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Build 10056 of Windows 10 Technical Preview -- which leaked online in the last few days -- has a hidden dark theme. If you have grabbed a copy of this particular build, you'll have noticed that there are a few tweaks here and there such as a resizable Start menu and a redesigned system clock.

But if you're happy to tinker with the registry, you can unlock a whole new look for the operating system, taking Windows 10 to the dark side. It brings to the desktop version of Windows 10 a theme option reminiscent of Windows Phone. Pull on your registry editing pants... we're going in.

While Apple haters would love to see the company’s latest product fail, it looks as if the tech giant currently has another sizable hit on its hands with Apple Watch. High preorders have already triggered the predictable backlog -- supply was always going to fall short of demand, Apple knows how to play this game -- with shipping times now at least a month for all models.

Slice Intelligence tapped its panel of over 2 million online shoppers to size up the early demand for Apple Watch, and also for the new MacBook, and the sales estimates make for interesting reading.

NetToolset is a free-for-personal-use network toolkit for Windows XP+ which supports eight common functions: Ping, Traceroute+, DNS Lookup, Reverse DNS, Blacklist Lookup, IP Whois, Domain Whois and Port Scan.

The program is more about simplicity than power. Typically you’ll click a tab, enter a domain or IP address and click a button. The Ping function has the most configuration options, including Rounds, Reply Timeout, Time between rounds, Bytes and Reverse DNS.

Each time someone reports that antivirus is dead, a hacker gets his wings (and I get furious). With our industries becoming increasingly data-driven, the need to protect our networks, devices, and archives has become more important than ever.

In a world of weaponized emails and polymorphic, self-replicating malware, entertaining the idea that endpoint antivirus protection is dead is both ignorant and dangerous.

Logipole has announced that its Windows 7+ media file manager Konvertor FM is now freeware.

There are so many media managers around that you might be wondering why you should care, but this one is a little different. It doesn’t just view JPGs, PNGs and GIFs: there’s support for 2,034 image file types, 795 audio, 230 video, 102 3D, as well as Office documents and other more general types, even if they’re stored in any of 165 archive formats.

Much of the focus of talk about the Internet of Things surrounds what the IoT can do for home users. A clever cooker is great, but move up the scale a little, however, and things start to get really interesting. Now teaming up with Miele, Microsoft today announces that it is also partnering with Fujitsu.

The two companies will work together to create IoT based devices to improve the manufacturing of other products. By harnessing the power of IoT and the M2M (machine to machine) platforms, Microsoft and Fujitsu aim to improve production efficiency and help drive down costs.

2014 was an interesting year for PC vendors. It was the year when Microsoft’s Windows XP -- a 14-year old operating system with more than one-third of market share then -- went out of support. The Redmond-based company announced that it won’t be providing any further security patches to the veteran desktop operating system, leaving hundreds of millions of computers vulnerable. PC vendors saw an uprise in their computer shipment figures, as a large chunk of users, as well as companies, upgraded their computers to Windows 7 or higher.

But things have started to wither once again for PC OEMs. These companies are having a hard time selling their new computers to people. While the individual figures from Lenovo and HP still point upwards, Dell and Acer seem to be having a bad time, so bad that they are dragging the entire community a little backward. Up to five to seven percent decline has been observed in the shipment figure in last one year.

When people talk about the Internet of Things, there are often semi-joking references to fridges that know when you've run out of milk and ovens that know how to cook whatever you put in them. Forget the jokes; this is now a reality. We've already seen a generation of smart appliances, and Microsoft wants to be part of what happens next.

At Hannover Messe today, Miele -- of oven, vacuum cleaner and washing machine fame -- announces it is working on a new breed of appliances based on Microsoft Azure Internet of Things (IoT) services. What does this mean? Ultimately it means you'll be able to find a recipe online, have the ingredient list and preparation instructions sent to your mobile device, and your smart oven will be automatically configured with the correct settings.

There is no such thing as the perfect Linux distribution. Try all you want, but your search will leave you fatigued and confused; perfection is impossible. With that said, you can definitely achieve happiness once you commit to a distro despite potential shortcomings. Ultimately, you must weigh the pros and cons and pick something that meets your needs.

For many people, Ubuntu is a smart choice, as it has many packages and a huge community for support. When I say Ubuntu, I also mean distros based on it, such as Mint and the distro du jour, elementary OS. If you are a fan of simplicity, elementary may be a great choice. The latest stable release, "Freya", is available for download now. It features a UI that I would call a Frankenstein-like marriage between GNOME and OS X's dock; it may appeal to Linux-newcomers and experts alike. Will you try it?

Over the last couple of months, we’ve seen a number of new Web browsers arrive on the desktop platform. We’ve seen Vivaldi -- a browser developed by ex-Opera folks, Maxthon -- a browser that challenges Chrome on speed and resource usage, and Microsoft’s Project Spartan which comes with a plethora of features. But there is one more browser that has many of us excited. It’s called Project Maelstrom -- and according to its developers -- it’s the world’s first torrent-based browser out there. This week Maelstrom hit the public beta, meaning anyone can now take it out for a test drive before the final version of it comes out in a couple of weeks. And so we did.

Project Maelstrom is different. You see it fetches content from peer-to-peer distributed torrents while other browsers ping traditional servers and request them for files. But how different is it? Will we have websites in the future available as torrent files? So here it goes.

Anyone setting up an Xbox One will be presented with the option of enabling the console's energy savings. At the moment, it is the Instant-on feature that is enabled by default, and few people delve into settings to change this later on.

By being upfront with the feature during the initial setup phases, Microsoft gives gamers the opportunity to reduce power consumption and lower electricity bills. As well as easing the impact console ownership has on wallets, it also helps to minimize its environment impact.

Season 5 of Game of Thrones begins tonight, and millions of fans will tune in in one way or another… but there’s a problem, and it’s a huge one.

Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world, and HBO has tried to counter that in the past year by making its programming accessible through additional means, which is a smart move. The only way to beat pirates is to offer an easier, and superior viewing experience. But how can HBO compete with leakers who are putting out episodes well in advance?

If you don't have a Kindle to read your books on then there's no worries, as apps exist on other platforms like Android. Amazon isn't standing still on this either, now offering customers on Google's mobile platform some new features already available on the stand-alone device.

Included are two new features that Amazon claims customers have found the most useful. First up is Word Wise, which Amazon claims is excellent for young kids and also for those learning English. Tapping a word pops up a box that provides a definition, along with synonyms and more.

If you've a Flash applet you'd like to share then there are a few options available. You might host it online, package it for offline use with an HTML file, maybe just email it to someone anyway and hope they've a player installed.

Alternatively, you could just use Flash Builder to convert it into a stand-alone Windows executable, ready to run on just about anyone's desktop.

As promised two weeks ago, Microsoft is today releasing the Windows 10 for phones preview build across a larger set of Lumia phones. In a blog post, the company announces that it is seeding out the Build 10051 of the Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones to the Fast ring today. In addition to bringing support for more smartphones, the new build also brings along a number of new features, including Project Spartan, new Outlook Mail and Calendar apps, and more.

First up, let’s talk about the new features. Project Spartan -- the new browser from the Redmond-based company which recently made its way to the Windows 10 technical preview for desktops -- is now making its debut on Windows Phone handsets. “It uses our new rendering engine to give greater interoperability with the modern mobile web, and includes early versions of Reading View and Reading List”, says Gabe Aul, Windows Insider Guru, Microsoft. Project Spartan will not replace Internet Explorer 11 on your phone as the default browser but will exist side-by-side with it.