Softbank, one of the 4 mobile operators in Japan (with Docomo, au, Willcom), has a cute dog as a mascot, that plays the role of father of an atypical Japanese family in TV commercials.

In this commercial, done for promoting a dog-shaped mobile phone speakerphone (WTF? Who will buy it?), Quentin Tarantino is Tara-chan, the tough guy that is scared by his own wife, hahaha

So, you downloaded Windows 8, and you installed it to try the new features.

Probably, like me, you have been shocked from the crazy new start menu that, maybe it's perfect to be used with a touchscreen, but it's so awkard to use with a mouse, with those huge icons and lack of features: where is the calculator??? And the notepad? What if I want to open "My Computer?"

There is a way to disable this new interface, just install Classic Shell. (I suggest to install only "classic start menu", don't install other tweaks that the setup is suggesting)

Once installed, you have the best of both worlds: classic start menu and, optionally also the new menu.

At this point you will ask yourself: "Why should I use Windows 8 instead of Windows 7?" Well, I think Microsoft did many improvements over it: it's much faster and Explorer.exe is much better

Honestly, after having some time with the new menu, I got used to it, and I like it better than the classic one: it's easier to customize and keep it clean from useless programs: I just missed the start button.

If you tried to install Windows 8 in VirtualBox, you saw that you could not complete the setup due to various errors.

If you want to install it you have to create a new virtual machine like this:

1. Make sure that your CPU supports the VT virtualization extensions
2. Create a new Windows 7 VM for 32bit
3. Give it more than 1GB RAM
4. After the creation, go in settings
5. In System, in the first tab, enable IO APIC (VirtualBox suggests to don't enable it for Windows systems, but we will enable it anyway)
6. In the second tab, enable PAE/NX
7. In the third tab, enable VT-X/AMD-V and the nested paging

Now the setup will be successful

After the setup, you might want to increase the screen resolution to run any Metro application.

If you want to disable the tablet interface, you can follow this other guide.

From September, 14th, it's possible to download the developer preview of Windows 8, at this address: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516

Don't download the one with the developer tools: it's mostly useless for common people, I suggest to download the 32bit on because it works better in emulators. (I don't recommend to install it in a real computer: data loss ahead!)

After the installation, I bet that you want to disable Metro, the new graphical interface: here is how to do.

If you want to run Windows 8 in VirtualBox you need to follow some directives, otherwise the installation won't be completed.

Recently I went in China, and seeing the prices, it was difficult to don't buy too much stuff, even online, sending the stuff to the hotel address.

As an Italian, I was skeptical about the shipping time: in Italy the snail mail is slower than real snails, for example an invoice that I sent to my customer in May, arrived last week...

But, I was pleasantly surprised, here are two examples:

Parcel 1, light, spare parts that are almost impossible to find in Europe (inside a common air bubble envelope): from Wenzhou to Guangzhou, 1250 km,

Sent at 7pm, arrived at 4pm of the next day! Sending fee: about $5!

As an Italian, I could even not conceive a letter sent at 7pm that can arrive the day after. And the price includes the pick-up fee!

Parcel 2, a little heavier, a T-Mobile myTouch slide: from da Guangzhou t Jilin, 3250 km

Sent Sunday, arrived Tuesday, with cash on delivery and the option to actually try the device before the payment (!). Total price: about $8

Again, I was shocked, a courier that works on Sunday!