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.

Are you interested in Windows 8, but don’t want to abandon Windows 7 just yet? Well, why not dual-boot Windows 8 and Windows 7, selecting the operating system you want to use each time you turn on your computer? This allows you to test Windows 8 while keeping Windows 7 around as an escape hatch if you want out. This process will install Windows 8 on its own separate partition, leaving your Windows 7 system intact.

Let’s face it, the mouse cursors included with Windows are getting a bit old. While it’s seen a few tweaks over the years, that white mouse cursor has remained largely the same for over a decade. You don’t have to wait for Microsoft to give Windows a new mouse cursor set – you can easily download and use beautiful user-created mouse cursor sets for Windows.

Most of us are very familiar with the Recycle Bin. We use it regularly, and it seems like a feature we can’t do much to customize – deleted files go there, and we can permanently delete them later. But there’s a lot more you can do to customize and tweak your Recycle Bin, from placing it in your system tray and automatically clearing old files to changing its icon and name. The tips here apply to Windows 7 and should work similarly on Windows 8 and Vista, too.

Cleaning a touchscreen is simple. You don’t need a special cleaning kit or cleaning solution to safely clean your tablet or smartphone’s touchscreen – you can do it with materials you probably have on hand. However, you do need to know what to avoid – many common types of cloths and cleaning solutions can damage a touchscreen. Once you understand what to do and what not to do, you can safely clean a smartphone or tablet’s touchscreen in just a few seconds.

If you’ve installed Chrome plugins, you’ve probably seen a warning that they can access your data on all websites, your tabs and browsing activity, or even all the data on your computer. This warning can be scary, especially if you’re installing a simple browser extension that looks harmless. Unfortunately, the way web browsers and web pages work means that extensions must ask for quite a few permissions to do simple things.

It’s no secret that Windows 8′s new interface is a “touch-first experience” – Microsoft said it themselves. If you’re curious about upgrading to Windows 8, you can try Windows 8 on your PC – but unless you’re using a PC with a touch screen, it just isn’t the same. Assuming you have an iPad or Android tablet lying around, you can test Windows 8 with a touchscreen before you purchase a new Windows 8 PC or tablet.

While desktop Linux may be a tempting platform, there’s one thing stopping a lot of people from making the plunge: PC gaming. Like it or not, Windows is the de facto platform for PC gaming. You can’t count on Linux supporting your favorite games, but you may be surprised: some Windows games work on Linux using the Wine compatability layer.

Updating your Ubuntu operating system and its installed applications is a fairly simple process, but it works very differently from Windows. All the software you install from the Ubuntu Software Center comes from Ubuntu’s software repositories, so you can get updates in one place – think of it like an app store for your computer. When a new version of Ubuntu is released, you’ll be able to upgrade right from within Ubuntu.

How fast is your Internet connection, really? Your Internet service provider quotes you speeds, but how do you know if you’re actually getting the speed you’re paying for? You can find out using one of these free tools. And, if you’re not, there are some things you can do to increase your Internet connection speed.

Your computer’s mouse may seem like an essential peripheral, but it’s not – it’s just nice to have. If you don’t have a working mouse around – or if you just feel like learning some new keyboard tricks – you can use your Windows computer entirely from the keyboard. These keyboard tricks can help make you more productive even if you have a mouse.

The days when working with digital cameras and other common consumer hardware on Linux was a chore that involved fiddling with terminal commands are over. Using a digital camera with modern Linux distributions like Ubuntu is an extremely simple process. In fact, the built-in software on Ubuntu and other Linux distributions is better than Windows for this, as it allows you to easily do basic photo-editing and upload your photos to web services.

There’s more to Alt+Tab than just pressing Alt+Tab to switch between windows. There are a variety of hidden keyboard shortcuts that make the Alt+Tab switcher quicker and easier to use. There are also ways to customize the Alt+Tab switcher, reverting to the old-style, classic Alt+Tab switcher or disabling the window previews that appear while Alt+Tabbing. You can even go beyond the Alt+Tab switcher that comes with Windows.

Leaving your computer on to download files can be a smart move, but what happens when the download completes? Your computer will stay powered on, doing nothing but wasting electricity and costing you some money. If you want to leave your computer on to download files, you can have it automatically shut down after the download process completes.

App stores are everywhere these days. Whether you’re using iOS or Android, you can get all your apps from a single location and have them automatically update in a consistent way. If you’re using Mac OS X, you can use the Mac App Store to get your software. Linux users use package managers with large software repositories to easily install all the software they need. There’s just one platform that seems untouched by time: the Windows desktop.