Windows 8.1, part 5 - achievement unlocked

[julesjones]

The rest of last night involved pointing the box at the Win 8.1 upgrade site, and letting it get on with downloading the update and restarting itself several times while I watched the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. Having unlocked that achievement, I started installing software this evening. I would have installed a trial of Norton, except it turns out there's already a trial of Macafee as a pre-install. I discovered this when they started complaining about each other... After that came Chrome and Firefox, before I took credit card in hand and headed off to Microsoft's HUP website, where I quite legally bought Office Professional for £8.95. Of course, this licence goes bye-bye if $EMPLOYER stops participating in the HUP, but I still have an Office 2010 licence.

I had some issues with installing Office, mostly to do with it not being obvious whether or not it was installing. But it seems to be on there now. It's just that I have to search for it with the search function to start it. I want my Start menu back. :-(

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I have put icons on my Desktop for all the programs I use regularly. For the ones I use every day, I have put an icon on the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen.

You make Desktop icons exactly like you always did. Just right click anywhere on the Desktop and choose New and the Shortcut. Work through the steps, browsing to the relevant .exe file that will start the program that you want.

Just a useful tip (please ignore if you have already found it, but it took me a while to discover it so I thought I'd mention it). There is no Show Desktop icon on the Taskbar like there used to be on older versions of Windows. However, if you hover the mouse in the extreme bottom right of the screen, all open windows will disappear from view. If you click in the same spot, it minimises all open windows, thus revealing the icons available on the Desktop.