Dear Computer Lady,
Hi, I love your newsletter!
Last year my husband got me a new laptop for Christmas. My home desktop is Windows 7 so I figured I’d just have to get used to the new system.
The one thing I hate about Win8 is that Solitaire and other card games are so different from previous versions. All of the games (just like all the other “apps”) take over the whole screen instead of opening in a window. And there is no way to turn them off without shutting down the computer – at least I haven’t found one. When I close a game, it’s at the same place when I open it again, which makes me think it’s been running in the background the whole time.
So my question is, are there earlier versions of Solitaire, Spider, Freecell, etc., that will run on Win8?
Thank you, Sarah
Dear Sarah,
First, let me share with you how to close those pesky full-screen apps in Windows 8, then I will address the game issue.
When you want to close an app in Windows 8 that doesn’t have any obvious way to close it, jut point your cursor to the very top of your screen.
When the cursor turns into a hand, hold the mouse button down and drag the cursor all the way down to the bottom of the screen. This will close the app.
As far as solitaire games go, there is no way to get the games from earlier versions of Windows to install on your Windows 8 computer. However, I long ago purchased a solitaire game from http://www.solsuite.com/ which includes over 500 versions of solitaire, including freecell, spider and probably any othe version that you can think of.
They are a great little company that keeps updating their game. It is currently on special for $9.99 instead of the usual $19.95.
Elizabeth
It’s Your Turn: What do you think?
…. Share your experience in the comments box below.
Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
Connect with Elizabeth on Google+
This article tells how to get the games from the store and you can copy the old versions of these games to your Windows 8 system and make a few tweaks to get them working) :
http://www.howtogeek.com/122145/what-happened-to-solitaire-and-minesweeper-in-windows-8/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2042582/have-some-frugal-fun-with-these-11-free-windows-8-games.html#tk.nl_win – minesweeper