doesn’t seem to be testing out new features — they’re just giving users more options that Android’s developers haven’t figured out how to integrate into the normal settings interface yet.

Before, Change Facebook Login Background Let me tell you can use & follow the simple method to Change Facebook Login Background. This is not really difficult you need to download the following chrome extension.

1) You Need To Download, First of all, Go to FACE BOOB Refresh Chrome Extension.
2) Go to the download link, & Click FREE, then confirm by clicking Add button.

3) After adding the plugin to Google Chrome, visit chrome://chrome/extensions/ to access all Chrome extension settings.

4) currently scroll down till you discover the put in extension (FB Refresh), then Click choices slightly below it.5) When you click Options, you will be redirected to settings page of FB Refresh.

6) Under Image (uniform resource locator) URL/Upload section you can paste the Image URL that you can find on Google Image Search or simply Upload an image ofyou.

7) you have to Click on Save button within the bottom of the page.

Note*: Click On Download Button,  Change Facebook Login Background Quickly Extention, & Then View The Right Corner Wait For 5 Seconds, & then Click on Skip Ad. your Download will there. Further The New Versions Will Be Uploaded. You Can Tap For Change Facebook Login Background Quickly Extention.

** Before Activating Must Check ReadMe File Present There In a RAR File And Follow The Simple Instruction.

Change Facebook Login Background Extention: