I recently got a new work (read: school) laptop, the site I ordered it from mentioned it came with a windows 7 installation already on the device. For some reason, there was a delay in delivery and the windows 7 changed to windows 8 installation. I decided to try out windows 8 but couldn't get around even one bit and hated every single part of it. Seeing as I only had a 32 bit copy of Windows 7 lying around and I have 8gb of ram in my laptop, that wasn't going to work out. I already checked the youtube page and watched the StartIsBack video and noticed he mentions making some other videos for improving windows 8. I searched the channel but only found videos made before that one, so I decided to check forums but all I found here were recommendations for StartIsBack.
So I was wondering if there are some things I can get to make Windows 8 less Windows 8 other than StartIsBack.
Well, once you get startisback it really is like a slightly faster Windows 7 for the most part (after you configure it). It is very encompassing in that respect. Also, just know windows key + "C" brings your charms menu back if you should need them for some reason.
One other suggestion would be to make Windows 8 a local account rather than having to access Microsoft every time. It really isn't necessary but it would then be more like Win 7.
Disable all the charms as well and disable the lock screen. As a power user it annoys me to loose 1 second every time I unlock my PC because the lock screen must go away.
Also look out for the "Performance information and tools" in the system configuration. Go to adapt visual settings and go for best performance. That disables all the visual effects that just annoy me (personally). Important: manually reenable miniature preview instead of symbols in the visual effects (the english names of all the settings mentioned here are aproximate. I translated them from my german OS)
On the note of windows 8, everytime I installed a new OS I immediately disabled UAC for obvious reasons. For some reason Windows 8 has a second type of it installed. Every time I try to save something, change something, or move something to some specific folders, I need to give permission for it, even though I'm on an administrator account.
I tried googling it, but I could only find the "remove read only" in properties, however I can't turn off read only, as soon as I get out of properties, it's immediately reenabled. Could it be because I dragged over some folders from my win7 ?
Well, I personally had to disable EnableLUA and admin approval mode because by default even if you disable UAC, all programs run without admin rights. Disabling those makes it work like in previous versions of Windows, i.e. if you are admin, everything runs as admin.
Beware though that this impacts security and metro apps (even PC settings) will not run after you change those.
But you might also want to use UxStyle if you want to use default theme with dark title bar (because on default theme program title is always black and custom theme fixes it).
8 is awkward as hell to get used to, once you get the gist of it tho its pretty sweet to use, im not a "productivity" user tho so perhaps im a little bias.