Windows 8 works well on smartphone, tablet and everything else with a touchscreen

Alas no desktop or laptop has touchscreen and what planned for touchscreen commands doesn't work well with mouse command

If you are not used to smartphone will be a nightmare , but also if you are you will risk at first to get mad fighting with a zoo of undesired apps that apparently start by themselves and once started can't be closed , and the mouse that never does what you wish .

I found a cool Open Source program Classic Shell http://www.classicshell.net/ that solve most of problems and has also a simple and clean interface and is easy to use

Most is detailed here http://www.classicshell.net/

But one of the most precious feature is not highlighted there :
Win 8 use the 4 corner as "hotspot" the idea is that moving your mouse there you switch back from the program you are using to the "apps" screen or open a large lateral taskbar or ...

Again maybe that works well with touchscreen, but on laptop screen the hot corners are over-sensitive, so any movement in direction of the corners will bring away from what you was doing, back to the "apps screen " starting point

Making basically impossible to use programs at full screen :
all program's controls close to the corners ,i.e at right top the "-" to minimize, the "X" to close ,and "File " "Edit" "View" in the left corner will become unusable :
any attempt to click one of them there will instead activate the closer "hot spot" ,usually bringing you back again and again to the "apps screen" starting point .

Luckily "Classic Shell" allow to disable that "Hot Spot" nightmare (its functions remain accessible from keys , without disturbing) with just 1 click

Super ... it really makes Windows 8 usable also on Desktop and notebook

personally i went farther and found how permanently unistall all the apps, permanently because if not Windows will reinstall most when updating ... , but that mostly because i deeply dislike the idea of dozens and dozens of apps that i would never use running in background , wasting my storage space and ram
(see here the how to http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-remove-a ... windows-8/ )





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Would you link in where you found the tutorial or explain how you removed the apps that run in the background and prevented them form returning?

sure i added the link http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-remove-a ... windows-8/ also to my previous message .

It is quick, a edit in the registry is required but is clearly explained how

to be correct if I un-install them they don't run in the background anymore and would just take up a negligible amount of Hard Drive space?

About the apps i just not use them,
not that are against are fine on smartphone that can't support normal software but on my computer are useless , i.e. i have a better music and video player, a better image viewer , a better mail client ...

But back to your question i am not sure how much space or resources they need, maybe not much , neither i know how much risky may be for my privacy, maybe none

But why i should keep something i will never use ?

Some of the Metro "apps" are (by default) associated with specific file extensions and will automatically run when files with those extensions are opened. Image file extensions are an example of this.

The solution is to associate extensions (that are current associated with "apps") to full blown desktop applications, thus avoiding Metro.

Another thing you can do is move all of the Metro "apps" to their own folder and hide it a couple of levels deep in the menu (using classic shell).

In my opinion, Metro (and to a lesser extent Gnome3) is designed to run on touchscreen devices. Running it on a desktop or laptop is like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. It just doesn't quite fit.

Yep I know exactly what you're talking about with the square peg in a round hole!

And PDF files are the only ones that still trump me with the opening in the Metro apps thing but w/e I live with it

You can download the full Adobe PDF reader and associate it with .pdf files, bypassing the Win8 Metro app.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tONDxROZ3k4