I remember Stardock form the early 2000s as stuff that really degraded performance over time. I take it that's not the case?

I've been running Start8 for almost a year now, and I haven't had any issues whatsoever. It lets you control basically every part of the Metro interface:

• Add back the Windows 7 style start menu
• Disable the "hot corners" that bring up other Metro features
• Disable the settings menu on the right side

And a bunch of other tweaks. It costs $5, but it's well worth it.

Good to know. I'd think the last two would just be simple reg hacks, but bringing back the start menu seems a little more intrusive until 8.1 comes out.

Whatever though. I'm all about my OS X/Linux/Win7 setups. VMs for everything but OS X.

8.1 released today. Downloading it now

Just upgraded myself. The whole "start menu is back" thing is stupid. There technically is a menu, but it just takes you back into Metro again.

Guess I'm sticking with Start8.

Yea, I noticed that too...wtf? I'll play around with I some more later.

They obviously want everyone to pony up the money and get touchscreen monitors. I'll never understand why anyone would want touchscreen for desktop computing.

There's some settings options I believe that let you adjust the start button behavior, but it looks like MS is still trying to push metro by default.

I tried to update earlier today and the 8.1 update wouldn't alert as available for download. I'll try again in a bit and play around with it once it will actually let me- which is odd, but I know they're rolling the update availability a bit at least for day 1 since it's a worldwide release according to one article. Would have figured MS could handle whatever expected traffic, but who knows?

I'll see what I find and report back.

There's definitely a load setting to boot up as a recognized desktop no touchscreen available which adjusts some of the setup and ui behavior. It was done for something to do with businesses to encourage updating to 8.1 so the employees had a more traditional desktop setup and not having a bunch of people confused about using their work computer and navigating the UI to use it as they typically have been before- 95 - windows 7.

Downloaded and installed on both my Surface RT and Surface Pro.

Failed to install on my laptop, luckily it rolled itself back

I recently got a new desktop with Windows 8 installed. I hated it at first, but I'm slowly getting used to it. It would be nice if there was a way to turn off the "point the mouse here and you see stuff" functionality. And, WTF is the thing at the top left?

You can turn off a lot of that shit (not sure about what you're describing). I had to turn off the swiping for the trackpad. It came rolling me back into the Metro startup screen. Drove me nuts.

I have read this thread, and probably don't know enough to recognize the answer if it is in here.

I just got a new Dell laptop with Windows 8. I am trying to figure out how to keep those black slide bars across the right side and lower left from popping up all the time when I don't want them.

I did the 8.1 upgrade and it didn't help anything.

It is very annoying and I appreciate any help if you understand what I am asking.

It'll cost you $5, but I highly recommend Start8. It'll let you customize all that stuff to the point that it works just like Windows 7 if you want it to.