Windows 8 seems really confusing

[kohl]

Where did the start menu go?

[dreki]

Here: http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/

I believe there's other free ways too, but idk.

[Carl Foxmarten]

According to what I've been hearing so far.
(read: I don't have any first-hand experience with this)

It depends on what kind of application you're currently using... =>.<=

If you're using a "classic" Windows program, the Start menu ought to be there like normal.
If you're using a program written with whatever they're currently calling the new system (used to be called Metro, but they changed it), it comes up as something else.

[Pea]

I like the part where windows 8 doesn't have windows anymore.

[Tonk]

I upgraded my workstation/gaming machine to 8 last week and I still can't decide if I made the right choice. I do tons of multitasking and work on lots of different projects at the same time while maybe watching something too. Before if I needed to launch an app I could just hit my windows key type in the exact program or file I wanted to open and it would happen without feeling like I'm leaving what I'm doing. Now if I want to open something I have to hit the windows key and bring up metro blocking my view of everything I'm doing. Then click settings or documents on the right of my screen if it's not a program only to have it bring me back to my desktop. In addition I have found navigating/multitasking inside of metro to be really counter intuitive and frustrating with my desktop. There are tons of little improvements that I really like however like the new task manager.

I really think they would have been far better off having a version for touch systems and a version for conventional desktops/workstations that is much more 7 like. Though when I get around to getting an x86 transformer tablet I'm sure 8 will be amazing on it.

[Tef]

One look at the overhauled design of Windows means that I have to restart my learning curve for the OS from square one, at least for the GUI. -w-||

[Alloud]

Tonk: WinKey+W will allow you to search directly in settings, and WinKey+F will search in files.
Totally recommend grabbing "Windows 8 Cheat Keys" from the Store (it's free) to learn all the hotkeys.

Once I learned the hotkeys, and how to multitask with a combination of desktop apps and Metro apps everything feels great. :V

[Tonk]

Tonk: WinKey+W will allow you to search directly in settings, and WinKey+F will search in files.
Totally recommend grabbing "Windows 8 Cheat Keys" from the Store (it's free) to learn all the hotkeys.

Once I learned the hotkeys, and how to multitask with a combination of desktop apps and Metro apps everything feels great. :V

Thanks for the tip that will help a lot.

I also just installed a program called start8 which can give you a win7 style menu or a smaller version of the metro menu. Without taking you away from the desktop and I'm liking it 1000x more now.

[Alloud]

Ah, cool. I'm staying away from Start8. The start menu has been useless to me since Windows 7 thanks to the search feature, and the start screen taking up the whole screen doesn't bother me since I can't think of a situation where I'd want to open a program while another demands my attention. Even in such cases I'd just pin the shortcut to the taskbar. d:

[kohl]

Anyway to keep icons in the Start Panel small?

Right now I gotta scroll through huge tiles of stuff I don't even use. And a pain to move tiles since since they don't all fit on the same screen.
I also can't seem to find away to disconnect my MSN account from my login profile, so it ends up keeping me logged into two accounts when using MSN Messenger.
It seems almost needed to learn all the WinKey shortcuts to not have to spend 5 minutes looking around in all the menus. Slowly I'm getting used to it though.
You're right about the inhibiting multitasking. It's annoying when even search bar ends up taking the entire screen.
Know how to bring up the menu to disable window's services?

[Alloud]

You can always unpin things you don't use from the start screen by right clicking and selecting "Unpin from Start" on the bottom bar that comes up. There's only 2 sizes of tiles: 1x1 and 2x1, you can change the size of most tiles by right clicking and selecting smaller/larger.

Your login profile is meant to integrate all of your Microsoft services and automatically sign you in. AFAIK there's no way to remove your default Windows login account from apps that use it. They're phasing out MSN Messenger by next year anyways and moving everything to Skype.

Not sure what you mean by services. Do you mean the list of services in msconfig? You can get to that via a search from the start screen for msconfig. :V

[kohl]

Grr profile thing. I'll probably just create a new user profile if I can't find a way to remove it. It's probably slowing my computer, updating all the time and I end up getting popup messages saying someone's trying to chat with me.

I got that tile thing down. Still seems like alot of work to have to reorganize everything.

I found the services in the control panel. It's called something else now and has a lot less user configurations.

[Alloud]

The performance hit of the background apps will be negligible, if they bug you though you can always just uninstall any offending app (like the messenger) by right clicking on it. d:
If you still want to keep the app though and just stop the pop-ups, hit Winkey+I then click "Change PC Settings" on the very bottom of the sidebar that comes up and find notifications settings.

[kohl]

Thanks Alloud ^.^ The uninstall fixed the MSN Messenger.

[Selkit]

After having gotten hands-on with the complete hash that is Windows 8 (And seen what they're doing to developers!), I personally refuse to use it. And refuse to release Fleetmind to it; I will not jump through Microsoft's hoops just so I can have a game operating on their confusing tablet-mess hybrid OS. Windows 7 via Unity 4 it is. The one saving grace about Win8, is that it's actually a fairly nice OS if you have no physical keyboard and mouse. And only then.