I helped a non-technical friend set up her new Windows 8 laptop. I encountered a bunch of expected problems as Windows 8 “changes everything.” I wound up showing her some keyboard shortcuts as they were easier than fighting with Windows 8:
- Alt + tab: to switch amongst applications
- Windows M: to show desktop
- Windows C: to get sidebar (this one she actually showed me as the first step in the restarting sequence)
I also did some setup to make Windows 8 less – um – prevalent. The biggest one was to boot to the desktop instead of the start mess and put the few commonly used programs on the desktop. I used windows-r a lot to type “cmd” and get to the command line.
I was expecting Windows 8 to be annoying though so this didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was the touchpad. I’m not sure if this is Microsoft’s fault or Toshiba’s. The laptop trackpad was disabled by default. I turned it on in the Windows settings. Then I learned that if you hit F5, it disables it. (Which I did by accident when trying to do alt + f4). It seems like it shouldn’t be so easy to disable the trackpad. A confirmation would be nice.