Hi,

I loaded Windows 8 Consumer Preview with some concerns about how the new interface would impact me.  As a keyboard user, the Developer Preview just didn’t do enough for me, however Windows 8 is now my primary home OS and I’m loving it.  What is more, my daughter is once again asking to have it (as she wants “Snap”) for her applications.

So my top tips are:

How to close a Metro Application

There are two ways to do this – dragging the open application from the top of the screen to the bottom – you will see something like the screen below (top half is once it is grabbed and the bottom half is as it is dragged to the bottom of the screen).

The second way to do this is to hover in the top left corner and one Metro application will show.  However if we now scroll down the left edge the other open applications will show.  We can now right click on one of those and select close. It is also worth noting that we can also snap the application to the left or right hand side of the screen too. Of course, move down to the bottom and you get your start menu.

Dual Booting Windows 8 and Windows 7

This is quite simple and instructions can be found here in the answers forum, however – there is an option in the installer.  I got the web installer from here. I clicked next a few times and then the installer was downloading:

Then you choose Install on another Partition:

That is it!

Using Windows 8 with a keyboard and mouse

So much attention has been paid to using Windows 8 with a touch device that some people think that using a reliable keyboard and mouse is far too difficult.  It is different, but I soon got the hang of it.  The very short video can be found here.

ttfn

David