We’ve lavished attention on VirtualBox here at MakeUseOf, and for good reason. However, VirtualBox isn’t your only option for creating and using free virtual machines. VMware Player, VMware’s free product, is every bit as good as VirtualBox for many users. You may even prefer it to VirtualBox. VMware Player runs on Windows and Linux.

Let’s be honest, the Windows Task Manager isn’t that great for understanding and managing the processes running on your computer. Even on Windows 8, where it’s much-improved, the task manager can’t come close to the power of Process Explorer. It’s part of the Sysinternals set of tools that Microsoft purchased – and for good reason. They’re among the most powerful system utilities for Windows.

Email was never made for large file attachments. Many email servers won’t even accept emails with attachments over 10 MB in size. To send large files via email, you’ll need to upload your email attachments to a file storage and sharing service. The email recipient will receive a link they can click to download the email attachment, allowing you to send gigabytes of attachments without clogging up inboxes and running into size limits.

Bookmarks seem to accumulate over time, growing into collections of hundreds or thousands over the years. If you only have a handful of bookmarks, this article isn’t for you – this is for the people with large collections of bookmarks. The tips here will help you tidy up your bookmarks, back them up, and make the best use of them.

Change is the only constant. This is becoming even more true as we rely on web apps that can change out from under us. One day you’re using a familiar interface with features you rely on, and the next day you open your browser to realize that the interface you rely on is gone. We’re naturally wired to dislike change – even positive change – but not all change is for the best.

Twitter accounts are juicy targets for scammers and malware distributors. Once someone compromises your Twitter account, they can send out tweets with links to scams and malware, bombarding your followers with their junk. Strengthen your Twitter account’s security and prevent it from being used to attack your followers with these tips.

Windows 8 is shiny and new, bringing an entirely new and different application model and ecosystem. No matter how experienced you are at troubleshooting previous versions of Windows, you won’t be fully prepared to start troubleshooting Windows 8 when you first sit down with it. We’ve gathered some Windows 8 app troubleshooting tips. This is all still new to everyone, so this isn’t the ultimate guide to troubleshooting Windows 8 apps. That will come later.

Whatever you think of Windows 8 (at MakeUseOf, our opinions are mixed), it’s certainly speedy. Windows 8 boots faster than previous versions of Windows, has lower memory usage, and has a desktop that feels nice and snappy. Like all versions of Windows, Windows 8 has a variety of settings you can tweak to speed things up and make it even faster. Some of the tips here also apply to previous versions of Windows, but Windows 8 has some new tricks up its sleeve.

Android Jelly Bean 4.2, initially shipped on the Nexus 7, provides a great new tablet experience that outshines previous versions of Android. It even impressed our resident Apple fan. If you have a Nexus 7, Nexus 10, or another tablet running the latest version of Android, be sure to read these tips to make full use of your tablet.

Encryption is often considered the playground of geeks alone, but it doesn’t have to be. Encryption just means that information is scrambled and you can only access the real information with a special password or key. On an Internet where we don’t want our credit card numbers and other sensitive data exposed to prying eyes, encryption is an important tool.

You’re in your office when the city is attacked. You start running, leaping over a chair and out the window of a skyscraper, landing on the roof of a nearby building. An airship whizzes by, disorienting you, and suddenly a missile falls from the sky and lands in front of you. You try to jump, but it’s too late – you didn’t make it. You’re playing Canabalt HD, an enhanced version of the popular flash game Canabalt.

When Apple released the iPad Mini – jumping on board the 7″ tablet trend pioneered by Amazon and Google – they said Google’s Nexus 7 lacked good tablet apps. While Android may not have the selection of tablet apps available for Apple’s iPads, the Nexus 7 does have many great tablet apps that are optimized for the larger screen. Here are some of them.

Libraries, found in Windows 7 and 8. are more than a list of suggested folders for saving documents, music, pictures, and video. Customizing your libraries isn’t just tweaking for the sake of tweaking – with libraries, you can streamline the way you organize your files and make yourself more productive. If you’ve ignored libraries so far and opted to organize your files the traditional way, be sure to give libraries a try.

If you’ve been around the Internet for a while, you probably remember Lavasoft Ad-Aware as one of the first big anti-spyware and anti-adware applications. Lavasoft Ad-Aware has become a complete antivirus and Internet security product, just as antivirus companies have added protection against spyware and adware to their own Internet security products. This week we’re giving away [...]

If you’ve installed Windows 8 and found yourself wishing that you could go back to Windows 7 or another operating system, there’s a way to do this. If you installed Windows 8 in a dual-boot environment and kept your old operating system around, it’s not too hard – but if you’ve installed Windows 8 over your old operating system, you’ll have to reinstall the old operating system from scratch.