I have a new HP ENVY dv6 notebook computer with 6 GB RAM, a 750-GB hard drive, and Windows 8. I have not yet transferred files from my eight-year-old laptop onto it, so the new machine has a ton of free space.
I have pretty much figured out how to work around the obstacles that Windows 8 erects for my edification, but I am not happy with the performance of this unit. Take Microsoft Outlook, for example. On the laptop I'm replacing (which had a 40 GB hard drive, maybe 4 GB RAM, and lots of stuff stored on it), when the Inbox is highlighted and I click on, say, Contacts, the switch to Contacts happens instantaneously with no interference. When I make the same 'maneuver' on the Windows 8 machine, the little blue spinning circle that apparently means 'wait a minute' flashes on the screen before the actual switch from Inbox to Contacts occurs. It doesn't last long, but why on earth should it appear at all when I'm doing something so simple and non-resource-intensive???
It's not just Outlook, either. While I was chatting with HP tech support, every time I would type something into the chat field, the little blue circle would appear again. I usually have at least four or five applications running at the same time, so if this is going to happen with only a couple of programs open, I won't be able to use this machine.
I was told by the store from which I purchased the computer to switch the Power setting to High Performance, which helped a little but did not solve the problem. I have also run disk cleanup, which hardly needed to be done and made no difference.
Has anyone else dealt with this? I would be most grateful for any suggestions, as tomorrow is the last day I can return this computer to the store for a refund if I need to.
Thanks!
Joan