Best Windows 8 apps

TUNEIN

If you’ve ever wanted all the nation’s favourite radio stations at your fingertips, then the free TuneIn app will be music to your ears. Everything from the major networks right down to the obscure local shows are now just a click away, so you can listen to BBC York in Exeter, or Jersey’s Island FM in Dundee if you so wish. Stations can be sorted by music, sports, news, talk, location, language and podcasts, and once you’ve selected one of these options, you can further refine your choice by genre as well.

It’s not completely perfect – it could do with a search bar to help pinpoint exact stations and podcasts without having to trawl through its various filters, and streams of smaller, more local stations sometimes take a while to load up – but radio buffs will absolutely love it.

TuneIn offers more radio stations than you can shake a stick at.

FRESH PAINT

There are quite a few free art apps to choose from on Windows 8, but Fresh Paint was definitely our favourite. While Colors! and InspirARTion simply give you a blank canvas to play around with, Fresh Paint offers picture-book style outlines for you to colour in as well. Every brush stroke is rendered with realistic textures, and you can mix colours in your virtual paintbox as well, either on the canvas itself or on your miniature easel in the menu. It’s the best mess-free way to play with paint we’ve ever come across, and you can even pretend you’re finger-painting if you have a touchscreen monitor.

Unfortunately, Fresh Paint only comes with six free outlines, but there are additional packs with up to 50 outlines available for less than £1.50. If you don’t fancy spending any money though, there’s always a blank canvas waiting for your latest creation.

The free Fun Pack also comes with outlines for robots, flying origami figures, turtles and monkeys.

NATIONAL RAIL ENQUIRIES

If you’re overwhelmed by the seemingly unnecessary and sadistic structure of Britain’s rail services,then the National Rail Enquiries app is handy tool to cut through the confusion. You can set it up to show departures from your favourite stations at a glance, view routes, check station facilities and even go online to buy tickets. It needs better support for planning connections to be perfect, but features such as live news about delays make it one of the most helpful apps around for anyone who suffers the daily grind of commuting.

See depatures and delays from your favourite stations at a glance