How to disable gestures (charms bar, edge swipes, etc...) without changing the registry

A million thank you-s that charm bar was driving me insane!!!!!

I've had a Windows 8 laptop for a few days and the charms bar/settings pages that kept popping up out of nowhere were driving me absolutely insane.  BUT, I finally figured out how to turn them off. 

I went into control panel>hardware and sound>mouse>device settings>settings.  From there you can adjust a lot of the trackpad settings, including DISABLE EDGE SWIPES. 

I have a Toshiba Satellite with a synaptics mouse/trackpad, so i cant guarantee this works with all models, devices, etc. 

Windows 8 for laptop is now tolerable!  Hope this helps!

I would very much like to turn these things off too but I have a Lenovo Ideapad and I cannot find the edge swipe options.  I have followed the instructions above but I've clicked on every option under device setting> setting and I have not found it.  I found Edge Motion but that does not seem to the correct item...  any help would be very much appreciated.

you can still press the windows key on the keyboard which will bring up the apps

THANK YOU! This was driving me crazy! I also downloaded a 'skin' to make it look like my old windows program. But how do I get to all the apps now? Just wondering, although I'm not sure I'll ever need them?