My !"§***!! new Laptop

[perplexed]

What macdonalds ?

He's already having problems with supersized text...

 

[Doseone]

My laptop, made by Messrs Compaq and at which I am sitting now , is driving me round the bend. If my left hand touches the rectangle bit which serves in lieu of a mouse at the same time as my right hand, the print size mushrooms like an atomic bomb detonation or goes down to sub microscopic.

I just moved my right hand in a way which remains mysterious and was propelled from CC to Google!

I'm scared that if I type while drunk, I'll inadvertantly cause all the nuclear rockets in N Korea to detonate in their silos.

What on earth are these computer loons thinking about when they designe these things? (Cue some smartarse telling me to buy an Apple. Great idea but for that kind of money I could get some new planes and saws.)

You've been caught on CCTV....

 

[the_mikey]

What on earth are these computer loons thinking about when they designe these things? (Cue some smartarse telling me to buy an Apple. Great idea but for that kind of money I could get some new planes and saws.)

It frustrates me too, the new multi touch gestures made me emit a pained roar. Annoyingly, even after disabling all of these features Google Chrome is in a world of it's own, any multi touching on the touch pad causes the text size to either explode or shrink.

 

[JoeyB]

I'll keep Windows 7 thanks. (Well, it's running as a vm on a Mac Book Pro)

 

[irw]

I've just purchased a laptop with Windows 8 and it is superannoying! Is there any way I can get rid of all those silly squarey things permanently and get myself a proper desktop?

I installed Classic Shell on my wife's new tablet laptop pretty much as soon as she bought it, as Windows 8 was infuriating us both (me trying to set it up, her as she's used to XP). Makes it so much more user friendly, as we get an 'old' start menu

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Upgrade to 8.1 for a start. Then you can tell it to boot to the old "Desktop". 8.1 is easier to negotiate, and your laptop will most likely be telling you there is an upgrade available.

Got used to it now, had our HP Envy laptop a month and it boots in 12 seconds - super speedy. With 8.1 you get the start button thing, but you have to 'right mouse' click it to get the list.

I just got a 8.1 laptop this afternoon and that right mouse click trick really helped me get it to do things in a way that I recognised. At some point tonight, I'll find the proper way of logging off....

 

[Andy in Sig]

It frustrates me too, the new multi touch gestures made me emit a pained roar. Annoyingly, even after disabling all of these features Google Chrome is in a world of it's own, any multi touching on the touch pad causes the text size to either explode or shrink.

Oh no! I've never even heard the term "multi touching" and wouldn't expect to hear it outside a court case dealing with sexual harassment. I'll not be looking into it, being strictly a one click at a time bloke.

 

[Andy in Sig]

I just got a 8.1 laptop this afternoon and that right mouse click trick really helped me get it to do things in a way that I recognised. At some point tonight, I'll find the proper way of logging off....

Such naive, optimistic innocence is almost touching ...

 

[ufkacbln]

Windows 8 - it's the new pinch and swipe functions on the mouse pad - mimics the 'touch screen' version of Win8.

you'll get used to it.

NEW?

Apple have been using them for years

 

[fossyant]

I just got a 8.1 laptop this afternoon and that right mouse click trick really helped me get it to do things in a way that I recognised. At some point tonight, I'll find the proper way of logging off....

Right mouse click the windows button, and shutdown is on the bottom. Or swipe to the right, and on the settings pop up click power down. I had to google it first. 8.1 made things easier.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Right mouse click the windows button, and shutdown is on the bottom. Or swipe to the right, and on the settings pop up click power down. I had to google it first. 8.1 made things easier.

Cheers. I did find it eventually. Now, as for all these tiles, can you play mahjong with them?

 

[fossyant]

[QUOTE 3047850, member: 259"]That's a terrible indictment on an operating system![/QUOTE]
It's been a mare. I can see it being ok on a touch screen, but some silly implementations meant its not so easy without a touch screen. 8.1 went some way to address it.

I still prefer Micropoo than Applepie.

 

[phil_hg_uk]

Windows 8 is not a problem if you install one of the many programs that provide you with the Start Menu, when I sell any laptops with windows 8 on them I also install a program called Start Menu 8 available for free from here ---> http://www.iobit.com/iobitstartmenu8.php This provides a start menu like windows 7, when it is installing if there is an option to install any other programs such as Advanced System Care make sure you untick them, also I make sure that things like skype and adobe reader have the Program versions installed not the App versions so people don't get marooned in full screen apps with no where to go. A tip for installing skype is that when you go to the downloads section of the skype website it will by default point you to the APP version if you are using windows 8, to get round this click on the the link that says "Get skype for Windows desktop" and it will download the normal desktop version.

The most regular thing people seem to get stuck with is that the default photo viewer is usually an APP so if you open a photo quite often you can get stuck in a full screen photo with no obvious way out, to solve this I usually install something like Picasa and make it the default program for all picture formats ( you can do this when it is first run ) this way photos will open on the windows desktop in a window in Picasa photo viewer as normal.

As for the touchpad problems I was getting loads of calls from customers saying that the touchpad had a mind of its own, to solve that if you go into the Control Panel then organize it by Larger Icons and not Category (drop down menu top rhs of screen ) and look for and icon for the touchpad, on HP / Compaq it is usually called Synaptics Touchpad if you go in there you can disable all the fancy functions of the touchpad and that will get rid of any problems with tapping and pinching etc. If you cant find an icon for the touchpad try the Mouse icon and look for the tab on the far top RHS that says device settings then highlight the touchpad in the list and click on settings and that should take you to all the settings.

 

[marknotgeorge]

My three-month-old Acer, despite a Synaptics touchpad and 8.1 pre-installed, doesn't seem to have all the fancy pinch-zoom stuff. I need 8.x Pro to run the Windows Phone 8 emulator, and installed it on my old laptop pretty soon after launch. I've got used to it fine without any extra shell programs. The only trouble I found was my old laptop's win8 graphic drivers had worse OpenGL support than the win7 drivers. I too use a wireless mouse, but I did try a Bluetooth one to save a USB port. Kept switching off, despite fiddling with power management settings, so I went back to my trust Microsoft USB mouse. It has a proper off switch, and batteries last ages.

 

[Andy in Sig]

Just use a mouse. The trackpads are just a nuisance.

Thank you very much indeed. I have dug out the mouse which I found in the case for my old laptop and it works a treat. The type size still occasionally jumps around bit if I touch the tracking pad but the likelihood of me exploding has significantly reduced.