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Autumn 2012 | Sample Issue
Amazing home entertainment Connect with family & friends Stunning apps for your PC
SAMPLE guide to time-saving apps Get on top of your diary!
amazing zenbook reviewed Is this the King of the Ultrabooks
Perfect tech for the best hoLidaY ever! Explore, share, blog and stay in touch with our guide to buying travel tech DISCLAIMER
This public sampler features pre-launch content. Prices, availability and other specific details are subject to change.
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Change the way you watch films at home
windows store is open Explore a world of big-name apps and games
make the right choice We round-up the best devices for every budget
Welcome
The time has come! indows 8 is nearly here. We’ve got our hands on the latest preview version and to say we’re really excited would be an understatement: it’s a huge change for Windows, and it’s one that we’re sure will help you get more out of your life. The app store is exploding right now, ready for Windows 8’s release on October 26th, so we’ve taken a look at some of the apps and games that will be keeping you enthralled once you’ve
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upgraded. We also go deep inside Microsoft’s amazing Bing Weather app so you’ll never forget your umbrella again, and tell you everything you’ll need to do to get your Windows 8 upgrade up and running in a flash. We’re not just looking at Windows itself, though. The hardware that’s going to run it is just as important, so the team has pulled together a selection of the best kit to take your computing experience further – perhaps even worldwide, thanks to our travel guide – over the coming months.
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Autumn 2012 | Sample Issue
Amazing home entertainment Connect with family & friends Stunning apps for your PC
amazing zenbook reviewed Is this the King of the Ultrabooks
Perfect tech for the best hoLidaY ever! Explore, share, blog and stay in touch with our guide to buying travel tech
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guide to time-saving apps Get on top of your diary!
Adam Ifans, Editor-in-Chief
watch amazing movies
Change the way you watch films at home
windows store is open Explore a world of big-name apps and games
make the right choice We round-up the best devices for every budget
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Live Tech Life
Live Desire Enjoy
Perfect tech for globetrotting Discover the ultimate PCs, gadgets and apps to take with you all over the world, even on a tight budget
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ou may be trekking through rainforests, exploring ancient civilisations or just off to Blackpool for a week. Wherever you’re headed, you’ll be lost without the right kit. You’ll need proper connectivity, amazing computing power and something that isn’t going to let you down at the crucial moment. You’ll also need your kit to be lightweight. We think we’ve found three devices that each tick all of those boxes.
best for showing off Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2 £TBC
our choice for travel best for staying connected
Nokia Lumia 900 £400/£25 per month
best for portable power
Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook £TBC
try it with these
Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2 £TBC Get everything possible out of Windows 8 with this brilliantly designed tablet, complete with a stylus. www.lenovo.com
Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook £TBC This Ultrabook is an ideal travel PC. It’s small, light, powerful, cheap, and it fits in a bag. Nice. http://bit.ly/ Pw9PRP
Nokia Lumia 900
Heads have been seriously turned by Nokia’s range of Windows-toting phones and it’s not just because they come in a range of lurid colours. These are slivers of proper nextgeneration kit. The unibody polycarbonate construction is far thinner than that of your average smartphone – just 11.5mm at its thickest point, with a tapered edge that makes it appear even slimmer – so the Lumia 900 is perfect for stashing in any pocket. Corning’s well respected Gorilla Glass covers the remarkably bright screen, meaning it’ll withstand just about any knock. We’ve seen Gorilla Glass screens broken before, but it takes a special case. Most of the time they won’t even scratch when sharing a pocket with keys or coins. In addition, there’s a coating of ClearBlack magic, meaning the screen works in any light,
Travel in style with these apps and gadgets
Travel £FREE Hi-res photography of popular worldwide destinations mixes with all the local knowledge you’ll need to get along.
