How to make Win8 more MIL friendly?

downhillfast

Hi Guys

Firstly a little bit of background info:

My MIL is not amazingly computer literate but used Windows XP on her laptop for a good few years to check emails, surf the net, open documents etc. A few months ago she tasked me with replacing her broken laptop. I should maybe add at this point that I used WIN7 and found it to be an intuitive step forward from XP... and naively figured that Win8 would be a similar stepping stone for her - boy how wrong was I!!!

Skip forward to the present and still after a few months of her using this laptop she is far from comfortable and regularly gets in a mess which I cannot sort out over the phone as we live 250 miles away (I'm not an expert either so remotely accessing her laptop is probably beyond me, especially as I have no Win8 experience anyway!)

A prime example of this is when she couldn't print an email - what idiot thought that not having 'print' as an option in an email app was a good idea??? From here I had to teach her how to access her email via webmail as I don't know whether there is access to an email client on her desktop... and now she's somehow deleted the bookmark I set up for her! lol

I know people say that as the technology moves on we have to adapt to use it but it really isn't fair on the people that struggle to grasp new concepts. tbh I'm totally in awe of any pensioner that can use a computer as they sure as hell didn't learn in their youth.

Anyway, we are going to be visiting her this weekend and I hope to have a couple of hours spare to implement some changes having read about 'Classic Shell' and some of the other addons that people mention.

There is a lot of discussion of how to retro-fit Win8 to make it more like Win7 but what changes should I look at to make it more like XP (tbh I forget what XP was like!)

I'm thinking main priority is to boot straight to desktop and change the default programs... what are the minimal programs I will need to install to replace the apps taking over the main functions? I really don't know what apps are on there and what they are defaultly opening? iykwim! Ideally I'd like the whole metro/app thing to become totally redundant and everything be done from the desktop.

Will a couple of hours be enough to sort this for her or am I gonna make things worse and leave it butchered beyond comprehension!

TIA

closed

there are a few existing threads on this subject if you do a search

stick avast or teamviewer on, at both ends, then you can remote control to your hearts content

you dont say what client is being used for mail, but thunderbird can print.

kwikbreaks

downhillfast wrote: »

I'm not an expert either so remotely accessing her laptop is probably beyond me

That bit is easy to fix - https://secure.logmein.com/UK/ The free version is perfectly adequate. No need to open any ports on the router. It works very well.

downhillfast

Thanks both.

Will definitely look into the remote access for future troubleshooting.

She was just using the built in (Live Mail???) app for email until realising that although easy to access and navigate it couldn't print - will look at thunderbird.

Regarding my question as to what to change/install... I've read a lot of the threads but as it's not me that's struggling with it it's hard to work out what to change hence asking about what would make it more like XP as that is what she is comfortable with. And with the limited time I have available I wanted to hit the ground running and not have to go through each thing she didn't like step by step as she won't know what it's called anyway so it'll take forever! lol :T

kwikbreaks

Installing Classic Shell will get rid of 90% of the problems. All you need do is get her to install that and a remote access program - hopefully prompts and defaults will get it all to the point where you can remote in and do any further tweaks. Make sure to email links to safe downloads - as I found when telling my granddaughter to install Libre Office there are plenty of sites out there higher in the search rankings for popular software that will litter the machines of the unwary with crapware if not malware.

flashg67

You can print from live mail - very top left of the screen is a drop-down menu offering print and other options?

I see the imminent Windows 8.1 upgrade allows you to reintroduce the start button & more traditional desktop?

downhillfast

flashg67 wrote: »

You can print from live mail - very top left of the screen is a drop-down menu offering print and other options?

Maybe it isn't Live Mail then (it was a couple of months ago...) I spent ages googling it only to find that it wasn't an option!