Puget Systems offers to give their Windows 8 systems a Windows 7-like look and feel

By Mike Epstein Published March 26, 2014

Custom PC builder Puget Systems is apparently well aware of the fact that many people have yet to warm up to Windows 8. With that in mind, Puget offers its customers the option to tweak Windows 8 and make it function and feel like its more popular cousin, Windows 7.

Puget systems offers something called Windows 8 Makeover: Emulate Windows 7 to re-skin Windows 8. With Windows 8 Makeover: Emulate Windows 7, Windows 8 boots directly to the desktop mode, a start button is added, and the OS uses desktop apps by default when possible. At its core, this tool consists of an existing app called Classic Shell.

Recommended Videos

Perhaps best of all, the service is free for anyone who buys a PC with Windows 8 installed, should they choose to check off the box asking Puget to load their rig with Windows 8 Makeover. It’s worth noting that, with a little bit of technical know how, users can definitely tap into most of these tricks on their own rigs. On top of that, you can also configure your Puget Systems PC with Windows 7, should you prefer the real thing.

Of course, there’s more than one way to tweak Windows 8. Feel free to check out our guide on how to make Windows 8 look and feel more like Windows 7.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments below.

Former Associate Editor, Gaming

Michael is a New York-based tech and culture reporter, and a graduate of Northwestwern University’s Medill School of…

Topics

Computing

This app turns the iPhone Duo into a pocket-sized Mac

Headroom uses macOS's built-in Screen Sharing to let users control their Mac from the foldable iPhone, without installing additional software on the computer.

Headroom App on Apple iPhone Duo controlling a Mac

The iPhone Duo has barely been out for a day, and someone's already found a way to run their Mac on it. Well, sort of. Headroom, a remote desktop app from MusicFlow, lets users control their Mac from Apple's new foldable phone, with an interface that adapts as the device opens, closes, and folds in half. Think of it as turning a pocket-sized phone into a miniature MacBook, minus the actual MacBook.

Headroom turns the iPhone Duo into a mini Mac

Computing

AI helped uncover a hidden PHP flaw. Now websites worldwide are facing millions of hacking attempts.

A critical PHP vulnerability has websites worldwide racing to install security patches.

php-flaw-websites-under-attack

PHP is the programming language behind roughly 70% of websites, and it just ran into a serious problem. Security researchers used AI to uncover a critical flaw called PHP2Shell, which could let attackers take over web servers, steal data, or disrupt online services. Since the discovery, websites worldwide have been hit with millions of attempts to exploit it.

Hackers moved fast once the flaw went public. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said the attack attempts jumped from tens of thousands within 45 minutes to millions overnight, The Guardian reports.

Computing

Microsoft has begun rolling out Copilot Code for building apps with natural language

The workplace-focused vibe coding tool can pull context from emails, documents, meetings, and chats.

Microsoft introduced Code last month as one of the three core parts of its revamped Copilot app. The app was pitched as an easy-to-use coding agent that lets users describe what they want to build in natural language, like an app, a tracker, a dashboard, an automation, or a workflow, and Copilot would build it for them.

Essentially, it's a workplace-focused vibe-coding app that turns existing work into a functional app, and Microsoft has begun rolling it out through the Frontier program.