Windows 8.1

My wonderful son set up my laptop with a desktop view, The tiles are still there I have 8.1 operating system if I want them but otherwise it's the same as my old machine.

Word and excel have a different format for editing printing etc. from the ribbon and that takes some getting used to, I just play around with it.
I also went on a free night school course which helped a great deal.

Windows 8.1 in desktop mode is very similar to W7.

The one thing going for 8.1 is it has a start button which was omitted on Windows 8. Come back Windows 7, all is forgiven.

If you have w7 w8 the upgrade to w10 will be free for 1 year. If your PC/Laptop is pre w7 it may not be capable of w10.

Same here, roses - just hope my PC holds out!

We want to update our computer,but are waiting for Windows10 to come out, later this year. everyone we know has probs with 8 and 8.1For now we use a iPad Air for most things, and it's brilliant.

You may find that you have a number of system installed printers showing in control panel, delete any that you won't use, just leave the ones you want.

Thank you so much for your help-I thought that I had cracked 8.1 and was amazed to be floored by something so simple as being unable to print a letter. I am well aware that I am technologically challenged but I did not think that I was that bad!

I think we all have short memories of previous windows versions, my laptop rarely crashes, with past versions it was a weekly occurrence.

The only thing wrong with W8 and W8.1 is that it can be knackered by Micro$oft updates - as my desktop has been twice now!

There has been a lot of whining about this Op Sys, but it is a great deal faster and smoother in operation than W7 (which it closely resembles) and certainly makes XP look its age.

Just go to "Control Panel" > "Devices and Printers". If your printer shows up, just make it your default printer. If it does not show up, use the "Add printer" option to add a new printer.

These options should have come up when you first configured W8.1.

This was the same procedure from Windows XP onwards, not anything new for W8.

Mishap, regarding default programmes, you have always had to specify which you want to use, most programmes try to make themselves the default when you install them. Again, these can be set/changed in control panel as previous versions of Windows.

W 8 and 8.1 are a total pain in the proverbial.

You have to go to control panel and choose which programmes you want as default for performing various actions, otherwise it makes up its own mind - you do of course have to load those programmes to start with before you can choose them - e.g. I have Photoshop as default for opening photos. And whatever you do don't click on an email link or you get into a right tortuous process - copy and paste the address into your email address bar.

I am a technonumpty who has just changed to Windows 8.1, and got the same message when trying to print. It said I had to use One Note 2013 for the first time before I could perform this function. I signed on to the One Note, and now it contains my photos, which I didn't want, but I can at least now can print Word documents. I found that going to the same item saved in the Cloud file was a way round it. Sometimes I tried to print items using the 'charm', accessed on the right of the screen, but it states that printing is only possible from apps. On these occasions I found that using the Control+P route works. I changed from Windows Vista, so the whole system is totally different for me, but I am slowly getting there!
I am sure you will get proper help from the experts on here - good luck!