DeathNACan

I have found a third party application that seems to work very well. Unfortunately, you have to pay for it. For those interested, it is called "Seven Classic Start".

I know what you mean. Someone here suggested third party alternatives. As far as I know, there are none for the Start Menu. Is anyone out there aware of an option to either recreate the Class Start Menu or emulate it? Also, I tried one for Office 2007 under Vista, it did the job (sorta) but was buggy as can be.

I have a question. Doesn't it take more system resources and time to build or search a database of applications (even if it is the windows registry) for a list of programs than it does to display a static list without searching it? Assuming that Personalized menus are off that is. Wouldn't the Start Menu come up faster if all the OS had to do was sort, then display a listing rather than sort, search and display a list of the results? Is the new method actually more efficient or just more bloated code with the illusion of improvement?

Most companies will not allow the deployment of third-party applications like that even if the user is willing to pay for it. Therefor, this option is not available to the 99 percent of all users in the work environment. The reasons for this are quite simple: first they do not want to pay for it, third party applications have to be tested for compatibility and then supported which is an added cost. The same is true of freeware and public domain applications. It doesn't always make sense, but that is the way it is. Nice suggestion though. If you find one that will emulate the Classic Start Menu, let me know.

I'm not going to argue whether or not MS should have removed the Classic Start Menu. That issue was beaten to death in another forum here. I will say this... The best arguments against the new Start Menu and for Classic Star Menus are ergonomics and time. Consider this, with the Classic Start Menu, you are three clicks away from an application (assuming you turned off Personalized Menus that is). Searching, on the other hand, requires two clicks to get there and then you have to type in the text box some or part of what you want. Wait for it to appear. The likelihood is that it will not be in the same place it was the last time you saw it because it got moved by the OS. I really love that when I'm in a hurry! Then locate it, if you can, then click on it again. Now most people would think, how could this be a problem? But consider this: having to do this a several hundred to a thousand times a day or more a day as an IT Support Professional does. Not all software and upgrades are pushed out automatically (Not to mention new builds that have to be customized). Also, when you're in a hurry and have a hundred workstations to work on, even the time it takes the OS to search and list what you want is costing you productivity. Now add to that, the Power User who can also go through applications like an beer through an alcoholic's bladder. Just in case you don't believe that all those little clicks can add up, Google carpal tunnel, tendinitis and rotator-cuff injuries. Or you can just ask me, I got the hands, arms and shoulders to prove it and I got them one click at a time. We are supposed to be clicking and typing less, not more! Is this really an improvement?

Faster, for the most part. Some good changes in the GUI; mostly more bad changes in the GUI. Good: Customization options better organized than Vista. Still a mess though. Bad: Getting ride of Classic Start Menu Options (This forces users to type to find things and delays time it takes to do task. As a person with several multiple use injuries to both my hands and arms, the last thing I need to do is more typing. Secondly, it's forced, no option not to use it! Totally unnecessary!) Bad: Still making too many changes to the GUI at once and driving up both costs and learning curve for users and IT professionals and home users alike. Bad: Making it too hard to find tasks. You have to go through too much to change power management and firewall options. Bad: Forcing Superbar on users and getting rid of Quicklaunch. You should have to be an IT Pro to get it back. At least that can be done though! Bad: Getting ride of Network Connectivity Animation. Gee, I kinda-sorta want to know when packets are going into and out of my computer. First, that way I know it's working. Secondly, that way I know when there is malicious software running in the background or I'm being hacked. In a nutshell here is my first impression of Window 7: Once again, Microsoft took one step forward and two steps back.

