I'd rather tell the OS what I what readily available, not a huge array on six or seven scrolling screens of idiotic large icons even if I wanted to use that interface. It's a pain to re-organise.

In reply to a post by johnjburness:

Many thanks for that! I hadn't realised that it bought up a hidden Search Screen!!

Good grief.

In reply to a post by johnjburness:

Needless to say, I will be installing the non-MS Classic-Start onto my new Laptop as soon as possible!

I haven't heard of Classic Start, so it may not have the niggles I experience, but to load to the Desktop rather than the Metro see this page and scroll down to "Choosing where to go when you sign in". That's what I do.

Incidentally, the opening sentence in that section is hilarious! "By default, most people will open the desktop when they sign in to their PC, but no matter what kind of device you use, you can choose to see either the desktop, the Start screen or the Apps view when you sign in to your PC".

Then why, Mr Microsoft, do you default it to the Start screen? And default to pinning Metro versions of MS Apps to the Taskbar rather than the standard programs?

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

In reply to a post by johnjburness:

Many thanks for that! I hadn't realised that it bought up a hidden Search Screen!!

Good grief.

Why the strange comment??

Was I meant to be a mind-reader?

It as one of the mind-boggling things I discovered (fortunately) early on when I complained to someone about the difficulty of getting to the Control panel. The told me just to type C when the Start Screen was showing.

Utterly insane.

I'm not sure I understand why those who detest the Metro interface so much, (including me), just don't install a 3rd party utility for free, so that you can use Windows 8/8.1 exactly as per previous versions. I use Startmenu8 which is brilliant. Metro invisible, full Start Button with Start Menu as before. http://www.iobit.com/iobitstartmenu8.php

I manage OK with the simple Load to Desktop option I described. I'm just left with niggles.

I dislike external unknown provenance overlay GUIs such as that's a simple example of, as they are even more likely to have unforeseen problems, bugs and foibles than Windows itself.

I beef mainly about the daftness of the people who signed it off for the mainstream OS in the world LOL.

The most obvious one being, as I've said many times, that it is contrary to the excellent fundamental concept of Windows. It cannot be suitable for serious work until that is rectified.

Even the Live Tiles are pointless except on an idle machine.

Totally agree with what you say about the way the interface is implemented in Windows 8/8.1. Who on earth at Microsoft thought this was a good idea for a desktop PC. Arrogant company as I've said before. Got to say I've been using Startmenu 8 since 8 came out on 6 PC's and never had one single problem.

In reply to a post by rogerfp:

Got to say I've been using Startmenu 8 since 8 came out on 6 PC's and never had one single problem.

I've used Classic Shell without any problems, but I also believe there is Classic Start 8.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Incidentally, the opening sentence in that section is hilarious! "By default, most people will open the desktop when they sign in to their PC, but no matter what kind of device you use, you can choose to see either the desktop, the Start screen or the Apps view when you sign in to your PC".

Then why, Mr Microsoft, do you default it to the Start screen? And default to pinning Metro versions of MS Apps to the Taskbar rather than the standard programs?

Unfortunately, MS's logic (or lack of it) is beyond my comprehension!