Tech Talk: Windows 8.1 - Start Screen

The start screen of Windows 8.1 were met with a lukewarm reception with some disappointed by the abandonment of the familiarity of the previous operating systems and with some embracing the new change. The Start Screen brought a colourful screen with new colour schemes and background patterns which could be adapted and personalised to the users' preference. The Start Screen became a hub for just about a lot of things with information gleaned at a glance such as e-mail and news headlines, which I find makes it that much more easier and fluid to use due to less management.

At first glance, the screen shows apps and of any live notifications on apps that have live tiles. An arrow can be seen near the bottom right which is used to access Apps view which shows of all the program/apps listed. Top right of the screen shows:

• Microsoft login name - Can be used to sign out of the account or change the profile picture.
• Power button - Gives options of Sleep, Shutdown and Restart.
• Search button - Search through everything or refine the search to a specific area and even gives an option to search the web.

There are options to customise the app tiles to make it personal to your liking. You can access them by holding down on a app or if you're using a touch screen or right clicking and a tick mark will come up on the highlighted app. By doing this, the following options come up:

• Unpin from Start - removes from the Start Screen but does not uninstall it.
• Unpin from taskbar - unpins it from the taskbar found on the desktop.
• Uninstall - uninstall the app completely from the system.
• Resize - resize the app to Small, Medium, Wide or Large.
• Turn live tile off - turns off the live notification on the display of the tile.

Not all the apps will have the full resize scale and may just have one or two on display such as Internet Explorer only having Small and Medium. Resizing the app to small may not be to everyone's taste either as some app live updates may disappear as a result of it.

Accessing the settings on the charms bar will give you different options:

• Personalise - You can change the background and colour schemes that fits your mood, it especially helped me in seeking new inspirations - makes a nice change!
• Tiles - Show more tiles on the Start Screen so there is more apps in view without having to scroll along the screen for the rest. You can also change the amount in view in Apps view. You can also hide personal info from the live tiles should you wish not to have it displayed in view of the public such as E-mail live notifications.
• Help - Get tips and tricks on using the Start Screen and other aspects of using Windows 8.1

There are also an option to turn off the notifications for a duration of time which can be found at the bottom of Settings in the charms bar. It can be turned off for a duration of 8, 3 or 1 hour. The charms bar is useful for finding out the time and date as it is not found on the Start Screen and can be found on the bottom left of the screen when it comes up. This can be used at any point when using Windows 8.1 to find out the time/date.

If you like organising your apps on the screen, you can group them together and create a group name for them. You can re-arrange the apps by click and drag or hold and drag the app to the desired location. If you want to move a whole group of apps, click or tap the dash found on the bottom right of the screen and drag the group to the desired location.

To name a group, you can right click anywhere in the background and select "Name Groups" or drag up from the bottom of the screen and click customise to bring up a space to fill out the group name.

Apps can be added from the Apps view on to the Start Screen which will be explored in another blog post!