"Some people prefer to resist change (and bi*ch about it) instead of embracing it. Nothing we can do I'm afraid. I never cared too much for XP's start menu (took too bloody long to get to any app you haven't used last), but Vista's and its search is a million times better than XP's and classic. You can start ~99% of your apps in 4-6 keystrokes, without ever touching the mouse. sorry with the old menu have to do more clicks to get the programs open. You're only intolerant in having new ideas. I hope they never bring those old, stupid startmenu back. It's a good thing why some posters in this thread are retired. You know what they can, "Can't teach an old dog new tricks." I guess when you get to that retirement age, you like things the way they always were. Sooooo.... that doesn't mean keep things as they were. Some people **CAN** HANDLE change and ADAPT to new way of doing things. Hey, it might actually be faster. Gosh, if we didn't improve, we would still be getting out of our car and winding up the engine! So, come on. Quit posting the same old crap about MS this and MS that. If you don't like it, don't use it. Simple. That's basically it. Some people prefer to fight change instead of embracing it, and usually whine in the process. If they listened to these people, we'd still be using the command line (no GUI), because "it's just as good of a program launcher" (that's what they all said in the win 3.x era anyhow) -- who needs a mouse anyways? There's always someone complaining about any minute change in the interface, something that got moved by an inch, any new way that's actually better, things placed more logically and all that -- just because it's different, and they don't want to adapt ("the old one worked! why did they do this?") Just like if they change the GUI, people say "it's just a new skin" (whereas if they didn't change it, they'd say NOTHING as changed as they don't seem to see past the GUI). Just like they complain about "bloat" for any new feature that's added (they don't use it, so surely nobody else does, right?), and if they added nothing, then it would be a worthless upgrade, etc. And so on. The good part is soon they'll stop whining about Vista. The bad part is, they'll be whining about Win 7, then Win 8, 9 and so on. The ONLY way to please those people is to have a totally identical GUI (no changes at all, nothing moved) yet still have a new shiny GUI, has new features (yet doesn't have them), various enhancements (yet not have them), and have that run on a vic 20, and be free and open source -- and even then, they might have to pay you to run their OS before they stop complaining. It's a good thing they don't listen to them. Not every change is for the best, but for the most part (~95%) it is. Not so. But I already made up my mind that you're a Vista basher, and that what you say are merely personal opinions, without much (if any) facts to back them up. sorry, if you are intolerant against improvements change your job so that you're no longer confronted with new things. If all people would think like you we would still sits in caves" *** This thread changed when these comments were posted. I have a question for you. Why didn't say something when all the above was being posted here? I have tried to remain both civil and constructive while others have been insulting and argumentative. Next time you tell someone to stay on topic, please read the whole thread. Or is it this forum's policy that as long as someone agrees with the moderator's opinions, they can say anything, even insulting others, their life's work, their experience, and yes THEIR OPINIONS? You know, I've been wrong before but I learned and got wiser for it. For that matter, I am still learning and I hope wiser. But when did you become too old to learn? Probably about the same time I was supposed to be getting too old to change. Don't bother commenting, I know you will delete this anyway.

Sorry but you're making a mountain out of a mole hill, the NT OS Start Menu you're shouting about has really been in use since NT3.5 and is due an overhaul. If number of clicks is your problem you should think about creating a set of macros, utilising some scripts etc. There are many third party Menus, Launchers, File Managers and Shells to choose from if you really cannot handle a possible extra click or two. It's not as if you haven't had time to start adapting; XP gave you a New Start Menu, and left the old one there as an option in order to help you slowly ease the transition. Vista further afforded you extra time to change by keeping the legacy option as a fall-back for those who were very slow at adapting. You still chose to ignore it and remained steadfast with the old system; how long should Microsoft keep making allowances for those who don't wish to make changes? As to third party Menus, Launchers, File Managers and Shells, those in corporate IT are not usually afforded that luxury. The introduction of such into the corporate environment is usually considered risky, not provided for in the budget, and against corporate IT policy. Secondly, the use of scripts in many larger corporation is, for security reasons, policy restricted and therefore not always available to the average support person, let alone the desktop user. There are also software licensing issues you haven't considered. Again, why force change upon the user at the expense of money and productivity unnecessarily? Why not give them the option? This is not about likes or dislikes, this is about bad business policy and bad IT practices.