Nokia Lumia 900 £400 Keep tabs on the world in any light with the Lumia’s amazingly bright scratchproof screen. Not many smartphones can match it. www.nokia.com
Powerbag
SAMPLE even through polarised sunglasses. The top feature for us, though, is the Carl Zeiss lensed 8MP camera, which is pretty much good enough to eliminate a separate camera from your bag altogether. It’s great quality, as long as you take care of the lens, which strikes us as a little bit of a scratch magnet. 16GB of on-board storage is enough for a veritable portfolio of snaps and while it’s not expandable, connecting the Lumia to a PC to transfer your memories is a straightforward job. The whole package is tied together with Windows Phone 7.5 and, while the Lumia won’t be getting a Windows Phone 8 upgrade, its app lineup will keep you company on long journeys. The battery life is admirably long – you’ll get a film or two out of it before you need a recharge, or nearly a full day of music or podcast playback through the Zune app.
Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2
We’re entering a new era of Windows computers. It’s one where tablets are actually good. Lenovo’s newest stab at the genre – so new it hasn’t even been given an official price yet – looks set to be a major player in the Windows 8 market.
Why? Is it the ludicrously modern no-frills design? The Thinkpad is squared and rounded in equal measure – an initially inconspicuous form that seems to dial up the classiness the more you hold it – and incredibly streamlined at under a centimetre thick. Yes, it could be that. And it could be more. The dual-function screen is a huge plus when on the road. You can poke and prod it with mucky fingers, but you can also whip out the pressure-sensitive stylus for precise control. It’s perfect for keeping an illustrated journal of your travels or for sketching a map to the next town. Of course, the major upgrade from the original Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet is what makes this new machine particularly exciting. The original was more like a phone, running much of the same technology under the hood. This is a proper computer, with a decent Intel chip, toting Windows 8 Pro. Be warned, though – it’s not super powerful. The screen lacks the full high-definition resolution of Microsoft’s Surface and the processor is a very low-power variety, so you’ll find that it will struggle with ultra‑demanding programs. But don’t be dismayed. Battery life, based on
these specs, should be absolutely phenomenal, so the Tablet 2 won’t let you down when you’re showing pictures of your cat to a bemused foreigner. We’d also wager that the price will be very reasonable – if it doesn’t come in under £600, colour us shocked.
Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook
It’s not unreasonable to suggest that the Ultrabook has been the most significant computing development for world travellers. Five years ago, if you tried to drag a laptop around in your carry-on bag, you’d end up with a hefty osteopath bill. Yes, the netbook faze did a good job of reducing bag weight, but with a significant power and resolution sacrifice. Ultrabooks are revolutionary. They’re powerful, sturdy, slim and light. And Samsung’s Series 9, a 13.3-inch frame weighing in at less
£85-£150 With a built-in battery and compatibility with tons of different cables, you can simultaneously recharge up to four devices wherever you are, zipped away and hidden from view. You’ll need to order from the US, but we reckon the Powerbag is a must-have for serious travel. http://bit.ly/nClw06
than 3lb, is a perfect pick for travel. Hunt around now and if you’re lucky you should be able to pick one up for around £800 with Windows 7, a full £400 short of the original asking price. Pricing will change once Windows 8 comes out but we’d be surprised if it makes anything more expensive. Inside, there’s everything you’ll need for full-strength computing on the road. There’s a lot of memory at 4GB, a low voltage processor that means you’ll get extra battery life, a huge solid state hard disk – which means it’ll boot fast and is robust to knocks – and even a set of USB 3.0 ports for lightening fast interaction with external drives. There’s a memory card reader within, so it’s perfect for scrolling through the photos of the day once you’ve transferred them. While the resolution of the screen isn’t quite as mindblowing as some of its competitors, it’s perfectly decent. The Intel graphics engine isn’t exactly superb, so you probably won’t be playing too many high-end games, but it does at least have a display with SuperBright technology and an effective anti-reflective coating. You can use it in the sun with confidence. ■
Maps
£FREE There’s location awareness, traffic details and integrated directions so you can always find your way to your destination.
