An Arm and a Windows

So I'm going to get out in front of the March Madness curve by a bit and do my own homage to college basketball by starting a new tradition here at An Arm and a Windows. In college basketball, both the AP and USA Today poll broadcaster, sportswriters, and coaches to determine who everyone believes the best 25 teams in the country are.

In that same vein, I'm going to be publishing a list of the Top 25 Free apps, as decided by the Windows Store itself, here at An Arm and a Windows on a (hopefully) weekly basis. Personally I'm interested to see which apps hold their places, and which apps rise and fall from week to week. Also, since there are a few absolute strongholds (Xbox Smartglass, I'm looking at you) that I doubt will ever lose their top spots, I'm also going to post apps 26 through 50.

Before I post the list, though, one quick note: is it just me, or is the Windows App Store getting significantly better? I've been noticing that a lot of the old top free games are getting bumped by new, better games, and there seem to be a few solid new productivity and news apps coming out every few weeks. Still a far cry from the Android Play Store and Apple's App Store, but the change is noticeable, at least to me.

Okay, without further ado:

In one of ZDNet's recent moderated blogger debates (think Obama vs. Romney, but via online post), given the choice between declaring Windows RT either "The Future" or "Worthless", both the moderator of the debate as well as 65% of the voting audience gave Windows RT their nod of approval.

Now the moderator's words were far from glowing. By "the Future", he means that Windows RT is more likely to survive in some form or another than not. But this is a much needed bit of positive press for an operating system that's been getting absolutely roasted by tech journalists everywhere.

In my mind there are two reasons why current and prospective owners of Windows RT devices (such as the Microsoft Surface) shouldn't be worried about their machines going the way of the HP Touchpad.

I've noticed a number of reviews of Windows RT stating something along the lines of "the RT desktop is not touch friendly".

While I can't disagree completely, I do wonder if said reviewers were aware of the fact that you can adjust the size of menu items and whatnot on the desktop via the RT Control Panel. I did so and now rarely have any issues using touch when working on Microsoft Word or the desktop version of Internet Explorer (I prefer it over the Start Screen version since it allows me more options when organizing my favorites/bookmarks.

In any case, if you'd like your desktop to be a little bit more touch friendly on Windows RT or Windows 8, just follow the directions below:

Theoretically I could do video editing and whatnot through TeamViewer as well, but I imagine that it would be unbearably slow. I'll try it though one of these days just to see.