Not so. But I already made up my mind that you're a Vista basher, and that what you say are merely personal opinions, without much (if any) facts to back them up. You mean exactly like it always was? Like when you could get XP but not Win2k anymore? (and son on for every n-1 version) OEMs complaining? Yeah, that'd be because they now have to sell you a machine with more than 256MB of RAM and onboard Intel GMA video. That would be me. You can get enough RAM to run Vista for much less than $60 at full retail price, in big name brands no less, at full retail prices and in quantities of 1. And that's assuming you had no RAM at all, or will dispose of the old one. Newegg will sell you 2GB of DDR2 667 for $17 everyday. If you shop around, and are buying 3000 packs, you'd get a better price (let's say $13.33). So let's say $40000 total, which isn't much $ for a company with like 3000 employees. Iit may still looks like a large number, but a company that size pays several millions of $ on salaries weekly. $17 is a ridiculously low investment in fact, and it'll pay itself VERY fast. If it just saves a single hour worth of wait time over the lifetime of the machine (several years), then it already cost less than nothing. If it saves a single second everyday it already paid for itself. It's nowhere near as bad as you try to portray it. BTW, 250x$1200 isn't 1.2M but 1/4 of that (not that it would cost anywhere near that in the first place). That's if they don't wait until extended support is over in 2014. And then upgrade to Windows 8. They're not avoiding Vista at all (unlike what DeathNACan claims), they're just in no hurry to upgrade yet as they just got XP recently. You need to stop thinking like a home user. Most corporations have a very specific list of vendors they do business with. It takes a paperwork just to get on the list. Before we got swallowed by a bigger fish, my boss used to go to one of the local PC Repair places to buy RAM and they still charged us more than they would someone off the street! After we were gobbled up, we had to go through corporate to get everything. And I do mean everything, from toilet paper to new desktop computers. Most of the time, they end up paying way too much for what they buy. I know, I've seen the receipts. It made me what to cry when I saw what they were paying for things because I knew that somewhere, some bean counter was trying to figure out how to get the cost down and the first thing usually hit was labor, as in jobs. And I will go so far as to say most don't buy from Newegg or any other Internet based retailer, you don't see that happening a lot, if it all. By the way, I like Newegg!. What you and I can go to the local Best Buy and get for say $59.95 on sale or Newegg for $19.95, a corporation will pay $89.95 for from some local "Authorized Retailer" with an IBM, Dell, Compaq or HP logo on their door or though corporate purchasing. Same stuff, higher price. Go figure! Corporations give the profits to investors and that's called dividends. They generate bigger profits, so they can pay hirer dividends, in the following ways: Gaining more market share... making more sales. Reducing the cost of a product's materials... make it cheaper or buy it cheaper. Reducing the cost of labor by either redefining how something is produced so it is less expensive or just plain finding somewhere less expensive to make it. The last is representative of the business philosophy in the Corporate America right now. It is the current fad to outsource to labor to somewhere cheaper. An example of this was when the company I worked for moved its mortgage servicing division from New York City to Columbus Georgia where the labor costs were lower. Later I saw over 300 people loose their jobs when they were sent to India. To keep profits up, somewhere is a bean counter trying to figure out how to reduce costs... all the time! So don't think that those new PC's at work or that new OS you got last year, or whenever, might not have cost someone their job. When you add the RAM upgrade, hard drive upgrade, training costs, lost productivity to all the other things being paid for, they probably did. Discounting corporate greed, which is a given, all you have to do is look at the unemployment figures in the United States and you will see what I am taking about. By the way, I used to work for the following companies: GreenPoint Financial Corporation, North Fork Bank, and Capitol One. As of January 1st of this year, everyone I know at Capitol One here in Columbus Georgia just lost their jobs. Most of their jobs were also sent to India over the last few years, the rest went somewhere else so I know what I am talking about. And the moral of the story is... every penny counts and no dollar is too small, particularly when you have to multiply it by numbers from 100 to 10000. What I have been writing has been meant to be informative. I hope you will not take it personally and some day can make use of it. Someday, they job you it save could be your own!