Olympus SZ-14
£152 720p HD video, 14MP, a 24x optical zoom, a wacky 3D panorama mode, and a whole host more for just £150. This really could be the perfect travel camera. It’s not super robust, but the metal front makes it tough and good looking, and it’s only 216g with a battery and memory card inside. www.olympus.co.uk
Skyscanner
£FREE Find the cheapest flights in seconds. Input your location and destination and filter by carrier, duration or time.
The Thinkpad 2 improves on the original in just about every way
Live
Quick Note
£Free Scribble with a stylus or type with a keyboard – it doesn’t matter. This is a quick and easy Post-it emulator.
Bucket List
windows store Top notch time saving apps
Run a marathon Tech to help you reach your goals
Dark RSS reader £Free Navigating the web can be time consuming, so use Dark RSS to keep tabs on your favourite sites.
Live Tile News
£Free Getting the news has never been quicker than with Live Tile News. You can read the latest news headlines, complete with pictures, and what’s more, if you pin it to your Start screen it will push the news to you.
Wikipedia
National Rail Enquiries App
£Free Settle any argument in seconds with this brilliant interface to the world’s leading online encyclopedia. This Windows app puts Wikipedia’s entire archive at your fingertips, making it easier to work or just geek out.
SAMPLE £Free
Bash Unit Converter
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£Free What’s 12 kelvin on the Newton scale? If your time is being sucked up with common conversions you need this handy app to save you valuable time every day. (It’s -86.18, by the way.)
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ake the stress out of travelling by rail with the fantastic National Rail Enquiries app. From finding out when the next train home is, to booking tickets and getting the best fares, this app can save you a serious amount of time – and money. By enabling location services, you don’t even need to type in the name of the station you’re heading to – it’ll instantly find your closest one, along with relevant train information. If you’re going to travel by rail, make sure you do it in style with this app. Remember to pin it to your Start screen too for live updates!
£Free Save time trying to remember what you’re supposed to be doing, and create a superb online memoir with this clever visual diary app. You can even record past events for future posterity, with photos to boot.
Mind8
£Free This neat mind mapping tool is great for tackling projects. It takes seconds to do and will save you hours.
Too much time?
Microsoft Solitaire Collection
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marathon takes serious preparation. Thankfully there’s plenty of technology to help you prepare for the 26.2 miles. A GPS watch will help keep your training on track, but if you’d rather not splash out, there are free apps that let you do the same thing with your Windows smartphone. You can also use wireless headphones to make sure you don’t get all tied up. Elsewhere, modern bathroom scales can track fat loss and send the information straight to your PC, helping you to stay on track. ■
T Engage in competitive play with your friends online
Measure body fat and hydration, and send data to your PC. www.tanita.eu
kit to get you fit
Get a helping hand with this superb helping of tech
£Free
he biggest time-waster in Windows history is coming back in Windows 8 with a fresh new twist. There’s a range of customisable themes – like the rustic Western theme pictured to the left – and tons of card-slinging varieties (from standard Klondyke to FreeCell, Spider, Pyramid and TriPeaks). You’ll also be able to engage in competitive play with your friends online, or play daily challenges to keep you hooked. While you’re there, hunt through the Store to check out the new generation of Minesweeper, too. You’ll never get any work done again. Even with the host of games now available on PC, it just goes to show the old ones are still the best.
Tanita BC1000 Body Composition Scale £162
Garmin Forerunner 610 £310 Measure distance, pace, heart rate and more, then upload it all wirelessly. www.garmin.com
Plantronics BackBeat 903+
£57 These Bluetooth headphones let you enjoy music without a tangle of cables. www.plantronics.com
best app for fitness
Meet your goals with this superb app from the Windows Store
MapMyRUN
Free Log your runs, discover new routes and send automatic updates to Twitter and Facebook. www.mapmyrun.com
ENJOY
Air Soccer Fever £TBA Subbuteo was fun, but it was stop/start. This takes the game to a new level, with real-time fingerflicking soccer.
