Technical information

Chapter 1: The New Start Screen

Tap a Charms bar icon, and Windows gives a hint as

to its purpose. For example, tapping the Settings

area’s Screen icon on a tablet presents a sliding bar

for adjusting the screen’s brightness. Sitting atop the

sliding bar is a lock icon that keeps the screen from

rotating, which is handy for reading e-books.

Introducing your free apps

The Windows 8 Start screen comes stocked with sev-

eral free apps, each living on its own square or rect-

angular tile. Every tile is labeled, so you know what’s

what. The tiles for some apps, known as live tiles,

change constantly. The Finance app tile, for example,

constantly updates with the stock market’s latest

swings; the Weather tile always tells you what to

expect when you walk outdoors.

The Windows 8 Start screen shows only some of

your apps; to see them all, right-click a blank por-

tion of the Start screen and choose All Apps from

the screen’s bottom.

You may spot some or all of the following apps on the

list, ready to be launched at the click of a mouse or

touch of a finger:

✓ Calendar: This lets you add your appointments

or grab them automatically from calendars

already created through accounts with Google

or Hotmail.

✓ Camera: This lets you snap photos with your

computer’s built-in camera or webcam.

✓ Desktop: Choose this to fetch the traditional

Windows desktop, which runs the Windows pro-

grams you’ve used for the past decade. I cover

the desktop in Chapter 2.

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