UKC

Ok, so I've bought myself a new laptop (yay!) but it cmae with wondows 8.1 (boo!)

After first booting up, I'm properly confused. a littel bit of looking around and things are making some sense, but it did just take me 5 minutes to find how to shut it down.

Is anyone aware of a how to get to grips with W8.1 guide anywhere before I get frustrated and install windows 7 instead?

Thanks

In reply to balmybaldwin:
Is this any use?

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=how+to+get+to+grips+with+windows+8&oq=how...

Once someone told me that to do anything in Windows 8 simply hit the Windows button and start typing, it suddenly became very very easy. Agreed that shutting down is a bit odd though.

In reply to ByEek:

I was really after a personal recommendation, but thank you anyway. Hitting the windows button and typing sounds like a good tip, will have a bash at that.

So far it's not as bad as I feared, but I'm confused that I seem to have things running (that I can Alt+Tab to) that don't apear along what used to be the start bar of the desktop.

In reply to balmybaldwin:

If you find you can't get used to 8.1, consider installing Classic Shell - it's free & you can set it up so 8.1 looks & behaves almost like Windows 7

In reply to balmybaldwin: Win 8 has some changes to the ui that my 80 year old father has had no problems adjusting to so ignore all the fud floating round the net and just accept that it will take a little while to get used to a slightly different way of doing some things. Don't bother with the addons that try and make it look like win 7 unless you are completely incapable of dealing with small changes in your life.

The main change that the simple minded can't deal with is instead of having a small hierarchical start menu you now have a full screen start menu. If you can get your head around that simple change then you should be fine.

Firstly check that you have the latest update to 8.1. I suspect that as you had difficulty finding the shut down button that you haven't. You should have a shut down button next to your user name on the start screen. See graphic on this page http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-8/install-latest-update-windows-...

Once again just ignore all the people who claim great difficulty with W8. There is one regular poster here who leaps into every W8 thread claiming it is impossible to print from W8.....?

In reply to balmybaldwin:

Agree with carless. Install classic shell, completely deny the existence of Windows 8 and all your problems are solved. Has worked very well for me.

In reply to balmybaldwin:

Another vote for classic shell, and then disable all the stupid stuff that pops out of the sides of the screen every time you go near the edge of the track pad. Since I did this I have actually found a few things with windows 8 that are improvements over win 7.

In reply to balmybaldwin:
I seriously wonder how Windows 8 made it past the design stage.

Having a great big side bar fill the screen each to you move the cursor into the corner... But it okay, noone would ever have any need to move the mouse to the top right corner of the screen!

Yet another vote for Classic Shell

In reply to balmybaldwin:

Just format it and chuck win7 on it. It'll be quicker than all the messing around you'll have to do to sort out win8 even if you take into account having to reinstall some drivers/install software. Plus you'll get rid of all the shitware that came pre-installed.

In reply to Trevers:



It's designed for a touch screen.

In reply to TimB:

I've got a touch-screen laptop with Windows 8 on it, and it's fine. However, I do keep accidentally finding touch-pad gestures which I cannot for the life of me repeat.

There's some good videos on YouTube which I found helpful when making the transition.

In reply to TimB:


Yes, been using Win8 and 8.1 on a couple of tablets for over a year now and I think it's pretty good. You need to use a little time to get used to it but I think it's worth it. Browsing is a lot more fun when you can swipe between pages! When I want to do real work I connect the tablet to a 24" monitor and external keyboard and mouse. It works as well as Win7 for my needs (although 8.1 broke a couple of web-based work applications hence I now have an 8.0 and an 8.1 tablet). I have not bothered installing any classic start menu, once you get used to the new Microsoft start menu I think it's useable.

In reply to BigBrother:

That's what the Romans said...we showed them. And like the Romans, once they're gone some things will be better and some things will be back to the good old ways. Windows 9 will be like windows 7, but with better toilet facilities and nice straight roads...so if you jump into bed with windows 8 you'll only have to go back once Windows releases the next decent OS.
No one needs a start menu anyway, let alone a full screen one.