Facewon wrote:

This will take some getting used to. Why can't I actually set up the news thing how I want?

Cause it's rubbish. Luckily there's alternatives on the Store. NextGen Reader is probably the nicest, URead is free.

Music Info is a nice alternative to the built in one as well. There's better alternatives to most of the built in ones really. That seems to be Microsoft's policy for years, provide functional but not amazing software for free then let other developers make better ones.

Pin Steam can make your home screen look all pretty with game graphics, if that's your thing.

Here's a couple of tips, click the tiny little - in the bottom right of the Start screen to create and name Start screen groups.

Pressing Right mouse button has the same function as swiping up or down from the screen edge if you had a touch screen, i.e. it brings up the App Bar which has various settings/options/functions depending on the app.

No official Steam app. Gabe objects to MS running a games store, because he also runs a game store. And I'm guessing anything sold though a Steam app would be subject to a cut to MS like Apple. In fact I don't think any Steam app could be used to purchase anything anyway because of the way file restrictions work.

There's nothing stopping Gabe make a Steam browser/messenger, but a) it would be pretty superfluous and b) see the first paragraph.

There is an app called Pin Steam that lets you pin tiles (links to games basically) on the Start screen - and a few other niceties. It costs a quid but I think is worth it.

As for SSDs, I'm just heading out, will post some general etiquette tomorrow, or you can just search for SSD best practice. Windows 8 recognises you have one and more or less adjusts settings accordingly automatically though compared to Win7.

I take it its meant to have no off option? As I couldn't find one and it seems to shut down automatically.

Nothing fancy, just want to know how to turn off my pc. Every version of windows I've ever known It's just a matter of the start button and selecting shut down. If win8 auto shuts down that's fine, it's just odd.

Ah, yep.

Still, to be honest, if the default sleep mode shuts it down as much as it seems to, I may not bother to actively shut it down most of the time.

Tell you what though, it (win looks noticeably better than vista, and everything seems to run rather well. May help that a cleaned out so much crap prior to installing, but either way, new lease on life for my little old PC.

Some odd decisions on that new start screen though.

Why can I only resize some tabs? Why can't I put them where I want? (These questions may be rehtorical, as I may not have found the options, but it just seems like it could do with some more flexibility.) Feels a little like the standard s3 homepage issues, tbh, feel like I need to be able to nab a nova launcher equiv.

Liking a lot of the functionality of Outlook, although I may still keep the regular Mail App up, as for just quickly jumping in to check a new email, it's very clean and easy to read.

No discoveries, just quibbles so far.

Evernote app doesn't work as well as desktop evernote.

Outlook doesn't want to seem to connect to servers so I had to access old emails through browser hotmail.

You should be able to sync from and when you like. Dunno what's going on there.

What did you mean by resize tabs up there?

You just move them. Check the steam faqs.

Mod74 wrote:

You should be able to sync from and when you like. Dunno what's going on there. What did you mean by resize tabs up there?

I would have thought so re syncing, but it defo wasn't liking something. I couldn't get hotmail or the outlook app on my phone to load up my email. Seems to be working this morning.

A bit more of a play tells me that it's Microsoft Activesync that's having the fight. Outlook keeps telling me to remove devices. I've turned it off on my phone, and hopefully I can just manually get emails with the hotmail app. tbh, stranger still is that the mail app doesn't seem to sync with Outlook. I know it seems silly to be wanting two email things on the start screen, but Outlook is functional and UGLY, I'd like it to be doing the grunt work and the Mail app to be where I just read and respond to emails. I notice there's a third party app for andriod to outlook syncing, but they want $30. Get fucked.


 When I mentioned resizing, I meant well, resizing. The Word icon on the start screen, why can't I make it a rectangle? Or the size of two small apps, if you know what I mean. I can resize some, it seems. Just not sure what the differences are as to why I can mess with some and not others.

Total sense.

In the great scheme of things, it's no biggie at all. It's just that the start screen is so pretty that it's a shame to have ugly icons/tiles.

Still having grief from outlook, so I think I'll just have to ignore using the outlook program and just use browser outlook, which, tbf, is a little nicer to look at, and with a bit of a play, has all the stuff I want to use (just discovered the "rules" thing, which is my main new toy, autofiling bank statements and the like ftw).

Also, Mrs Face wanted to pass on her thanks for all of this advice too. This upgrade was taken up because we spent 3 hours on a 5 minute job on Sunday because between Open Office on my vista pc and her old macbook, trying to fix up my resume as a nice looking pdf turned into a massive clusterfuck.

It took about 30 seconds with Word when I went to do it yesterday, and when this goes out of preview, she'll have office on her Mac too. Everybody wins.

Ghah, Bento News is clearly the pick of the news feed apps on Win 8, but doesn't have a proper Oz paper listed, and won't let you rename things you manually add.

Small things irritate me with these apps. Why can't I make them pretty?

Pulse news on a 21inch screen is stupid.

Al Jazzera's app is the most frustrating though, looks lovely, but the live stream crashes it, every time.

Bento News has google reader import. It's fine, all the content is there. It's just the niceties of the presentation that are lacking if the newspaper/website in question doesn't actively support bento. tbf, it does actually do a good job of linking direct to the website while not taking you out of bento.

It's just one of those apps that's so good that the few minor issues really glare out.

I don't know that flipboard would suit a full PC screen, I'd like to see Feedly on Windows 8, actually, it's layout is a touch restricted on a smartphone, reckon it could look and work amazing on a big screen.

It'll be fine. It's growing on me daily.

Question:

It was automatically going into sleep mode previously, but we went away for a few days, so I turned off the PC, now it won't automatically go into sleep mode, why? And where do I change it? Can't find it under settings.