Later, I realized that while I had covered several ways to shut down Windows 8, I had not written an article about these techniques.Īs you may remember, in How do I shut down Windows 8, Mark Kaelin showed you how to create shutdown shortcut that you can put on the desktop, the taskbar and on the Start screen. As the discussion evolved, I also pointed out that you can shut down Windows 8 using the power button on your desktop PC or closing the lid on a laptop. Even without such a keyboard, a plain old desktop shortcut can be configured to respond to a keyboard shortcut. I then told him that using a keyboard with programmable hot keys, one could easily configure a key on the keyboard to Shut down Windows 8. This blog post is also available as a Screenshot Gallery. As the discussion heated up in a friendly manner, he snarkily said, 'There's no shut down key on the keyboard!' As a quick retort, I said 'Well, there can be!' After a recent discussion with a friend of mine about getting used to using the key on the keyboard in Windows 8 instead of pining away for the Start button, my friend asked about shutting down Windows.
