WIndows 10

I chose Kit Kat as I like the chocolate. It's quite a different texture to jellybeans, which I find too sugary.

I haven't used 8 or 8.1 as I didn't see enough to warrant moving to it from 7.
My most recent server at work though turned up with Server 2012 R2 on it and it mimics the 8.1 style on there. Was quite a shock but in the end I found they have grouped nearly all of the administrative tasks in one area etc, so that was quite a step up on the quite scattered approach for certain tasks in 7, which itself was a step up in this regard from XP.

No idea where you are going if you start with a right click Nigel. All I would do is left click on the start menu on the task bar - which takes me to the start screen - go to user - left click on user- select sign out and left click again.

As for using a guidebook - what's a guidebook?

Carl

Hi, Right click on Windows icon (start button?) and there it is in Windows 8.1 Bill




[quote:3496ace15f="fritzthedog"][quote:3496ace15f="McGregNi"]Here's a quick win8 question teaser for our win8 boffins out there, just to illustrate my point about logic and intuition with the bread and butter stuff.....

Assuming no installation of Classic Shell (that's a Third party add -on) who can tell us the steps needed to ' sign out' of your windows 8 login (used to be termed log out in previous versions .... Just sign -out ... From whatever screen or view ... How do we 'sign out' ... ? If there's a simple way I don't know as always I am the first to happily learn about it along with others right here. Ok, over to the win8 PU experts!

That's all good info ... Not sure about the left click only? I was only able to find sign out via the start button right click then into the 2nd layer menu. Convoluted in my view. Also I wonder about sign out from the Start screen or with an app open ... Would you have to go to the desktop to access the start button for the right click? I don't see sign out as a power option from the charms bar ....

Oh yes - so it does - which proves 3 things:

1. Signing out of 8.1 is easy
2. There is more than one way of skinning a cat
3. Perhaps I should read guidebooks to find the quickest options Although in my defense - I have never actually signed out on my PC running 8.1 - I am the only user of this one.

Carl

For years I've used a free program called Poweroff to shut down local and Remote PC's. Just a couple of clicks and that's it.... Bye! Can also be set as a timer.

Works OK on XP should be OK on later, because Poweroff is just a command which can be typed into the RUN box.




The developer is....
http://users.telenet.be/jbosman/applications.html

Scandisk/Chkdsk has been terrible since W98. It's still a DOS based program and takes quite a lot of effort to check multiple drives/partitions. Again it's a RUN command and several programs exist to provide a GUI.

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Free Chkdsk GUI....

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/checkdisk-is-gui-for-windows-chkdsk-ex...

Alternative (32 and 64bit versions)

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/checkdrive-quickly-perform-thorough-ha...

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All done automatically under current Windows on a daily or weekly schedule. More time for creativity I reckon.

Many of these system tools have barely changed since the early Windows days, and sometimes third party software does a better job that's true. For example I user auslogic disc defragmenter which is more user friendly and gives progress information as well as more detail generally.

For a long time tools and various system settings have been available in specific places , eg via the disc drive properties page, or the control panel folders (and this has been tweaked a little over time and now offers different views and display options). With win8 the emphasis has moved towards a search based accessibility ... It's often easier to go straight to the search box on the start page and just type ...eg ' windows update', or ' device manager ' to open the feature needed.

But this approach brings new pitfalls as search is contextual, and may return results from irrelevant sources ... Controlling this adds an extra element of complexity so you need to filter and take greater search control. It's also not conducive to an exploring approach, as you need to know what exactly you need to know before you can find it!

I despaired of not being able to run an old DOS-based database when I went from XP to 64 bit Win7. Then I discovered vDos. It gives one a virtual DOS window: one needs a separate one for each DOS program that one needs to run, but it works very well. Easier in fact than the clumsy pseudo-DOS window in XP. vDos is free from the Sourceforge people.

Martin

The PC I use for editing has W7 64bit on it and Currys are doing 120GB OCZ SSD's for £45 so I bought one as a boot drive. My other XP machine boots up quicker than W7 at present.

I thought I'd check the BIOS settings before I do anything. The boards a Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H with a graphical BIOS...... What a mess I can hardly move the mouse around and finding settings is just about impossible. There is a sort of Classic version, but I still can't find where boot devices etc. are chosen. The board is supposed to have an online BIOS update, but it won't work and the lastest BIOS is too big for the on board program as well?

Going back to Chkdsk it's better to run it from a PE Boot CD/DVD it can fix problems that can't be done whilst the C: drive is being used.

No windows file manager has ever come close to the DOS XT_Gold.
I couldn't see any need for a database when I had that the search
was so good.

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Bill that screen capture illustrates all the admin power tools being in the one place now.

8.1 should satisfy anyone needng to upgrade from 7 now from waha ive heard.

I use my i7 powered Windows 8.1 PC with a 24 inch IPS screen.

I boot to desktop, run two internal drives, an external drive, a printer scanner,my photography and its editing, my music networked around the house and through home cinema and internet radio, my wife's laptop (i3 and much faster with current leaner operationg system) feeds off of it fully networked including Steam for a few games.

I do photo editing Graphic design, paper design, merchandise and web shops for Radio Caroline and other clients including photographers, artists,business owners etc.. It all works fine, it doesn't crash and it keeps itself maintained. Yes a few tools have moved around and yes like Macs it has become more hidden and less geeky. I like that. I wouldn't want to have to mess around with my SKY box or my camera the way some seem to mess around with computers still. How do they have time to actually be productive i wonder?

This is what my son responded with , he has been using 10 as a technical preview.
( They skipped 9 for marketing purposes. It will be quite a leap forward in terms of the underlying technology involved (The same version of windows will work on everything from fridges, phones, computers, Xbox..etc). From a casual user perspective it will probably look a bit nicer, but will run mostly the same.)
He also said it will be free upgrade for windows 7-8 users.

@Nigel.. Re: Fast shutdown.
As with all Windows OSes, after closing your application/s - press Alt+F4.