Mum vs Windows 8 - attempting a shutdown


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Or they could just try pressing the power button. Did she really need to shut down?

5 minutes and 33 seconds could have been saved by just pressing the power button on the system.

Either MS fanbois or don't realise that most people use the OS to shutdown

Both are embarrassing fails to have to your names

5 minutes and 33 seconds could have been saved by just pressing the power button on the system.

We've been telling people for 2 decades not to do that! Besides, why should I have to bend over and push a button on my computer? On Windows 7, shut down is 2 clicks away. 2 FRICKIN CLICKS AWAY FOR CHRIST SAKE!!!!!!! Not swipe, click settings, click power, click shutdown or push a power button.

first thing you see in OOBE is the swipe from right edge.

We've been telling people for 2 decades not to do that! Besides, why should I have to bend over and push a button on my computer? On Windows 7, shut down is 2 clicks away. Not swipe, click settings, click power, click shutdown or push a power button. 2 FRICKIN CLICKS AWAY FOR CHRIST SAKE!!!!!!!

it's 3 clicks on Win8 -.-

also it looks like you can even search for shutdown

  • Like 2

first thing you see in OOBE is the swipe from right edge.

Yeah, unless someone else sets up the computer...

first thing you see in OOBE is the swipe from right edge.

it's 3 clicks on Win8 -.-

also it looks like you can even search for shutdown

4 steps I meant to say...W7 is 2 steps...

1. swipe charms bar.

2. Click settings

3. Click power

4. White dialogue pops up that says reboot, hibernate, or shut down.

If she had new account on the PC, she would have known from the intro screen that there is a hidden menu, otherwise, they should have told that there are hidden menus in the corners.

It's like when you use a friend's phone., if you never used it before, and it happens to be a weird model, you don't know how to instantly unlock it.

Does your friend tells you how to unlock it, or does he makes a youtube v?deo showing that the phone is really hard to unlock?

Ugh this "joke" again. Take 30 seconds to learn what's changed in the OS and done, move on. Change happens. Probably would have seen inane videos about Program Manager disappearing if there was a YouTube back then too. Besides, this isn't exactly specific to Windows. There's some WTF decisions being done on other desktops too.. ask anyone who got dropped down "cold" in front of Gnome 3 for example, some of those make Windows 8 look sane. Kudos for rehashing the same old forum drama though. I was wondering when a "new" 8 Sux thread was coming.

2 FRICKIN CLICKS AWAY FOR CHRIST SAKE!!!!!!!

Can add an icon to the start screen if it bugs you that badly, a lot less exclamation marks involved too. Click click done.

The fact is, 1) she's on a multimonitor setup making access to the charms bar slightly more annoying on the main screen in front of her. And the OOBE and main instruction for USING windows 8 is to have a go and see what it does when you stick your mouse in the corners! SO, tell her that and THEN see how long it takes.

Ugh this "joke" again. Take 30 seconds to learn what's changed in the OS and done, move on. Change happens. Probably would have seen inane videos about Program Manager disappearing if there was a YouTube back then too. Besides, this isn't exactly specific to Windows. There's some WTF decisions being done on other desktops too.. ask anyone who got dropped down "cold" in front of Gnome 3 for example, some of those make Windows 8 look sane. Kudos for rehashing the same old forum drama though. I was wondering when a "new" 8 Sux thread was coming.

Can add an icon to the start screen if it bugs you that badly, a lot less exclamation marks involved too. Click click done.

Gnome 3 is indeed crap but the problem is that Gnome 3 isn't used by more than a billion people daily nor is it the first thing a person sees when they unbox a new PC and turn it on 99.999% of the time.

Gnome 3 is indeed crap but the problem is that Gnome 3 isn't used by more than a billion people daily nor is it the first thing a person sees when they unbox a new PC and turn it on 99.999% of the time.

True, the first thing they'd see unboxing it is the tutorial showing them how to use bring up the charms ;)

Can add an icon to the start screen if it bugs you that badly, a lot less exclamation marks involved too. Click click done.

No thank you, I'll keep my exclamation marks...and my start menu...besides, ASROCK doesn't even have drivers for Windows 8 yet.

Also, gnome 3 has its issues too. but at least I can switch to XFCE or KDE.

Also, gnome 3 has its issues too. but at least I can switch to XFCE or KDE.

And if you're an expert user you'd know you can change out the Windows start menu with something else, or the shell completely. Even KDE. Just saying.

The plain truth is that Windows 8 suffers from poor design choices.

Yes! It took me ages to figure out how to shut down Windows 8 without using the power button on the system (which, by default, only puts the system to sleep). Ridiculous.

Sure it only takes 30 seconds, but only if you've spent AGES trying to find it.

Start8 solved it for me, though :)

I set up my mother's laptop with Win 8, because Vista was having problems (it did well for 5 years though), and forgot to tell her how to shutdown before I left her house. She called to tell me she couldn't find the shutdown and googled it, and made a comment about all the people complaining about the difficulty of finding the shutdown button in google. Anyway, I informed her that pressing the power button would suffice and explained that the power button is intercepted by windows and does a controlled shutdown these days which she didn't know. I also set her laptop to shutdown when the lid is closed in power options and explained that to her, she hasn't had any other problems using the system and she is fairly computer illiterate.

It's strange, because for all the complaints I see, what I don't see is a good option put forth by the complainers. Like "they should have put the shutdown button at this location, in this menu, etc." I see things like "it's a bad UI design" because of the shutdown location, but that's way too far reaching, once you figure it out you really won't forget. I theorize that shutdown is an unnatural function for a computer, and will go away, and that it really doesn't fit any where in the UI any way because of this. Remember all the people that complained that you had to press start to stop the computer in previous versions? And if it's just eating the user up that they have to press 3 buttons to shutdown, you can always put a shortcut to 'shutdown.exe /s" in the start screen.

^This 100%.

I'd go a bit further and call it poor design choices for the different form factors. Hiding the power off setting maybe makes sense on tablets, but applying the same logic to desktop and you end up with videos like this one. And it's just one of many issues it suffers from.

And if you're an expert user you'd know you can change out the Windows start menu with something else, or the shell completely. Even KDE. Just saying.

I shouldn't have to use a 3rd party tool or "hack" to do something that was there in the first place. If I'm replacing the shell, why did I buy Windows 8?

  • Like 3
I shouldn't have to use a 3rd party tool or "hack" to do something that was there in the first place. If I'm replacing the shell, why did I buy Windows 8?

I don't know, why did you? I can't answer that for you. That's ignoring the obvious fact that you still have access to all the Windows software, etc etc, regardless of what shell or start menu you use.

You mention Linux being flexible as a positive thing, yet having that exact sort of flexibility in Windows is a bad thing. Biased much?

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