Hello and welcome to our quaint forums!
First off, what brand of PC is your laptop? Also, have you checked if you have a Synaptics or other touchpad driver in the notification tray on the Taskbar? That should have some options available for you to change. If not, go to Start and type in mouse, hit Settings, then hit the Mouse entry to see if options can be changed from that panel.
Now, I'm guessing you PROBABLY need some learning of the ways of the Windows 8. No problem!
This is what I'd recommend to go over with Windows 8 and especially with your touchpad as that is rather fundamental to the use of Windows.
First, learn the touchpad gestures. There are at least seven different gestures depending on the PC. My bet is that you have all so this won't be a problem. Swipe from the right side of the pad inward, opens the Charms. From the left, switches apps that are open. Swipe from the bottom of the pad opens the app command bar. Pinch to zoom to go to zoom in or out. On some PCs when you're on the Desktop, a three finger gesture downwards will minimize all your open windows. Three up will show the window/app selector ribbon. Three left or right is the same as clicking the back or forth button in any program. You can probably also do a rotate gesture with Photo Viewer as well. Two fingers up or down will scroll. Although I'm not sure on your particular laptop, please report back if the gestures do work on that.
Second, learn how to pin things to Start. The Start Screen is VERY easy to get configured when you figure out what to do. This is simple. Open File Explorer and go through and find things like Documents, Pictures, Videos, and Music Libraries and right click on them. Then, you will see, Pin to Start. Do that for all sorts of things other than libraries, like folders, program shortcuts, Recycle Bin, Computer, ect. Hit Start, go to the end, and click and drag the tiles around to how you'd like. To remove tiles, right click them, then hit Unpin from Start at the bottom.
Third, uninstall the apps you don't want. This is dreadfully simple that most that decry Windows 8 don't seem to know. Right click on the app tiles, on the bottom of the screen you'll see an option to Uninstall. Hit that, and hit Uninstall again and that's it. But I'd suggest to keep the Weather, News, Finance, and maybe the Calendar or Mails apps as they're nice to have.
Fourth, choose program defaults. If you want IE 10 to ALWAYS open on the Desktop, you can do that by opening up IE on the Desktop, hit the Tools cog on the top right of the window, Internet Options, Programs, and set IE to always open on the Desktop. Do this for other programs like Photo Viewer over Photos, Windows Media Player (or VLC or whatever music player you'd like) over Music.
Then install Decor8. It will make the Start Screen look very cool!
Numero six, ideally, you'd want to uninstall all the crap and bloatware that comes on OEM PCs, they generally install stupid things like power "utilities" and other dumbware that takes Control Panel items into their own applets that waste resources. Makes things a tad faster and improves boot time.
Seven, open the Task Manager, hit the Startup tab, and disable all the items that don't deal with needed programs like said idiotic power utilities. Leave things like the touchpad software enabled.
Windows 8, open some apps, and use the touch gestures I said of earlier to navigate around. Just a simple type to search will start searching. No need to hunt down a search bar. The Settings charm is what is used to change app settings, sound, power, and screen brightness. This is used very often. Share will be used if you're in an app and want to email someone a link to a website, but this is ONLY within apps, not on the Desktop. Things work differently. To close an app, move the mouse pointer to the top of the screen, see the little hand icon, click, and just drag down. BAM! That simple. To change some settings like Start Screen colors, account picture, picture password, and some other things, open the Charms, hit Settings, and you'll see PC Settings at the bottom. PC Settings is a condensed down Control Panel of very commonly changed settings within Windows. Also, on the Desktop, opening the Settings charm will display a few things from the Control Panel, like Personalization and PC Info.
8 simple things for the Windows 8.
And some screenshots to show how to arrange the Start Screen nicely...
Windows 8 was designed for touch, you have a touchpad that makes interacting with Windows 8 better than a standard three button mouse (if you can get your issues resolved with the hovering feature, that should be an option to turn off). Simply, learn to take advantage of the Start Screen, make things your own, and use the touch gestures of your new and shiny laptop and you'll quickly start liking things and won't feel so lost anymore. Also, ask us whatever questions you have. That's the main thing here, ask and you will theoretically know.