Finding Answers to the Unknown...

[MarvinP]

I bought a Surface Pro the first day they came out to replace my Dell XPS laptop as my desktop workstation. I'm driving a huge 30 inch second screen from my Surface Pro and both work great. I did however need to learn how to tap, press and hold, swipe, pinch, slide from left, U-Turn and many other gestures to do things that I think are possible. Of course this gesture stuff only works on my Surface screen and I need to use the mouse to do similar things on the larger non-touch Dell screen. That means I need to know/learn that a bottom up swipe on the pro is the same thing as a right click on the mouse. I also bought a wedge mouse to go along with my Surface as it allows touch gestures on its surface too. All this works wonderfully until I run an older application (or newer one) that isn't gesture aware. Then I need to find the scroll bar and drag them up/down or left/right instead of flicking screens.....

I'm pretty old to be learning all this new stuff when it is hard enough to keep up with Excel questions and answers. BTW - did you know that in Excel 2013 there is a Touch vs Mouse setting that makes the Icon's bigger so you can touch them easier if you have a touch screen???

I installed Windows 8.1 Preview on my Surface last Monday to see what features it has. I made a Restore thumb drive before doing the upgrade to insure I could get back if 8.1 was real buggy.

My first and only problem with 8.1 was with this site. Or it might have been with Internet Explorer. Or it might have been with the vBulletin version this site uses??

When I tried to type anything into this message area I could only see two lines of text. I looked for IE problems and found a site that suggested I change the IE Options -> Advanced Tab and uncheck some security settings. This didn't help. I sent email to Arlette asking if she had ever seen this and she said she would let the tech team know.

I later discovered that when I tried to open an attached .xls or .xlsx I got a message that attachment.php was about to be downloaded and I got an error message. I sent this concern to Arlette also thinking it was a conflict with Windows 8.1 or IE preview and the Excelforum.com site. She sent this concern to the tech team again.

So I've been trying to help solve forum questions when I can only see 2 lines of my text in the message area and can't download any of the sample files. It has been like this for 5 days.

Today I finally decided to fix this and called Microsoft Tech Support line 3 times. I got 2 "accidental disconnects" and 1 message that they were closed for the weekend. I did an online chat with a Microsoft Store salesperson who suggested I needed to go back to my Restore version of Windows 8 to fix anything.

My wife heard me yelling at he phone for needing to go through the routing tree 3 times to find out they were closed for the weekend and asked if she could help. I asked her to do some searching on the net to see if there is a fix for Windows 8.1 Preview and or IE or our forum problems. She asked how my compatibility settings were set.

I've never seen or heard of "Compatibility Settings". She clicked my computer a few times and Poof... I can see the whole message area and download .xls files.
See
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...-turn-off.html
for what she did.

I'm pretty good with Excel and Access but not so good with IE, as you can understand above.

I have a new appreciation for OP's who ask questions and have no idea where to start. When you don't know about Compatibility or VLookup or Dynamic Named Ranges you don't know what to ask. I'm lucky to have a wife who knew this answer or I'd still be angry at Arlette, Windows 8.1 and IE Preview.

When you have no idea what the problem is .. Finding answers to the Unknown is really hard....

[Tony Valko]

I feel your pain.

I did however need to learn how to tap, press and hold, swipe, pinch, slide from left, U-Turn and many other gestures to do things that I think are possible.

If that's the future of computing then I guess I'm as far as I can go. I refuse to do any of that. I sit more than an arms length away from my monitor and I refuse to get any closer just to make stupid hand gestures!

What about all the smudges on the screen?

[JBeaucaire]

What about all the smudges on the screen?

Oh man, Cheetos-crumbled smudges...everywhere!

[abousetta]

I have to clean the tablet screen after my kids go to sleep (it's not mine anymore... especially after I upgraded it to Windows 8). New ways of interacting with artificial intelligence is definitely the future. Google seems to think so...http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-it-feels/

I don't know when computer learning will hit forums, but I have seen a lot of businesses now incorporating computer learning algorithms to predict everything from your chances of getting pregnant (if you're a woman... just to be clear) to which suspect is most likely to be the culprit based on eye witness sketches.

abousetta

[MarvinP]

The smudges on the screen are wiped away with the ever-present bottle of "CleanScreen" that claims to not hurt electronic equipment. Maybe I should buy some stock in this company?

[TMS]

I refuse to get any closer just to make stupid hand gestures!

I sit wherever I want to make hand gestures at my computer ... seems to make no difference, it still ignores me.

[FDibbins]

whew thanks for that Trevor, I thought it was just me

[Tony Valko]

Stock?

Yeah!

Never thought about it like that.

[Tony Valko]

Instead of flipping the bird at my machine I prefer to cuss very loudly.

[FDibbins]

Hows that working for you Tony? I tried that, maybe Im not using the right words?

[Tony Valko]

It's a good stress reliever but the machine is not impressed!

[Paul]

Try yelling in Korean or Chinese, as most parts of your computer were likely built in one of those countries. Careful what you say, though, we don't need to start WW3.