Knowing the weather is essential to planning anything from an upcoming weekend away to which route to drive to work. While many users watch the news for their weather information and others might check the Internet, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 provide a great alternative with their bundled Weather app. Once configured, this app provides extended forecasts, hourly forecasts, weather maps and even historical

Chatting has become a very large part daily computer usage for many people. Whether messaging on Facebook or with a chat client, you've likely spent a significant amount of time messaging with friends back and forth. Using separate clients to chat with contacts can get annoying, so Windows 8 has taken a step to try and make it easier. The Messaging app allows you

While we've already covered the basics of configuring and using the Windows 8 Mail app in quite a few guides, there's more to it. Once you've got your accounts set up and you're receiving emails you may want to dig into the intricacies of this useful app. At first glance you may think there isn't much more to the Mail app than folders and

Most of our web savvy readers likely have more than one contact list. One for each email account, one for each social networking account and maybe even more. While that may seem like an accomplishment in this digital age, isn't it really annoying? If you have ever tried to email a person only to find that their address is stored in a contact list

After you've added your email and social networking accounts to the People app, you may find that your list of contacts is getting a bit unruly. Even sorted by name and including pictures may not be enough to help you find the person you need quickly. Luckily, the Windows 8 People app has a number of built-in ways to help filter, sort and search

Essentially, the Windows 8 People app is an all-inclusive contact list. You add your various accounts and the app stores contact information for everyone you know, regardless of whether they're an email contact or a Facebook friend. While that is useful enough on its own, the People app doesn't end there. It's also a window into your social networking life allowing you to view

When working with the Windows 8 People app, your contacts will typically be entered in bulk lists by adding your social networking accounts and email accounts. Their information will all be added automatically, you'll only have to type your usernames and passwords. However, times will arise when you'll need to manually add, alter or combine entries to keep things organized. Perhaps you have a

The Windows 8 People app is a tool for aggregating all of your contacts from all around the Internet. You can pull contact information from email accounts, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social networking accounts as well. Having to add each contact individually would most likely be a monumental task, but People takes care of that for you. All you have to do is

Life can be hectic. As your individual worlds of work, play and family come together you can be left with a jumbled schedule of overlapping appointments, parties and events that can be impossible to keep track of without help. Windows 8 offers you the help you'll need with the bundled app named Calendar. This new app gives you the ability to keep track of

For those of you who've had a chance to try out the new Mail app in Windows 8, you'll know that it's a convenient tool for aggregating all of your emails into a single location, that is, unless you have a POP3 email account. While most email providers have updated to the IMAP protocol, some major ISP's, including Comcast and Verizon, still use POP3.

When you add an email account into Mail, the app automatically configures the name of the account to match the account provider. That means you're likely to see accounts named Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo or others such as that. While that makes perfect sense and will work quite well for most people, this system falls apart in a few key situations. What happens for an

Once you get your hands on a copy of Windows 8, you'll notice it comes packaged with a few useful apps to get you started. These apps aren't the standard Desktop applications you're used to, they're Windows 8 apps, and they're nothing like anything Windows has offered before. The first of these apps that we'll take a look at is Mail. After a short

Have you ever had an appointment that you remembered about 15 minutes after it was past? Have you ever had an important email message that sat in your inbox far longer than it should have? If you've known these annoyances in the past, you don't have to repeat the experience. Windows 8 has a very handy system of notifications from important apps such as