Re: How do you wintrolls...

"Alan Baker" <alangbaker@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:alangbaker-A3DFD5.19515124032009@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
...put up with the steaming pile that is Windows?

Well, steam clears my sinuses, you know! :D

I was asked by a client if I could help a user transfer some of his
files from an old and completely bogged down (by what, I can only
imagine; I've never seen a Mac get to the point where the only answer is
a complete reinstall) laptop to a brand new Dell.

This "bogged down" effect is usually caused by the huge pile of junk software you've installed. Sometimes it's malware, and sometimes it isn't.

Sometimes, however, a similar effect can be produced by ill-advised 'tweaking'. Much of the 'tweaking' advice out there on the internet is wrong and will hurt rather than help.

This is much less a problem on a Mac, since you can't really tweak anything, and there's hardly any software for that, anyway. :D

[snip- tale of woe!]
And after realizing that for some inane reason, Vista no longer displays
the menubar in Explorer Windows by default (and doesn't make the option
to show it appear where you'd expect it: in the View semi-menu that it
does have; no! It's under "Organize"!)

I think this is a clue!

Anyway, Vista's re-arranged explorer UI does make sense in its way. It never made much sense for "View" to be the huge dumping ground for everything and its dog. In Vista, it's functions have into a bunch of different places now, often with a richer UI to boot.

[snip]
It keeps telling me to disconnect
from the mapped drive, but doesn't actually have any place where you can
do it.

You do this by right clicking on the network drive, and choosing the "Disconnect" option from the context menu.

But this is another clue!

Anyway, mapped network drives are a DOS-ism. While they can be useful for backwards compatibility for apps that don't understand UNC paths, it's quite likely you don't actually have any of those. For quick access to frequently used locations, you can place shortcuts in the Explorer sidebar, the start menu, the quick launch bar, the desktop, up your nose, wherever really. I recommend the sidebar: it's available in the new open/save dialogs.

[snip]

I think the clues above give away the story here. You've got a lot of ingrained habits from other versions of the OS, and you are having trouble adapting. You're trying to *make* Vista behave like Windows 95 (or DOS!). To some extent, you *can* do this, but it isn't optimal.

This is really a very common problem; most people don't like change, after all.

I suggest you let Vista be Vista. Forget the menu bar and the mapped drives; it'll serve you better if you do.


.

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