Windows 8 Issues

Windows 8 is a nightmare of a PC operating system because it throws out a lot of what you have learned on a PC to-date. It is also very confusing switching between the full screen apps and the desktop.

• Windows Mail app provided with the O/S only supports Microsoft email accounts (Hotmail, Live, etc.). This means you need to install Windows Live Mail for your Gmail or other account.
• By default the "Send to -> Email Recipient" option is not available within Explorer. To fix this create an empty file named "Email Recipient.MAPIMAIL" in folder location "shell:sendto".
• If your Windows Live Mail has not been configured with a Microsoft account you will be prompted to sign in, even though it is not required to send. The only work-around we have found is to create and link a Microsoft account.
• After you fix the "Send to" function and link a Microsoft account any images you send using this function get uploaded to the SkyDrive, without any confirmation from you.
• By default when you go to the Skype page to download Skype it will direct you to the Windows App download for Skype - this is very confusing and must be associated with a Microsoft account, which it will then tell you you must use from then onwards.  It is better to return to www.skype.com and look carefully for the link to download other versions of Skype where you can download the traditional simple installation.
• We experienced some issues with a Toshiba P870 after installing an updated Synaptic touchpad driver which caused the system to freeze at the login screen.  Safe mode would still freeze. Oddly there were no recent restore points and restoring to a 1 week old restore point resulted in much corruption in the Windows start screen tiles and loss of Explorer favourites.

Difficulties flowing over from Windows 7:

• Windows Scan & Fax is an annoying limited piece of software.
• Explorer Libraries concept just causes much confusion and inconsistent behaviour