The more I use Windows Vista, the more I hate it. The latest bugbear for me using Vista has to do with the way files and folders are viewed. I am yet to find out how I can tell Vista to stop being ‘helpful’ by ‘identifying’ the type of folder by the content, and just please remember that I have manually set what information columns I want, and to please use them from now on for all folders? Including the ones I manually reset and you overwrote?

This is really starting to become incredibly annoying, and far from being helpful is actually making it harder for me to work with the OS, as I have to spend time resetting the view every time I set down to work with some files, as well as resetting the columns.

The single most useful piece of information I find in the file column view is ‘last modified’, and the least use are ‘tags’, ‘rating’ and ‘date taken’ - yet for some reason Vista insists that it knows what I want, and resets all folder views to show ‘tags’, ‘rating’ and ‘date taken’, and removes ‘date modified’.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that Vista likes to decide when I’ve finished using Windows Explorer by helpfully closing it, without warning. Here’s something you can try for yourself, and this is a change in behaviour from Windows XP:

Put a DVD or CD in your DVD drive. Open Windows Explorer. Select the DVD/CD from the left-hand column so you can see a list of files on the DVD/CD. Now press the Eject button on the front of the DVD/CD drive, and watch Vista close Windows Explorer. You were finished with that program, weren’t you? (For the record, Windows XP would automatically select the next available device/folder further down the tree, rather than closing the program).