Ultimate Settings Panel 5.1
Www.snipca.com/22079
What you need: Windows 7, 8/8.1 or 10
The Control Panel used to be your PC’S nerve centre, with all settings in one menu. Now, Windows 10 scatters them all over the place - Control Panel, Settings app, System Configuration and more. Ultimate Settings Panel (USP) restores order with its Windows 10 panel, a new feature in version 5.1 that lets you access all your PC’S controls from one neat window.
You don’t actually control your PC using USP. Instead, it helps you navigate the settings you’ve already got. Click a tab (Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10) to open a panel, and then click the buttons to go straight to those settings in Windows. Buttons are in alphabetical order - for example on the Windows 10 panel they range from About Windows to Wordpad - and they’re laid out neatly so you can see all your settings at a glance.
USP also has settings panels for certain tools, such as Outlook and Chrome, plus a Windows Advanced panel where you’ll find deeper settings, such as Disk Part for creating partitions. It’s a shame there’s no search tool, but your PC’S Start menu arguably does that job already.
The program is small (23.13MB) and fast. It’s also quick to install, but we recommend downloading the installer from open-source directory Sourceforge (link above) instead of the developer’s website ( www.ultimatesettingspanel.co.uk). The developer’s site insists that you tweet about USP on Twitter or ‘like’ it on Facebook before getting a download link, and Sourceforge does not. On Sourceforge, click the green Download button, save the ZIP, extract its contents and then open the appropriate folder for your OS (x64 for 64bit and, confusingly, x86 for 32bit. Click ‘setup.exe’ to run the setup wizard, which doesn’t contain any junk. The program is now completely free, and replaces the old Ultimate Settings Panel Pro, which cost $9.99 (£8.05).