The world is changing, people in every job are required to constantly adapt regardless of whether that change is in their opinion unnecessary or wrong.In this case you aren't being asked to change overnight, you've got a golden opportunity to begin to adapt now through beta, then release and a considerable length of time on top of that as required before upgrading all of your systems to the new OS. You don't have to adapt, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the 'kids with small experience in windows administration' will and take your job as a result. The entire point is not about change. It's about forced change and not being given options. It's about unnecessary changes made for marketing purposes just to convince the consumer that they have something new. It's about too much change at one time and the effect they have on everyone from the IT professional to the home user. No one is against innovation and anyone who works in IT knows you have to keep up. This is the same old argument that has been around for a long time. For the most part, on one side you have a lot of programmers, developers and wanna-be power users. On the other side you have IT support professionals such as Network Administrators, PC Technicians, and Support Personnel. The IT support group understands that change for change sake is bad for a waste of resources, time and money. I will say again, just because you can change a thing does not mean you should in IT and you should make **** sure you consult the people whose jobs it is to support your product before you do. As far as I can tell, Microsoft is continuing to make changes without considering the impact on the user or IT professional. They have a business responsibility to consider the impact those changes have on the user. I am Joe Average and Microsoft puts out a new OS. It costs me $259.00 to buy the upgrade. If all goes well during the upgrade, I don't have to hire a PC Technician to fix the botched install. If not, well add another $75.00 plus dollars to that. Because Microsoft decides I didn't need to have the option of doing things the way I knew how anymore, so, if I don't have the time, patience, desire or skill to figure it out, it will cost me another $150.00 to $350.00 in classes to learn how to use it. And then I will still spend the next several months learning what they were supposed to teach me in class. Look, I'm no Apple fan either but why do you think they have such a loyal, fanatical user base? It's because while they make improvements, they don't complicate things buy making big changes to how things have to be done.

Not so. But I already made up my mind that you're a Vista basher, and that what you say are merely personal opinions, without much (if any) facts to back them up. You mean exactly like it always was? Like when you could get XP but not Win2k anymore? (and son on for every n-1 version) OEMs complaining? Yeah, that'd be because they now have to sell you a machine with more than 256MB of RAM and onboard Intel GMA video. That would be me. You can get enough RAM to run Vista for much less than $60 at full retail price, in big name brands no less, at full retail prices and in quantities of 1. And that's assuming you had no RAM at all, or will dispose of the old one. Newegg will sell you 1GB of DDR2 667 for $17 everyday. If you shop around, and are buying 3000 packs, you'd get a better price (let's say $13.33). So let's say $40000 total, which isn't much $ for a company with like 3000 employees. It's nowhere near as bad as you try to portray it. BTW, 250x$1200 isn't 1.2M but 1/4 of that (not that it would cost anywhere near that in the first place). That's if they don't wait until extended support is over in 2014. And then upgrade to Windows 8. They're not avoiding Vista at all (unlike what DeathNACan claims), they're just in no hurry to upgrade yet as they just got XP recently. You win! Your vast years of experience is overwhelming me too much. You have shown me that I have no idea of what I speak. Thank you for educating me about the way things really work in IT. Have a nice day.

I agree with you. I addressed that in another post. If Microsoft had their way we'd all be upgrading every two years or so. That's just not going to happen in the business world nor for the most part in the home environment. As far as application compatibility is concerned, no argument here but it's not just other vendor's software they had problems with. Remember the XP SP1 debacle? It broke, for lack of a better words, a lot of apps including some of heir own. I too believe that most businesses will wait for Windows 7. Assuming that Microsoft is responsive to the IT Professionals that is. Look at some of the post in this very forum on that. I remember having to go take a week long class when we migrated from NT 4.x to Windows 2000. It barely scratched the surface but wasn't too bad. XP was, for the most part, a cleaner code with a flasher GUI. No real big changes there. But Vista! God that is a nightmare from an IT perspective... policy and GPO changes, not just moving but busting up the way profiles are handled, adding the Trusted Installer service, and to top it off major GUI changes that moved, renamed or split up too much stuff. It's for the IT Pro not to mention the end user. Many of us were hoping that the would have learned from their mistakes with Vista and fixed them in Windows 7. It doesn't look as if they did but the jury is still out on that one.