Your players can pull off all kinds of cunning skill moves Game of the month
The big kick-off £55 Don’t go outside. It’s bright out there. Settle down with your PC and a joypad instead
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ike clockwork, the major sports release this year has ticked around – the latest instalment in the venerable FIFA franchise. It’s the most detailed, intricate footballing simulation out there. EA’s stick-flicking control scheme means your players can pull off all kinds of cunning skill moves and FIFA 13 adds extra tricks such as a new low chip and a finesse pass to join the finesse shot introduced last year. There’s also better AI, an improved first-touch feature – which calculates a player’s ability to receive a pass based on his skill, his position and the speed of the ball – an expanded career mode and some brilliant physical interaction between the players. Lay the elbows in and your opponents will know about it…
ARMED!
£TBA Part real-time strategy, part tabletop war game, part 50s schlock robot-fest, ARMED! has already been a big hit on Windows Phone. If you’re after some laser-toting strategy fun, seek it out immediately.
Physamajig Spritehand
£TBA Create your own physics-based games, or play one of the huge selection of included levels.
Doodle God
Hot game!
Reversi Twist
SAMPLE F1 2012
Cristiano Ronaldo’s Freestyle
£9 Football game? You’d think so, but no. This is a strange but brilliant rhythm game, where you control Ronaldo’s skilful limbs and do keepie-uppies by tapping to the beat.
£50 Take to the track behind the wheel of the most ludicrous, ridiculously fast vehicles ever. F1 2012 features all the tactics, tantrums and tyre changing of the real thing. Oh, and be prepared to crash. A lot.
WSF Squash 2012
Full Ace Tennis
£15 This is a serious tennis simulator. Serious. That means there’s no arcade mode, no assisted positioning to help you out and an engine that takes into account everything from ball trajectory to friction.
£30 Squash games aren’t something you see every day, but this one looks rather nifty. It promises all the shots of the real game and realistic representations of 12 of the world’s top rubber-ball players.
Free game of the month
What’s the word? Outspell your chums with Wordament, the perfect touchscreen game
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ne look at Microsoft Studios’s Wordament and you know the deal – swipe letters horizontally, vertically and diagonally in sequence to spell words and score points. Yes, with a 4 x 4 grid of letters, it does bear more than a passing resemblance to Boggle, but its online component, where worldwide games are running all day every day, makes it a completely different beast.
£Free This puzzle game puts you in the robes of a creationist god to recreate the world as we know it. Mix elements and items to activate further evolution, making your way from bacteria to weaponry and beyond.
Flow
£TBA Connect coloured dots on a grid without overlapping the connections. It starts easy, but the difficulty ramps up.
Bubble Star
£TBA Clearly – ahem – ‘inspired’ by classic ball-popping games of the past, this is a puzzle standard. Point your bubble cannon at likecoloured clusters, fire one off and score big points for matching colours.
£Free It’s Reversi, with a twist. What’s the twist? A choice between 8 x 8 and 10 x 10 boards. Okay, it’s not that big a difference, but the graphics and sound of this classic recreation make it well worth a try.
Violet Storm TBA A colourful concoction that combines fast-paced blasting with baddie-dodging fun
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ou don’t always need a story to have fun. You don’t need protagonists or peril or redemption. Sometimes a big spaceship, an unlimited supply of laser bullets and eye-popping graphics are enough. Violet Storm obliges with a wireframe grid of two-dimensional warfare, putting fun and form on the same pedestal. It would be clichéd to describe it as Asteroids with a facelift, but it would also be true, as long as the arcade machine was transplanted from the 1980s into the middle of a pumping disco and had a much more accessible control scheme than Atari’s classic.
Hot game!
