Island Dog's Articles In Personal Computing
April 29, 2021 by Island Dog
Microsoft has commissioned five new custom fonts that could be the new default font going forward.  "Calibri has been the default font for all things Microsoft since 2007, when it stepped in to replace Times New Roman across Microsoft Office. It has served us all well, but we believe it’s time to evolve. To help us set a new direction, we’ve commissioned five original, custom fonts to eventually replace Calibri as the default. We’re excited to share these brand-new fo...
March 26, 2021 by Island Dog
I've been using Microsoft Edge as my main browser for quite a while now, and I've been quite happy with it. I really like the Collections feature and I really haven't had any issues with the browser overall. A new feature that came out earlier in the month I believe is vertical tabs . It's a simple idea but for those of us who have been using "regular" tabs for years, might be not so sure about it. That's where I am with it. Using tabs in a browser is just natural now, and I don't even think...
February 3, 2021 by Island Dog
I recently picked up a new 4K monitor for my PC as I gave my current ultrawide to my wife for her work at home setup. I realized I had purchased that monitor in 2016 for this PC which means it was even older. Looking back at my receipts and my previous blog on my PC build , I was a bit surprised that I built it in 2015. I've updated a few things over the years with the last upgrade being a GTX 1660 Super video card, but otherwise it was mostly the same. It has worked very well over the years,...
November 20, 2020 by Island Dog
Happy Friday! I was sitting here trying to straighten up my work area before the work week ends and thought maybe that should be the part of the topic for this week's question. I have my main desktop PC which I mostly use for gaming and design work. My Dell XPS laptop is really just dedicated for work stuff, and I also have an iPad on my desk for casual web browsing and keeping up with emails.  We have a desktop workstation thread here on the forums, and we've seen some really cool ...
November 4, 2020 by Island Dog
I came across this post today and it's a good reference for aspect ratios and screen resolutions. https://www.displayninja.com/what-is-aspect-ratio/
November 2, 2020 by Island Dog
In 2015 I wrote a blog post here showing my PC build that I was working on. I've had that PC ever since and it's been one of the best PC build I've ever done. It would run many of the latest games at ultra settings, and has been a great PC to edit videos and just do general work with.  I've added a couple small upgrades such as doubling the RAM to 16GB, adding another SSD drive for games, and replacing smaller hard drives for bigger storage.  Lately though, games are runnin...
September 15, 2020 by Island Dog
We have a large wallpaper gallery here and since we've been focusing on getting more content added, I was wondering how you use some of these. Specifically, do you take a desktop wallpaper and use it as the wallpaper on your mobile device such as a phone or tablet? On most of my mobile devices I typically just use a photo from my photo album, but I have used downloaded wallpapers before.
July 29, 2020 by Island Dog
Happy Birthday Windows 10! Today is 5 years since Windows 10 was originally released on July 29th, 2015. I've been a user since before that being in various beta programs, and overall I have been happy with it over these past few years. It's also exciting for me to be part of a great company that makes awesome products to make Windows 10 even better! Windows 10 has certainly changed a lot over the past 5 years with lots of updates, and our friends over at Neowin have put together a great arti...
July 23, 2020 by Island Dog
I have a new CNC machine going in my shop, and I needed a Windows PC to run the code going to the machine. My current laptop I use for work is a Dell XPS 15" 4K touchscreen which is something I'm not going to keep in a place that is often filled with sawdust. So I needed something as cheap as possible but still capable of running quite a few applications. After searching on Amazon and eBay I narrowed it down to a $90 Windows tablet and an Acer 15" laptop for $190 . I ended up purchasing the lap...
July 7, 2020 by Island Dog
I admit I should be using more keyboard shortcuts aside from just the most basic ones such as copy and paste. I was browsing Windows Central and they have an article which lists all the essential Windows 10 shortcuts. They even have them broken down to help you narrow down any you might be looking for. I'm going to go through it and find some of the most useful that I might use. Here's their list:  https://www.windowscentral.com/best-windows-10-keyboard-shortcuts
June 10, 2020 by Island Dog
Files UWP is a new app that's currently in beta in the Microsoft Store. It's a nice modern app you can use as an alternative to Windows Explorer.  Thanks to Yarlen for the tip! You can download it here .
June 4, 2020 by Island Dog
I have a 15" Dell XPS 4K touchscreen laptop that I primarily use for work purposes. Any productivity software I need is bought and used mostly for this machine. Over the years, I've tried out more types of apps than I could probably ever remember or count. Most of them I never stuck with because they ended up not being not very useful for what I needed. Now, of course everyone's view on what is productive for them will vary from person to person, but I wanted to talk about the software I have...
October 30, 2018 by Island Dog
Recently, I shared an  intro to customizing your Windows desktop . This time, I wanted to do the same type of article, but put the focus on desktop productivity apps. Organize your desktop icons with Fences Fences is one of our most popular apps for a productive desktop. Fences allows you to create fenced off areas on your desktop that you can place your icons in to organize them how you like. Fence can be customized with colors and transparency, and can also be rolled-up to save sp...
October 16, 2018 by Island Dog
My wife and I currently do cruise travel vlogs on YouTube. Recording all our adventures is fun while we’re on a ship, but the real work begins when it’s time to sort through and edit all that footage we have captured over the week. For many years I have done photo editing, which is also quite time consuming, but that’s nothing compared to what it takes to get a whole video edited and ready for uploading. That means I need to use every tool at my disposal to make the process a...
June 5, 2018 by Island Dog
In my previous article , I described how I was setting up my new work PC with a variety of productivity apps. I’ve gotten most of the software I use on there, so it was time to start adding some customization apps to personalize various aspect of Windows 10. Sometimes I might want to completely change the look of Windows, and other times I might just want some minimal customization. Either way, the options I talk about below are perfect for customizing my PC however I would like to. ...