CleanInstall
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Windows 10 preview makes it easier to do a fresh install
Windows 10 Insiders are greedy but brave souls who want the latest software toys and are willing to take some risks to get them. The latest preview build (14367) gives them a "get out of jail free" card, however, with a new tool called "Refresh Windows." According to Microsoft, the tool will "install a clean copy of the most recent version of Windows, and remove apps that came pre-installed or that you installed on your PC." The caveats are that it's only available to Windows 10 Insider Preview users (of course) and that it will replace the latest version with an older, but more stable Insider Preview build.
Ask TUAW's triumphant return from abroad
This, my friends, is the triumphant return of Ask TUAW -- everyone's favorite Mac and iOS Q&A and advice column. Unfortunately, a giant beaver ate all of the questions from prior editions of Ask TUAW, and we need more new questions! So, here's what we need you to do: go to the comments of this post, think long and hard about which burning questions have been bothering you about your Mac, iPod, iPad, iPhone or AppleTV, and ask away! You can also email your questions directly to ask [at] tuaw.com. Here are a few perennial favorites asked and answered: Q: Which MacBook Air should I buy? A: Get the 11" if you have another computer, or the 13" if it's your primary machine. Order the BTO memory upgrade, too; you can't upgrade the RAM after the fact. Q: What's the best way to sync my iPhone to multiple computers? A: The only way to win is not to play -- syncing to more than one computer is asking for trouble, honestly. Pick your most accessible machine with the best storage situation for your media and applications library, and sync to that one. If you need to shuffle content around or purchase apps on multiple machines, go with Apple's Home Sharing to keep things synchronized. So, head down to the comments at the end of this post, and do your best. When asking a question, it makes life a lot easier for the Ask TUAW team if you include what type of machine you're using, which version of Mac OS X you're running or, if you're asking an iPhone/iPod/iPad question, let us know which generation device and which version of iOS you have -- though, in general, you should always upgrade to the latest version if you can. We've got a few questions left in the can from last time, so let's get cracking. Dave asks: I am seeing terrible performance from Finder when trying to access a Windows share over a VPN. If I do an 'ls' or 'cd' command to get to the same files, everything is instantaneous. Is there some setting in Finder that will make it act more like the 'ls' done via Terminal? I have looked at a lot of Finder replacements and they all appear to have the same problem. Given this works great on Terminal, I'm a bit stumped at what Finder can be doing that would slow things down so dramatically.