Fruit Ninja £TBA Use your fingers as blades and get chopping – no balaclava required
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earch the internet for five minutes and the chances are high that you’ll come across two things – videos of people’s cats doing silly things and videos of people demonstrating the keenness of their ninja swords by obliterating melons. Fruit Ninja is the virtual version of the latter hobby. Swipe the screen as various fruits fly by to cleave them in two. You can use additional fingers to make multiple slices simultaneously and if you time your slashes to hit several fruits at once you’ll be awarded a combo bonus. There’s really not much more to it than that. It’s frenetic stuff, guaranteed to leave you with greasy fingerprint smears all over your tablet’s touchscreen. If you have kids, get them this – they’ll absolutely love it.
Swipe the screen as various fruits fly by to slice them in two
desire features in depth
ASUS zenbook UX32A £TBC
Rated
Power and price meet at last
The zen of laptop design
Lithe yet muscular, with speakers that belt out audio with supreme clarity, the Zenbook is a great little Ultrabook. Just don’t expect its power to last. www.asus.com
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The Zenbook uses an SSD (solid-state drive), to store Windows. SSDs are much faster when it comes to searching, reading and writing data.
Supreme screen
SAMPLE the spokes of a wheel and gives this machine a premium sheen. It’s a truly classy look. You’ll be proud to use it. Inside, we’ve got the latest mid‑range kit, the sort of internals that will feel supercharged if you’re upgrading from a previous PC generation. Intel’s cutting edge Ivy Bridge processor range really is super-zippy and the Zenbook UX32A – which features a Core i5 version of the chip – has a lot of power on board. It’s not quite as storming as its bigger brothers like the top-spec Zenbook Prime, though. Don’t get us wrong,
The excellent Bang & Olufsen ICEPower speakers are tweaked and tuned to the chassis for a rather brilliant surround sound effect.
Solid state
Asus’s Zenbook UX32A is the evolution of the Ultrabook he original Zenbook was one of the first Ultrabook PCs unveiled and even to this day it takes some beating. Now it’s been joined – but not necessarily superseded – by the supremely affordable Asus Zenbook UX32A. It’s got excellent build quality, brilliant looks and meaty (but relatively scaled back) tech as a concession to the affordable price (still TBC). Let’s start with the head-turning design, which encompasses a sleek, aluminium build with the wedgeshaped look we’ve come to expect from Ultrabooks. At its thinnest point it measures a tiny 8mm and, while this gets thicker as you reach the back of the unit, it’s never what you’d call large. The case incorporates a concentric circle design that throws light back like
Sounds great
this machine will still perform – and perform well. But don’t expect to run demanding program on top of demanding program, or for this to last you more than a couple of years into the future. It’s absolutely perfect for a Windows 8 upgrade, but not impervious to the increasing demands of tomorrow. This is a machine for right now and, realistically, that’s the right way to think about any laptop. The other cost concessions you can probably live with are: the screen resolution is rather low, so you won’t get full HD playback on it, although 720p video, which it can handle, looks absolutely gorgeous; and the memory is rather short at 4GB – most other Ultrabooks squeeze in 8GB these days – but you won’t notice this unless you really push it hard.
The screen, while not super-high-res, has a matte-coated display, which is ideal if you want to use the laptop in bright light.
