To turn off a program in W8, press the 5th button from the left (the "X" in the box) in the top row of keys. When you press the "power" button to shut your machine off, that is just a short term power off. To get to the controls for longer shutdown, press the Windows window button (3rd button from left in bottom key row) and the letter "c" at the same time. Then click on the "Settings" icon, click the "Power" icon, and click the kind of closedown you want. The right panel you get up when you do the above can also help you to do many other things; just play with it a bit. The "Search" space at the very top can help you find just about anything regarding your computer that you want, if you can remember the name for it. There is a sort of traditional Start page (minus Start button) you can get by using the X I mentioned above. You should find the Explorer "e" on there somewhere. There is probably a W8 manual online somewhere; the documentation that comes with the new computers has almost nothing. I didn't like all the memory-draining videos that seem unavoidable when being directed to the Microsoft home page, so I went to Google and downloaded their Chrome browser, which is what I am using right now. Good luck--it is quite an adjustment, but the changes make sense, sort of, after you get used to them. Here is a link that might be useful: Microsoft Windows 8 Product Guide

The Toshiba A135 received a Very Good rating from cnet. Cnet doesn't give very many $1000 affordable laptops that high of a rating. I recently bought the A135 2877, I believe is the model, the one with 2 gs of mem. (would recommend 2 gigs minimum for vista, from what I hear. It has a 180g hard drive, actually two seperate hard drives, a 100g plus an 80g. Great for backing up your system. With this much memory and hd space, you could collect a sizeable video and audio library (were talking hundreds of songs and movies). It runs Vista flawlessly. Yes, there are faster systems out there. I would have loved one with the Nvidia graphics card, which would give you a whopping 512m of shared graphics memory. The Intel that comes with the A135 has 256megs, acceptable. For about $1100 at costco online, I thinks it's one of the best deals out there. It was about $300 more than I wanted to spend on a laptop, but I'm just thinking where technology is going today, with streaming video, tv and music becomming more and more prevailant, before too long, anything less that 2 gigs of memory and a harddrive less than 100 gigs will probably be obsolete in the next couple years. I think this will be sufficient for our needs for some years to come. -- john

I read this forum quite regularly, but rarely post here...But sometimes.... I just gotta say it..... You people are nuts...... I am quite used to people telling me I am nuts and have no idea what I am talking about when it comes to such matters, BUT since I am never, make that NEVER the one who has neither virus/malware issues and problems and NEVER have spent even a dime nor any time on such matters, the reality of the situation is that I and the few other Linux users here are really the only ones who have any idea what they are talking about when it comes to PC Operating Systems and PC "security".... A whole forum of "what should I get","what's wrong" "I bought/installed and/but" "what should I do". Soon many reading this will be thinking "Oh he's just one of those Linux nutscases" But, ask yourself, does he "Buy this", "get this", "do this"......Oh yeah, and then ask yourself if your system can match mine on safety, security, performance. I have yet to have either of these boxes contract a virus or a worm or a root-kit nor any other form of malware, not bad for systems running zero AV/security software..... I very rarely ever disconnect from the W3 and rarely ever even turn either of these things off. I have 4 browsers running right now and my email account has been open for days. Other than an outgoing firewall, I am currently running absolutely zero "security" software of any kind. And no reformatting, no scans, no defrags, no registry anythings. I watch videos, play music, redo photo's, make phone calls and do all sorts of other sometimes fun stuff with neither and never a worry nor a care. And my total investment in Operating Systems and software on both boxes equals zero dollars and zero cents. And all my upgrades/dates are free too..... Do yourselves a big favor and go to distrowatch.com, read about the different flavors of Linux and pick yourself out a few LiveCD versions to trial. Or you can always just wait for MSWin7 to be released and start buying all sorts of new software to go along with your already penetrated and compromised, outdated and obsolete brand new high dollar Operating System. Some of the new Linus distro's are so simple to install and use that my best friends 59 y.o.wife has installed several different versions on the same hard-drive and has figured out how to use them all with little more than dang near no assistance from any body. She has even figured out how to use Knoppix6 full time and save everything she does/wants to a persistant image. Oh yeah, she is really good at kids and cooking and sewing and fishing and growing things and all sorts of DIY stuff, but, when it comes to computers, she has the techno-savvy and training of your average box of rocks..... Dang folks....even my daughter, whose "technotude" is somewhat close to absolutely zero has installed and has everything running and learned the ins and outs of both SimplyMepis and VectorLinux on her PC all by her little ol' self. And while her friends are having regular issues after frequenting such mandatory malware magnet sites as YouTube, and MySpace she has nothing of the sort, ever.... But, if you wanna believe that you must MUST have MSWin-something, feel free to spend way too much for way too little, and want to keep spending and installing/scanning/removing/etc for no other reason than you insist on running something as shaky and insecure as Vista1, hurry up and buy the fix for Vista1, Vista2, otherwise known as MSWin7, that's certainly your right.... Well, let's see...I may have exaggerated things a bit by stating the "free" thing........Getting Linux will cost you somewhere around $.125 for a blank CD-R, or the current cost of a blank DVD-R.... HAGD Here is a link that might be useful: better than MSWindows, IMHO it is anyway

PolarPrincess - If you have a USB port, buy an external hard drive that connects to the USB port and copy ALL of your data (pictures and other personal files) to it. Then your data is safe and you can clean up the rest of the system. If not, burn them to CD for safety. THEN: 1 - Empty the Trash 2 - Search for files on the entire system, using this search pattern" *.bak (those are temporary files that can be deleted) 3 - Delete all of those files. 4 - Empty the trash again. 5 - Search for all *.tmp files and delete them 6 - Empty the trash again. 7 - Run the Windows XP "check disk" utility as described here: http://www.updatexp.com/windows-xp-chkdsk.html It may take quite a while ... 8 - Then try running the defragmentation program.