I do understand the consternation and the outrage, though for me it was not much of an adjustment because it was already my practice to streamline things with shortcuts and hot keys. Right off the bat i hit Windows key and E to get into my drives and Windows key and Pause/Break to access other things, besides engaging in customization. Let me know what is a problem for you and i will try to help, i will elaborate on some of the basic things that helped me .
As navigation should be fast and informative, and as i often "travel," taking time to set up a under a new install has been worth it to me. You can save your settings under W/7 and transfer them in W/8, but that is another tutorial due to the variables that should be considered,.
Not using that, one of the first things to do with a new install is to open up the C drive and change from the default view to Details, and reduce the column width as needed in order to see name, date modified, type and size all in a half sized vertical window. Then hit View>Option>Change Folder and Search options, and under General deselect all that is under the Navigation section if you a more compact window, then under View deselect all the "hide" options, except choose to Show hidden files.... I also choose Show Full path... Then i hit Apply to all folders up top. However, as in the past, this does not mean windows necessarily will . In Control Panel to change the view to small icons.
Making places I often access to be quickly but compactly reached is important, and while "pin to taskbar" is nice, space is limited, and vertical in the Quick Launch bar is the way to go.
But in order to add things to that, or to you Start Menu, or wherever, then taking time to to make a shortcut to your SendTo folder helps.
To do so, , paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows in the Run command box (Windows key and the R key) and hit Enter. Then look for the SendTo folder, and R. clk. on it and make a shortcut, and then drag or copy and paste the shortcut into the SendTo folder . Now wherever you are you can r. clk. and send shortcuts to or frequently used places (the Quick Launch bar being one of them) or programs (the .exe file) to the SendTo folder, and send wherever is appropriate to them.
To get the Quick Launch bar in W/8, R. clk, on the Task Bar and point to Toolbars>New Toolbar, and then paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch, then hit Choose Folder. Now you have your Quick Launch bar. You can try to drag it to the left side of the Task Bar but that does not always work it seems.
Then go to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer and make a shortcut to the Quick Launch folder and send that to the SendTo folder, and then you can add what you will to it from whatever folder you are in.
Likewise to the Start Menu (which path is%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\Startup) I have certain folders which i can reach quickly (using the Classic Start menu under Classic Shell). Although i actually use hot keys for these. Which is another lesson.
Note that using the same Toolbars>New Toolbar method you can also add a toolbar to the Task bar to places like My Documents, and which will add a pop up menu for all that that is therein.
To find the name of your user folder in W/8, paste %USERPROFILE% in the Run command box and hit Enter, and it will open it up and you can see the name in the address bar.
Note also that %windir% takes the place of C:\Windows like as %USERPROFILE% replaces C:\User\user name
Here are more path to folders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_folder
And here are some commands for the Run command that you may find helpful (do not paste the description in parenthesis):
wuapp.exe (Windows update) powercfg.cpl (power configuration) services.msc (services) control.exe (control panel) eventvwr.msc (see windows error messages) control printers (printer folder)
Then there is Firefox with extensions, from which MS could learn some things about customization. See the BBCodeXtra which provides scripts useful for posting, or make your own.
Hope this help some to do good for God.
Great post! Thanks for the info.
I kind of like 8. It’s not that hard to learn the new stuff. Also, MS has provided plenty of videos to learn about W8. If people would watch them and use the help function they would learn but they are too, well, lazy.
Do you know what the main differences between W8 and W8 Pro? I have a copy of Pro and my system just says “Windows 8” in the system description. I was going to put 8 on my HP laptop but if it would be better to put it on my main office box I would. Thanks.