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Apparently there is a plan to make Search automatically invoke Bing. I can’t see that being allowed by the EU.

I never read that stuff!

And even if you the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions…

What city is that that you have on your Desktop?

That must be the Citadel of Gallifrey, can you not see the Panopticon?

A thought here – Blue will almost certainly make some very significant changes, perhaps even as far as completely removing Metro and the Charms on computers, so IMHO it might not be worth investing the time and effort to learn Windows 8 in its current form unless you have a pressing requirement to do so.

can you link to a screenshot example?[/quote]
Here’s one: http://cloud.addictivetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Windows-8-Charms-Bar-Settings1.png
The charms are the five icons in the rightmost column – Search, Share, Start, Device and Settings. (Sorry, there are five of them, not four as wrongly I said before.)

do the icons’ appearance change to denote the function changed?

Good question. I don’t know, but given Metro’s reputation for not providing any visual clues to help users I doubt it.

There’s a description of the Charms icons here:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-windows-8-charms-bar-and-its-hidden-shortcuts.html

”Charms” (do I got that right? no W8 here) sound like “Gadgets”

Not really. Charms are four icons which appear in both desktop mode and Metro mode of Windows 8 whenever the mouse pointer is drifted into the top right or bottom right corner of the screen. They appear without the mouse being clicked, which many people find intensely annoying. They invoke some of the housekeeping functions which were previously on the Start menu. To add to the confusion, some of the Charms icons change their behaviour when a Metro app is being run.

Most of the third party utilities which restore the Start button and its menu also provide options to disable the Charms icons.

If you use an online calendar, it better be Microsoft’s, because Windows 8 can’t sync with Google Calendar anymore.

Is that statement correct? Does it apply in all browsers, or perhaps only in the Metro version of IE, or only in a Metro app?

The only difficulty was finding how to delete emails

There are various ways, including:
with the relevant message selected, press the Delete button on the keyboard;
or:
right-click the relevant message, then select the Delete option from the resulting menu (probably the bottom-most option)

George, why not Thunderbird?

Dell have a free downloadable version of Windows 8 For Dummies available. You have to supply some contact information for marketing purposes though. I thought it was a good book, full of useful information (and a realistically cynical view of Microsoft’s more bizarre design decisions).
http://marketing.dell.com/windows-8-ebook

Verification 100% complete.
Windows resource protection did not find any integrity violation.
C:Windowssystem 32

The first line says the scan finished.

The second line says the scan didn’t find anything wrong.

The third line is the standard MS-DOS prompt which tells you which directory (folder) you are currently in.

So the test passed with everything 100% ok.

I’m confused. Does the expression “killing the desktop” imply that – if it happens – future versions of Windows won’t be able to run any conventional EXE programs? It seems very difficult to believe that is really what Microsoft are planning as IMHO it would be a suicidal policy.

George,

If you haven’t already done so, as a precaution IMHO it would be well worth running a full scan with MalwareBytes AntiMalware, which is free of charge http://www.malwarebytes.org

I’m finding it extremely difficult to keep up with the latest plot developments in this thread but am I right in thinking that at the moment George’s computer boots up into normal Win8 and he wants it to boot in Win8 Safe Mode? Apologies if that’s wrong.

If I’m right, then perhaps this might help:
If you’re able to boot Windows normally, but still need to enter Safe mode, go to the Metro Start screen and type msconfig. Launch System Configuration from the list of search results, then select its Boot tab. On this screen you can check a box to enable Safe boot, with various different types of Safe mode available below. Click Ok, then click Restart to boot your computer into Safe mode.
– From http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/3421988/how-boot-windows-8-in-safe-mode (slightly edited by me for clarity)

George,

Have you tried Googling for:
f8 windows 8
Some of those links suggest various possible solutions to the F8 problem but I don’t know if any would be effective in your situation. Might be worth a go.

PS After reading your long-running saga of woe and misery I need something upbeat to cheer me up. Now, where are my Leonard Cohen CD’s?