The shut down button hidden under the settings button which is hidden on the lower left-hand corner of the screen. Too many clicks, it does not power off the computer and from what I am reading it does not work with a touchscreen. I do realize this is just a preview, but I hope Microsoft addresses this and other issues before it releases the live version. Looking good so far, though.

It took me some time to figure out how to shut down Windows 8 at first. It turns out, it isn’t overly hard. All you have to do is put your mouse at the bottom-left corner of the screen until the “Charms” menu appears. Click on Settings, and a bar will appear on the right side of the screen. Select Power, then Shut Down.

I have read of many paths to a shutdown option, but cannot, for my life, find the method in the above posts. My "Charms" bar is on the lower Right hand corner?
But, I find the win key + 1, or Alt F4 is sufficient. I have also put the shutdown options into my desktop right click menu, but forget to use it!

just drag the cursor over to right top corner and descend towards bottom,this side bar will appear with settings' option in the bottom,just click it and the click on to power and shut down.

I found it much easier to simple add Shutdown, Restart and Log Off shortcuts directly on the desktop as shown in this thread. I then further pinned them to my QL toolbar, but they can be pinned to the Taskbar or left on the Taskbar. I have done this since I started using Win XP. A simple One Click shutdown.

MS is their infinite wisdom, decided ages ago, to make shutting down your computer a rat-maze of Click here, then Click there, then..............well you all know what I mean.

With Windows 3.xx and Win-95 I just played their silly game, but with '98 I found the Quick Shutdown shortcut and it's been all good since then. Windows 2000, which I never ran, had a completely different syntax for their shortcut to Shutdown. It took me a long time to find that, because not many people really talk about win-2000.

But throughout 98, ME, XP, Vista and Win-7 (and now Win-8) I've used a Quick Shutdown icon on my desktop and I've shared that with my customers. I have always put that icon right above the START button for some kind of continuity with those used go going to START to STOP.

But now, with Win-8, we no longer get a START button, so now I'm putting the Quick Shutdown icon right where the start button used to be. Shutdown is even faster now, because it's only ONE click instead of TWO. I think someone else is doing that too. Eh?

I know that when I set up the first Win-8 PC for one of my customers, they will be getting the red SHUTDOWN icon as well. (along with a full desktop, with important icons and maybe even a nice theme)


This is just one of my Win-8 desktops. They are many, and varied. So far I've found five different themes that are just beautiful.

It's been rumored, that when you shut down Win-8 from within the program, it doesn't really shut down at all, but more or less Hibernates. OH YUKK!

The Quick Shutdown method we've described here DOES perform a FULL SHUTDOWN, and makes it safe to shut off all power to the PC, if that's your habit.
Shutting off the power to the PC, like with a Power Strip, is the safest way to leave your PC.

Cheers mates!
TechnoMage