[Citation needed]. That's merely your own opinion on the subject. Of course not a whole lot of companies have rolled out Vista yet -- last place I worked rolled out XP like 2 years ago (like 5 or 6 years late). They've *always* been upgrading late, nothing new here. It's not that they don't want to go near it, just like they weren't avoiding XP either. They'll eventually upgrade, just give them the time. Vista has a nice market share. There are still XP boxes because most people don't see a need to upgrade yet (nor a reason to buy a new computer -- which is how most people get a new OS), and they'll be getting Vista or Win 7 with their new box whenever they upgrade next. No news here either. XP's adoption rate at the same point in history was no better (some would say even worse). Again, just your observations and opinions. I've seen a LOT of people getting new boxes & Vista lately, and have been very happy with it. I personally ain't ever going back to XP. If we listened to you, nobody would have made the jump from MS-DOS to Windows, nor from Windows 3.x to Win 95 (and so on) -- it was different people had to learn new stuff (the learning curve was FAR steeper than a new start menu) I could spend the next couple of hours posting links from various websites and drawing this out but it would just be a waste of time. You have already made up you mind that I am just some old guy who is behind the times and too stupid to learn or know anything. As for all that market share Microsoft has 'gained' with Vista, I will tell you how they got it. They made deals with OEM's PC Manufacturers to push it on customers. Try buying a PC with Windows XP or NO OS installed today. Unless you go through the business side of a vendor it is almost if not totally impossible. That is not my opinion; that is a fact. I will end my part of this little debate by challenging you to Google, Yahoo or what ever you want the following phrases and finding out for yourself... Microsoft Vista Downgrade Vista sales 2008 (I'll give you this one for free... http://weblog.infoworld.com/sentinel/archi...ng_the_vi.html) OEM's reject vista Change can be a good thing... most of the time. New features are can be good things... most of the time. But in the end, innovation does not come first, customer's needs and desires do. Please understand that the people who are writing the code and creating all those nice new features you are using for the most part have a really bad history of not listening to either you or me. You have no idea how many times I went to a user's workstation and tried to show them a better, faster way of doing something just to have them return to doing it the way the 'knew how'. I don't know what you do for a living but try and remember this, the people who fix and keep your computers running at your job are given the awesome responsibility of keeping you working. Your job literally depends on them doing their job and vice versa. They have to take a conservative approach to it. They can not afford to openly embrace every change Microsoft or any other software vendor introduces without testing it first. Businesses do not deploy an operating system usually until after it's been out for a minimum of two years. That is because vendors take that much time fixing the bugs they should have had corrected before it was every shipped. You can't just drop a new OS on a computer every time it comes out. It is an expensive process. That bloated code I keep hearing about comes with a cost... hardware upgrades. Upgrade the RAM for one computer for $60.00 and you won't go out of budget. Upgrade the RAM for 3000 computers and you just spent $180000.00. If you have to upgrade 250 workstations just to run the new OS at a cost of $1200.00 each, it will cost you 1.2 million dollars. Sometimes, people loose their jobs to pay for it. Finally, you might want to remember that just because someone likes or dislikes something different than you do does not make them stuck in their ways. As you said, they have a different opinion. As for your "If we listen to you comment" I answered that in another post. You do not know me. You do not know anything about what I did for a living or how I did it. It was people like me that kept people like you doing their jobs. People like me were given the responsibility to test and deploy and then keep running every operating system and software product people like you had to use because we understood the importance of change. In the world of PC support, whether home or business, you can't just force change on the user without considering its impact. When you are responsible for not only your job but the jobs of thousands of others, you will understand that. You have missed the entire point I have been trying to make and that is that you don't force change without a really good reason in the IT world.

