Still can't install Mint 13 instead of windows 8

[lookslikeadam]

Can someone please help! I bought a Fujitsu AH512 this week with windows 8 pre-installed.
Spec:
Intel core i3 2328M 2.2 Ghz processor
4 Gb Ram
320 gb Hdd

I hadn't heard anything of windows 8 before buying this laptop, but now I know, I hate it. I was expecting to simply be able to install Mint 13 xfce or cinnamon 64-bit and remove windows altogether, i.e have the freedom to use this hardware that I just bought as I wish.
I've spent the last 4 days reading and re-reading posts, forums and articles all about the controversy with windows 8 (many went right over my head). I've been navigating myself through UEFI, BIOS, boot disks and system settings (all of which I knew nothing about before). I've learned a lot but got nowhere. Give a newbie windows 8 and tell them to remove it is a great way to get them educated! But it's become so frustrating.
I've disabled secure boot by pressing F2 to enter BIOS/UEFI, and can navigate UEFI to some extent, but if I set to boot from USB CD/DVD, it always gets reset back to windows boot manager next time i check and never boots from disk. The first time i went into boot options by pressing F12, I had the option to boot from DVD. Ever since then it's disappeared. I've managed to install linux mint 13 cinnamon 64 bit bootloader, but windows boot manager always comes up first saying windows has failed to launch and have the option to try again with Mint (getting the same result) or boot windows.
I think it has somthing to do with platform keys and signatures blah blah being manually set because the motherboard blah blah recognizes windows certificates blah blah and not other operating systems... but thats all mumbo jumbo to me. Does anyone know how I can stop windows controlling my machine and ultimately get it out of my life! I don't want it duel booted, i want it gone.
I tried sending it back to the retailer but they won't acknowledge this as a problem and refuse to take it back as I've "opened the box".
Any help is very much appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

[austin.texas]

If the DVD option is not showing, you may have disabled the Boot Menu option, (which also disables the F12 capablities when you boot).
Press F2 when you boot, and go to the Boot Menu, and make sure the "Boot Menu" option is enabled.
Then, once you get the computer to boot from the Mint DVD, just click on the Install icon on the desktop, and then choose the "Use Entire Drive" option. That will erase Windows and your troubles will be over.

[lookslikeadam]

I still have F12 capabilities but some options are missing since I used it the first time. I can't seen any disable boot menu option either. It seems to reset the boot menu in UEFI after I select to boot from USB CD/DVD. It doesn't seem to want to give me control

[notransponder]

In the toshiba bios there is more than one setting that needs to be changed to turn off eufi loading.
I would suggest revisiting your machine's bios settings and looking through all the bios entries to check.
I'm sure you will find another setting that needs changing.

I was also driven nuts by until I got all the bios settings sorted.