Re: Support is impossible
... us poor IT admins for friends and family. I had someone this Christmas asking what laptop to buy from PC World - a good family friend in his 70's. I told him to try to get a Win 7 one
Obviously not visited PC World et al in a while, Win 7 machines haven't been available from high street retailers for several years now...
ruined by Win 8
Well suggest you firstly double check that it was actually supplied with 8.1 and wasn't a bargain bucket end-of-line 8 system - which will need to be nursed through the 5+ GB series of updates to a fully patched 8.1 system.
I would firstly install ClassicShell, although you have to undergo a crash course in Win8 UI basics to achieve this (but tutorials are now available), but once done your life will become much easier, since many admin things will now be accessible in a way you are familiar with. This will enable you to more easily get to grips with updates, installing printers, etc....
Then I would create two accounts, one for you with all the admin stuff on display etc. and one for for friend which can be stripped down to how he wants it to be (including not running classicshell).
About the only real thing to remember with Win8, is many companies (eg. printer vendors) produce one distribution for pre-Win8 OS's and another for Win8.
Yes, I don't like the Win8 UI/UX, but with a little patience you'll find your knowledge of previous versions isn't totally redundant. However, it pains me to find good stuff in 8.1 that is effectively obscured by the poor UI/UX...