Gee, at 49 years of age I had no idea just how 'Over The Hill' I really am. Thanks for telling me. And you're absolutely right about not being able to teach and "old dog new tricks". What was I thinking of when I downloaded Windows 7 in the first place. Must be my senility kicking in. Why in the world did I ever beta test IBM PC DOS 7, OS2 Warp, Windows XP or Windows Vista in the first place? You've got to be kidding me right? Have you ever heard the words "Forced Retirement Due to Disability"? Just so you will know, my hands, arms and shoulders took too much damage from too many years of using a computer. But then, maybe that's because I spent as much time at home in front of my computers, notice that was plural, installing and testing both new operating systems and software as I did doing my job. By the way, I currently have three machines dual booting between Windows XP 64 Bit and Windows Vista 64 Bit. I have one machine dual booting between Windows XP 64 Bit and Windows 7 64 Bit beta, not counting my server running Windows 2003 64 bit. I have four browsers on my desktop, seven different media players, three pieces of anti-spyware (don't need more when they do the job), at least a dozen different media file converters, four ISO and image utilities, three email clients and more codecs than I can count, and one really good file manager. That, for your information, is the short list. Now tell me truth, you don't honestly think all that software miracle itself onto my computer with out being tested by me do you? Please tell me you don't actually think that I did my jobs as Network Support Technician, PC Technician and Local Area Network Administrator with just the knowledge I had the day I was hired? It's not a good idea to support 3500 users after an OS migration unless you have 'played with it' for a really long time before it's deployed. What were you doing while I and my fellow workers were keeping all those users working so they could feed their children and pay their bills? Where were you when I was testing over 80 different pieces of software to make sure they would run on Windows NT 4 and then later Windows 2000? What bar were you in December 31, 1999? I was at work verifying that the world as we knew it in IT did not come to an end when the clock rolled over to the year 2000. I don't remember seeing you there while I was explaining to the head of Corporate IT the effect spyware was having on our user's ability to do their jobs. Did I miss you while I was at home testing, on my own time, thirty different pieces of anti-spyware so I had a solution to the problem? Do you really think all those years of experience have no value at all and I just stopped learning the day the put me out to pasture? If that's so, I guess I should burn my A+, Network+, Compaq APS, MCP, MCP+I, and MCSE cards. Look, what I've been trying to get across to you is that there is more to operating systems and software than their pretty new features. There's how they are used, who uses them, what they are used for and how much it cost to used them. This is something Microsoft has either forgotten or never learned.

I don't see how making programs searchable by typing is a terrible thing. I'm currently on an XP machine (soon to be formatted to Vista) and I wish I had the built-in search that Vista provides. If you've ever used it for day-to-day work and finding documents, you'd know that it is faster, and lets users be more productive in the end. For most of my collegues and friends who have made the switch, it hasn't taken more than a couple of weeks in order to get the hang of how Vista is laid out. After the switch is made, they all say they like it more. And no, they're not in IT nor are they tech savvy. If employees are having a really hard time making the switch from XP to Vista, they're lacking experience/training in general computer usage, and that's no fault of Microsoft. I did not say making programs search-able was a terrible thing. What I said was that it is not the job of the IT Professional, whether working at your company or for Microsoft, to force change upon the user unless absolutely necessary. At the heart of this discussion are really two important issues: First, who decides when changes should happen and how much things should change. If I give you new options, you have a choice. It's your business decision or your decision as the home user what to do? If I take away those options you have, you have no choice. Microsoft wants to force change and taken away your choices. If they deploy Windows 7 with this GUI, they will have made decisions affecting companies and home users effectively without their consent. Secondly, any competent IT Professional who ever had to support users will tell you they not afraid of changes, they are terrified of them! If something goes wrong, it can cost them their jobs, along with potentially cost their company thousands or even millions of dollars in lost productivity or revenues. As for Vista, most companies do not want to go anywhere near it! Look at the stats for how many people still use XP. Most people don't want to go near it. And why, the learning curve is too steep for an the average user. By the way. Most users fit into that category you mentioned. That of "lacking experience/training in general computer usage". We IT Professionals don't want users learning on the job and getting experience. We want them working! The less time they spend having to learn a new OS, the more time they are working. As for the home users, well they are afraid of 'breaking it'. With the exception of the Power User, most home users don't want things changed, they just want to browse the Internet, pay their bills, IM their boyfriends, watch their porn or download their MP3's... the way the know how!

