Because he had some questions about Windows 8 (and I had been playing around with it for a while), we sat down and he pumped me for ways to increase his productivity. I thought I'd share some of the things we went over. Nice bullet list, easy to read. These will be obvious to some, new to others; but they were all things that made him say "huh", or "didn't realize you could do that".
Just as an aside, does anyone else hate the term "app", or is it just me? I must be an old fuddy-duddy; an "app" to me just sounds less useful than a "program". For here, at least, when I say "app", I mean the ones designed specifically for Windows 8 while "programs" are the ones that run within the Desktop app.
Running Programs
- When the instructions for a program tell you to go do stuff in Classic Mode (i.e. click on the system tray icon), use the "Desktop" tile on the Start screen.
- If you can't find the tile for a program, start typing the name of the program on the Start Screen. As you type, it will filter the list for you. The functionality was there in Windows 7, but there was a magnifying glass text box to type in, even if you didn't have to use it.
Hot Corners
- If your cursor is in the bottom left corner, a picture of your Start screen will pop up. Click it to go back to the Start screen.
- The top left corner works like Alt-Tab did in Windows 7. If your mouse cursor is there, the app you just switched from pops up. But if you run the cursor down the side (without clicking), it works kind of like keeping the Alt key held down when Alt-Tabbing: you get a list of your open apps that you can choose from. Oh, and it's redundant anyway when using the keyboard, because Alt-Tab still works.
- Split-screening is still a thing: if you drag a running app off of that task switcher, it'll mock up options to split screen with your current one, or just replace it entirely.
- That search magnifying glass for the start menu from earlier? That's on the right-side hover menu. So is a simple version of Device Manager. Dad's not a big fan of social media, so that "Share" button won't be of much use to him, but that Settings will be: that's where the Shutdown is.
Updating
- If the Store app's Live Tile has a number beside it, it means there are updates available for your apps. Go in, click the green words in the top right corner, then the install button bottom center.
- Unless you've changed the Windows update settings, it'll do most of the work for you. In an improvement over Windows XP's random restarts, the lock screen will tell you that updates are ready to install, and that the computer will restart automatically in # days.
