Windows 7

Have Microsoft made it harder to do anything complicated like they do everytime they update a program? I mean, in Excel 2008 for example they organised everything so a casual user can find things easier but for those of us who know how to use the thing properly, you either have to jump through twice as many menus or spend a couple of hours setting it up with all the shortcut buttons you want. I mean, I like the added functionality they put in, it would just be nice if they didn't feel the need to wrap everything in cotton wool all the time.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well, it's mainly the layout of the top bar I dislike. My Excel has a rather customised button-shortcut layout and I can't stand the way things are grouped in the new version. I'd rather have a fuckload of buttons than the various sections and menus they have now. I guess it's what I'm used to more than anything, having used Excel this way pretty much every day for at least 8 years but I just find it takes me a lot longer to do anything now. Like I say, I love the functionality improvements, I just dislike the interface which I feel hides a lot of the more complex stuff away somewhat.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

There's little danger of work forking out for Office 2007 anytime soon, especially since I installed the patch to open .xlsx files on 2003 and it's only a few clients who use the new version, forcing me to work on it when I'm at their offices so it's kind of a non-issue for now and I'm sure that if I used the new version day in, day out I'd get used to it soon enough, provided it does still let you program macros into custom buttons (Best feature ever in a software package, ever. Every piece of software should let you do this). Cheers anyway though mate.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I would have thought there would be an option built in to keep using the button bar, to be fair I've not really gone looking for one as I only ever use the thing on other people's computers. I just can't imagine a situation where having every command you use even semi-regularly represented as a small button at the top of the screen wasn't the most efficient way to do things (For those of us without the memory capacity for keyboard shortcuts anyway). I appreciate that they're trying to declutter the window and hide away the less often used stuff so as not to scare off casual users but some of us actually use that clutter and add more besides.

I'm quite the luddite when it comes to new versions of software though. In part because I prefer to use things I'm familiar with and more importantly, because I work for a bunch of skinflints who won't pay to update anything until the version we're using is completely obsolete, thereby giving me little opportunity to use new things. I still have Windows XP set to look like 98 on this computer and I don't use my laptop at home enough to make it worth the time it takes to download new versions to be honest.

How ya doing, buddy?

I'm just reading a preview of Windows 7 in the Guardian and it mentions that you can now "pin" applications and stuff to the taskbar. Is this in any way different to just dropping shortcuts on to the quicklaunch toolbar in every other version of Windows or is it just that this particular journalist never realised the quicklaunsh toolbar existed or fails at creating shortcuts?

How ya doing, buddy?