Let me say first, I am not intolerant of new ideas. Otherwise, I would not have downloaded the beta. I'm sorry but you're response is typical of the attitude I have seen with too many IT professionals and Power User Amateurs who put new things to play with before user's needs. They either do not know or forget that every change made has a potential cost associated with it. Many IT professionals overlook that fact that users either do not have ability or simply lack to learn IT technology as they do. All ninety-nine percent of business users and most home users want to do is whatever it is they need to at the time, they way they know how to do it. They are afraid of change and for good reason. In the business world, it can cost them productivity, which can in turn cost them their jobs! In the home environment, they just don't want the hassle of changing things because most of them don't really understand what they are doing anyway. I have seen too many IT professionals in the development end that fail to consider the impact of what they do on the user environment. They simply do not understand how in the professional world it effects the user's ability to do their jobs. What my rant was about is mostly Microsoft's failure to understand both the business and home customer's needs. This is not an insult, but I can tell that you are either not an IT professional or are a new one. Your response did not take into consideration that new innovation should never have an unnecessary adverse effect on the user. The reason in the business world is that it increases costs. Those costs can come many ways. Sometimes it is in the form of money, as in money spent for the software product and or the training both the IT professionals and users to use it. Other times those costs result from the of loss of productivity; and, that lost productivity can result form the time it took to train the user, the time it took them to adapt to the changes, the actual changes themselves making a given task more time consuming, or the the time it takes to develop and then implement workarounds. By the way, those workarounds are usually needed so that the change we made will work in the user's environment. It is our jobs as IT professionals, Microsoft included, to minimize the impact of whatever changes we make into the user environment, whether that environment be professional (business) or non-professional (home). The reasons for this are: 1. Test to make sure a change works before deployment. 2. Test to make sure a change works does not adversely affect user productivity before deployment. 3: Keep the cost down in terms of money. 4. Keep the time spent training IT Professions down. 5. Keep the time spent training IT Professions down. 6. To avoid unnecessary downtime, make only those changes necessary. 7. To avoid a disaster, make only those changes necessary. 8. Make sure the change is cost effective. 9. Keep the user working. 10. Put the needs of the user first. Again, in the business world, that means, unless there is really go reason not to, let the user do it they way want to, even if we know a better way. It's okay to suggest the better way, but we shouldn't force upon them. We don't have to do their jobs, they do! The same can be said of the home environment, as any PC Technician will tell you. Let me add that it is Microsoft's responsibility as a software and operating system manufacturer to do all the above. To that, they must add the following: Consider the needs of the IT professional who must deploy and support the products they create. That means even if they think it is out dated but we think it makes our jobs easier, don't screw with it! And why? Their business is to make our jobs easier as we see it, not as they see it not force their ideas onto us! Finally, people are resistant to change. They are afraid of it, particularly where computers are concerned. The veteran IT Professional knows the even the smallest change can have disastrous effects. The amateur computer users is already afraid of his or her computer enough and doesn't want the added stress. Maybe the best way to introduce new things is as "Did you know?" feature giving you the option of doing it the new way, rather than saying, "Oh, we decided you don't need that any more."

I wonder if they have considered the cost in dollars these changes will have? First there is the cost of retraining, not just of IT Pros but also of end users. Do I have to mention the home users? Then there is the cost in lost productivity, all those people being trained and then having to go through the pains of trying to apply what they've learned. In today's economy, do we really need this? I wonder how many people will loose their jobs just to pay for the training the others will need when companies actually start switching to Windows 7? They have become out of touch. Gee, that sounds vaguely familiar doesn't it? Two words: Minimal Impact! If you can't make it faster, easier and more productive don't mess with it!

