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If you don't want an application on the start menu, you can remove it from the list with two clicks.
Notepad does show up on the list, however this depends on whether you launch it a way a normal user would, through the start menu, task bar, explorer, etc. It can't just stick every executable that is ran as it would end up with a bunch of crap that gets loaded by other programs, for instance.

I use notepad on a daily basis for storing random bits of temporary information - never appeared in the menu. 'Remove from list' also doesn't work permanently. Example, I removed 'Section 8' just now along with a bunch of other stuff, the next time I open the start menu it's at the top of the list. I've played that game all of twice yet Thunderbird is opened constantly and doesn't appear. The feature is shit.

You don't have to use libraries if you don't want to. Explorer's starting location can be changed via the shortcut properties, it never changed itself for me, plus it seems to default to "My computer" when launched with Win+E anyway.

Try setting the shortcut to this. It was such a problem MS actually put it into a kb article... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/221878 - one would think copying the address and placing it in the 'Start In' box would work, but no that would be too simple.

you can disable the desktop peek feature of that region.

Thanks for this, I didn't know that.

Also, Windows doesn't give focus on mouse-over, so can just keep typing as you move the mouse all over the screen anyway.

Hun?

I disagree about the clutter, despite combining many different elements I think the ribbon manages to keep everything look nice and consistent. Or have you forgotten the mess of toolbars that came before it?

I guess it's good that you can make your own ribbon tabs with whatever buttons you want now...

How is different sized buttons, different shaped buttons, different colour schemes and styles keep everything looking 'nice' let alone consistent. I do remember the toolbars that came before, and I much prefer them. They could be customized, they were smaller so you could have more buttons at your fingertips, etc. They were also customizable the same way ribbons are. I look at something like this: http://www.sunflowerhead.com/msimages/DifferentLayouts-9-14-2005.png and my eyes just gloss over, there's too much to look at, no patterning, just a jumble of controls.

Really, you have a problem with buttons having descriptive text labels? Do buttons outside of the ribbon never have them?

*Looks at just about every browser, icon buttons no text*
*Looks at Adobe CS5 programs, icon buttons text only where sliders or input box controls*
*Looks at Skype, where text and buttons exist the text is integrated into the design of the button, not floating and wrapping below the icon*
*Looks at VLC.... nope no text, just icons!*
etc, etc, etc.

Descriptive labels are great - they were just much better as tooltip text.

Of course the ribbon uses more space than a menu, because it isn't replacing just the menu, but also the toolbars. You can google yourself for comparisons, but the ribbon typically takes up about as much space as a default set of toolbars, and much less than the 10-rows of toolbars horrors that you often see in the wild. The ribbon takes advantage of wide-screen monitors by creating a flexible layout that takes advantage of the winder windows by scaling its content. A bit more flexibility of being able ot put it on the side of the screen would be nice, admittedly.

The default size of everything above the document: Office 2003: 102px (2 toolbars) Office 2007/2010: 138px - as for 10 rows of toolba

It's been proven there are next to difference between how different layouts affect your typing.

Possible responses:

1. [Trivial] What?

2. [Condescending] Try typing that again.

3. [Pedantic] [Citation needed.]

4. [Professional] It's been shown that the differences are trivial among those first learning to touch-type. Move an experienced, 60 wpm QWERTY typist to another layout, though, and watch him suffer. I've been reading Jensen Harris' blog on the ribbon UI and, frankly, I don't believe a word of his claims that the ribbon is easier to use. His data is based on self-selected users sending data on their real-world activities, plus focus groups, but doesn't include critical factors like:
      (a) using the ribbon, do users not just press buttons but complete their work faster using the ribbon?
      (b) what is the time delay before a function is invoked (indicative of how hard it was to find)?
      (c) how often was a function invoked in error?
      (d) how do these factors vary with user experience with earlier versions of the tool -- keeping in mind that nearly all users of the tool will not be naive users, but experienced users that will have to be re-trained in its use?

It's clear from his blog that the ribbon was invented due to the increasing number of functions placed in MS apps, like Word, and their belief that the menu system was suffering from overload. Jensen also notes that the great majority of these functions are very rarely invoked (in about equal amounts of rarely), yet dismisses accusations that their software has become "bloatware". This leads into something I have long suspected, which is that the MS application business model (of making increasingly sophisticated versions of the basic apps) is unsustainable. I mean, look to the future -- at this rate of increase, Word 2020 will have 500 functions. This is needed in a word processor? A point has to be (or maybe already has been) reached at which one needs separate programs for a floor wax and a dessert topping.

As I said, I'm just not buying it.

Office allways did its own way in GUI widgets.

Lets look at Word 95 that hast "Microsoft" as a non-standard Text in the title bar
Or the new Open dialogue that came in some version and later was made the default in Windows.
Or hacks like (some?) Office 2003 on Win XP that made the documents of the MDI apps appear as separate "Apps" in the Task bar.

So: i wouldn't read anything into this. the ribbon is comming in Windows 7 to some apps and most likely in Windows 8 to the rest of them.

All your old macros will work fine; new top-level menus, toolbars, etc. created will be routed to a tab in the ribbon called 'add-ins' automatically. As you'd know if you'd done even the slightest research into the issue.

See http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/10/27/4 85597.aspx for a further explanation, or here for a screenshot (albeit from beta 1).

That reminds me of the time Microsoft released Word 6 for Mac and Windows, at the time Word for Windows was rather backwards while Word 5 for the Mac was one of the greatest word-processors around though starting to catch some bloat. Word 6 for the Mac ended up being one of the worst apps ever released for the Mac. It was slow, bloated, looked fugly and ran in something akin to an emulated environment.

You can sorta see the toolbar bloat progression here.

M$ Excel's interface is enough to make someone convert to OpenOffice.

Actually, they haven't increased the size at all. It's the exact same size as the three menu bars that Office includes by default. It also has a mode to hide the bar. Check out this blog post:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/09/15/4 67956.aspx
http://www.sunflowerhead.com/msimages/SizeCompare- 9-15-2005.png

I find that Outlooks "Display a notification message when a new mail arrives" option is a substantial productivily killer because not only does it flash a window up in your face, but it taunts you to stop working on your current thing by giving you a one button press to view the email.

With this off, the only way to tell that you have email is a small icon in the system tray. If that is still too much then you can either exit Outlook completely or use something like Knockout to remove the icon.

Check out YAC. It allows you to take your 56k voice modem and get the caller ID. You can even brodcast it to "listeners" on your network. It can even be incorporated into your TIVO. http://www.sunflowerhead.com/software/yac/

How many add-ons does it have to have? Or how many more add-ons does it have to have? There's a TON out there already, from TiVo and from the hacking community.

mp3 and ogg decoding?

There's an addon available (for cost) that does mp3, but not ogg.

programmable from any computer?

The same addon as the mp3 ability does that, too. Or you can use the free, community-provided tool, that's been around for awhile.

hackable?

There is plenty of that going on .

How about a pop3 client? Or perhaps AIM on your TiVo? What about caller id? Plenty of other stuff, too.

Personally, I'm glad that they don't slap a recordable DVD drive in there. That would just jack the cost of the hardware. If it is that important, just throw the TiVo on your network and hit google for tivo video extraction. With the tools available, it is fairly trivial to extract the MPEG streams to your PC and record them to DVD, plus you get the benefit of using whatever video editing software you want (to do things like cut the commercials, etc), and whatever DVD recording software you like. If the functionality were on the TiVo, I'd doubt that you'd get much more than save to DVD, with no editing possible.