Probably the cheapest route to getting Windows 8

If you are inclined to upgarade, read carefully.   

Microsoft today opened its virtual store and began selling upgrades to Windows 8 Pro for $39.99, making good on a promise made last summer.

The upgrade, which must be downloaded and installed via a utility called "Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant," can be applied to Windows XP-, Vista-, and Windows 7-powered systems.

Microsoft announced the upgrade in July, a bit more than a month after it issued the last of three public previews, but before it wrapped up its work on the new OS.

The upgrade does the most thorough job when migrating a machine from Windows 7, which is the only edition that conducts a "full" upgrade, the label for an upgrade that brings along everything, including data files, user accounts, Windows settings and installed applications.

Windows XP-to-Windows 8 upgrades are the least comprehensive, allowing customers to move only personal files; Vista transfers both Windows settings and personal files to Windows 8.

Although the $39.99 buys only the upgrade's 2GB digital download, users can optionally request a DVD for an additional $14.99. The combination is about $15 cheaper than the $69.99 DVD-in-a-box that Microsoft and retailers, including Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Amazon, are now selling.

Pokki, think of it as your new Windows 8 start menu on steroids..

Another cool program that will allow you to easily install your "Apps" to your Windows 8 PC.  Seems like it can be a handy tool.  It also gives you a start menu as well.   Seems like the developer world is stepping in where Microsoft stepped out.  Check it out here. 

Finally, I can support upgrading to Windows 8 - A Start Menu!!

My only real reservation about Windows 8 was the lack of a start button, with all of the elements that it contains.  Seems Microsoft wanted you to learn a new way of accessing everything.  No more.  A free program called....get ready...."Classic Start Menu" returns the old start menu to Windows 8.  You have no idea of how happy I am about this.  This really was the only non-sensical element of Windows 8 I had issues with.  You can get it here or you can get it on Ninite.com, it is a newly added program to the site.

How to shut down Windows 8...Don't laugh

Really, until you have played with a Windows PC without a start button, you may never know the initial frustration, so before the Friday launch, let me save you the headache in having to learn it the hard way.

In pretty much every version of Windows prior to this one, you'd click Start, then Shut Down.

Windows 8 notoriously lacks a Start button, so obviously the old rules don't apply here. More on that in a moment; in the meantime, here's how to shut down Windows 8:

1. Mouse over the little gadget in the lower right corner of the screen. (You can also move your mouse cursor to the upper left corner; same result. Or, you can press Windows-C on your keyboard.)

2. In the slide-out menu (known as the Charms Bar) that appears, click Settings.

3. Click the Power button, and then click your desired action: Sleep, Shut down, or Update and restart.

So, there you have it. In Windows 8, it requires four actions to shut down your PC: hover, click, click, and click.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It's always been something of a joke that shutting down your PC required a click of the Start button. Now the joke has turned downright cruel, with Microsoft seemingly going out of its way to hide one of the most basic computing options. In. The. Settings. Menu.

Shutting down a PC is not a setting. It should not require three clicks. Windows 8 arrives with a bunch of cool-looking tiles in its Start screen; how hard would it have been to add a Power tile?

Create Shortcuts without the silly arrow attached...and without the word "shortcut"

You can remove those arrows by changing a Registry setting, but that's the hard way to do it--and possibly dangerous. You're better off using free software that can tweak the Registry for you.

If you're using Windows XP, download and install Microsoft's TweakUI (if you haven't, already). This is one of those programs that every XP user should have. Removing the arrows is only one of its useful functions.

Click for full size

If you don't want new shortcuts to be named "Shortcut to…," select Explorer in the left pane. Scroll down the settings list until you find Prefix "Shortcut to" on new shortcuts, and uncheck that option. This setting may require a reboot.Once you have TweakUI up and running, expand the Explorer section in the left pane, then select Shortcut. In the larger, right pane, you'll find four 'Shortcut overlay' options, including None. Select your choice, then click Apply or OK.

Microsoft didn't create a TweakUI for Vista and later versions of Windows. Luckily, Ramesh Kumar did it for them, and made Ultimate Windows Tweaker freely available. It's portable, so you don't have to install it, and it runs fine in Windows 7, 8, and Vista.

Once you're running the program, click Additional Tweaks in the left pane. Check Remove arrows from Shortcut icons, and/or Remove "-Shortcut" suffix for new shortcuts. Click Apply before closing the window.

You'll need to log off and on again to see the results.

Email Scams are staging a comeback

Security vendors Sophos and Kaspersky Lab both have in recent days warned of scam emails using the names of well-established companies to try to lure victims to malware sites. The scheme is obvious, or ought to be—the bad guys figure that if they use a trusted name, victims will trust the link.

The scams have been present virtually since email began, but security experts say they are increasing at an accelerating pace.

On Kaspersky Lab's Threatpost blog, Brian Donohue wrote: "Criminal hackers launched an attack campaign earlier this week in which they sent a slew of emails purporting to come from the financial software developer Intuit. The emails contained links that led to sites hosting the Blackhole exploit kit in an apparent attempt to infect the machines of corporate users."

There are multiple other examples, purporting to come from American Express, Microsoft and others.

For more and the complete article from PCWorld.