Once again Microsoft has forgotten the KISS principle. Keep It Simple, Stupid! I have seen comments about Windows is evolving. Into what? A MAC? Where should I start? First the Classic Menu... what is its value? Simple! That's it.. it's simple. The programs don't move around and you don't have to hunt as much for what you need. It's faster! Why, because you don't have less hovering and or clicking to do. I really loved it when MS decided to add their adaptive / intuitive 'lets shuffle the short-cut' menu option the liked to call "Personalized Menus". Yeah, that's what I want, to have to guess where on the menu things will be when I using my computer. So what have they done now? They've started playing 'lets shuffle the start bar short-cuts' and it's being referred to as Superbar. Is it super to mix running apps with the ones where the Quick Launch Bar apps used to be? One of the advantages of the Quick Launch Bar was that you knew where things were. Now you have to sort through the running apps to pick out what you want. By the way, I just minimized my browser and when I clicked what I thought was the icon to Quick-Launch a second session it reopened the first one. Why again did I put the icon there in the first place? Let's face it, the idea is to make the computer easier to use, not harder. Maybe MS should study ergonomics and think about how much extra thought and time has to go in mentally sorting out icons to find what you are looking for. Try telling someone "It's the second icon from the left next to the start button" when it isn't because now there's a running application there. Advancement does not mean you have to change everything! Just because you change the way something is executed does not mean you have to change the way it is done. That's forcing the user to learn something and usually unnecessary. The idea is to make the computers both easier to use and learn, not harder. Maybe MS should study ergonomics and think about how much extra thought and time has to go in mentally sorting out icons to find what you are looking for. Sound whiny to you, wait until you had to do it several hundred times a day and then try telling someone "It's the second icon from the left next to the start button" when it isn't there anymore because now there's a running application where there used to be a Quick Launch button for it. Okay, so Windows 7 beta runs faster than Vista, Big Woop! Oh, don't get me wrong, that's a good thing. And its always good to make cosmetic changes and improvements to the way things operate in the background... so long as it is an improvement. You know, easier to use, adds functionality. Let's face it, they changed the look for marketing reasons, not innovation. MS still thinks its customers wont believe their getting their money's worth if it doesn't look and feel different. Wrong! They still haven't learned that it's bad to change the way things are done too much at one time. With Vista, and now with Windows 7, that's what they've done. It's time MS stop thinking like IT Dweebs and started thinking like users. Has anybody counted the number of changes to the interface from starting with Windows Vista to Windows 7? How many things got moved in the GUI? How many things got added to the GUI? Does anyone really think the average home, or business, user for that matter wants to spend the next six months taking classes just to learn how things they used to know how to do? Does that make them a happier, more productive users? Or does that make them a more PO'd customer? By the way, I'm not an Apple user, I'm a retired Network Administrator with an MCSE and have been using a PC since 1986. Just some food for thought. Okay, flame away! I can take it!

About every three months or whenever I screw it up.

It is possible that the registry settings for the filewall have become corrupt. First, I would update and run a virus scanner. I recommend AVG Anti-virus by Grisoft as it works well and has little memory and processor footprint. Secondly, I would download, install, update and run the following pieces of software: Spybot Search and Destroy (freeware), Spyware Blaster (shareware if you want autoupdates), and Ad-aware by Lavasoft (shareware). You want to make sure that you choose Advanced configuration mode for Spybot Search and Destory and "Immunize" your system. This will add adware and spyware sites to the Restricted Site list in IE and Firefox. You will also want to "Search for Problems" and then "Fix Problems". Spyware Blaster is a dedicted program that downloads a list of Spyware and Adware sites and also adds them to the restricted site list in IE and Firefox so run it also. Should this not fix you problem you can try the following: Install a 3rd party firewall such as Ghostwall and then uninstallstall it, there is a chance that it could correct the registry settings for Windows firewall. Uninstall your network adapter, reboot the computer, and then re-install the network adapter; again this could correct the firewall settings. My primary firewall is my router's hardware firewall. I back it up with McAfee Personal Firewall. It is easy to configure, uses little system resources and is stable. Hope this helps.