plenty of options when it comes to connecting an external display. It’ll work with just about any TV, monitor or projector you come across. Inside there’s a big portion of solid state storage, meaning Windows 8, once you’ve upgraded from the current Windows 7 operating system, should load in a couple of seconds. There’s a subtle backlight to the keys, which helps if you’re working away at night, and the large touchpad supports multi-touch gestures, so you can pinch to zoom or use two fingers to scroll up and down a document. You’ll be jumping around Windows 8 with incredible speed. One slight caveat to end on is that the battery isn’t brilliant. It’ll last you a good few hours on the move, but compared to its compatriots, the Zenbook UX32A lacks a little energy. If you can cope with that, though, this is a truly gorgeous laptop and one that comes in at the perfect price. ■
Great design
We might be berating the internal specifications somewhat, but when it comes to the hardware design and connections, Asus has got it absolutely spot on. It uses USB 3.0, so super-fast connections with external devices (10 times the speed of old-school USB) are entirely possible. There’s also an HDMI port and DisplayPort, which give you
When it comes to hardware design Asus has got it absolutely spot on
Life
Killer App
Bing Weather
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Windows 8’s amazing looking built-in weather app is going down a storm
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ooking to the skies is a national pastime wherever you live. And hey, nothing’s stopping you from sticking your head out of the door and craning it upwards. But what does it really tell you, and can you predict what’s coming? Nothing, and no, in that order, so why not turn to Bing Weather for the answers. The app gets its highly-localised information from trusted sources, so you’re always prepared.
Location aware
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Bing Weather should be able to pick out your location even if you don’t have a GPS device – it’ll look at your internet address and approximate from there. Rightclick or swipe down and use the Places menu to add more locales.
How hot?
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The temperature is, by default, displayed in centigrade, but you can change this to Fahrenheit through the swipe-down menu. You’ll see an approximation of what the temperature actually feels like underneath.
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World map
Check this out Don’t miss this hidden feature
The forecast
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Although Bing Weather will give you a brief look at the current climate on its live tile, head to the app proper for a detailed preview of the next few days. Be sure to click the arrow at the top right to view data for further in the future.
Compare, contrast
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Usually you’ll see data pulled from Accuweather on Bing Weather’s main page, but it’s simple enough to list information from Foreca or our favourite service, Weather Underground. Just tap the arrow, bottom right.
On the hour
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Just to the right of the main screen you’ll see a breakdown of the upcoming weather, divided up into three hourly slots. Swipe it to see a forecast for the weather further in the future – it covers the next couple of days.
Amazing looks
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Bing Weather is absolutely gorgeous, with a hand-picked image reflecting the current weather in your location. It’s not just the picture, though: the whole app recolours itself to match the mood.
Swipe down or right-click, and choose the ‘World Weather’ icon to see weather worldwide. Click an area to take a closer look.
A bit of charm If you’re using a touchscreen for Windows 8, you can swipe from the right to see the Charm bar, a new menu option.
Expert
Welcome to windows 8
Let us show you around the new-look OS
A fresh new look The new Windows 8 UI brings a whole new look and feel to Windows, as well as a new Start screen. It’s designed to be great for touch as well as mouse and keyboard, and you can arrange the apps in any order you want on the Start screen. Most modern UI-style apps run full screen, but you can also position them at the side of the window.
Get apps on your PC
Apps are key to the Windows 8 experience. There are plenty of built-in Windows 8-style ones, including Mail, Stocks and Sports, and you can choose from thousands more at the Windows Store. Lots of third-party developers have already produced apps for Windows 8, covering everything from recipes to music and video to Twitter. 15
The Charm bar One of the new ways to interact with Windows is the Charm bar, which can be accessed from all applications. It’s an overlay that appears on screen and shows essential information. You can access the Start screen, search your apps and files, and go to devices (a digital camera, for example) and settings. You can also share to social media or via email.
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Search and share All apps in Windows 8 are designed so they can be searched from the Charm bar, accessed from the right-hand edge of the Start screen. Searching in this way means that you can find information within apps without opening them first, saving you time and effort. The same is true for sharing. All apps are built enabling information to be emailed, tweeted or posted to Facebook from the Charm bar, so letting your friends know about what you’re doing is only a swipe away.
Real-time Live Tiles Apps in Windows 8 have their own icon, called a tile. Unlike other operating systems, these tiles aren’t static pictures and are able to push information such as new emails, news headlines, football scores or even your favourite photos to your Start screen. This means you don’t have to open an app to get the information you need. 16