Please note that I am speaking as one who loved XP and fought using Vista for close to two years. I have to admit now that Vista's growing on me, even though XP is still a perfectly serviceable OS.
If you really insist on having the Run function work similar to XP you can put it back on the main menu as noted above in the post "Re-Installing the xp Run to it`s original position."
However, to my way of thinking, Vista (and I'm assuming the method carries over to Win7) makes the process much easier in the default setup.
To use this method, you simply click Vista's Start icon and at the bottom of the Start Menu is the "Start Search" textbox (apparently in Win7 it's called "Search Programs and Files").
Type your "run" command string (i.e. cmd, or \\server\share) into the Start Search box and press , and voila it opens just as though you ran it from the Run box.
In addition, the program is not required to be located in the search %PATH% to locate it and run it, since this method combines Run and Search into one function. With my old XP box, when I typed "putty" into the Run box I got:
"Windows cannot find 'putty'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button, then click Search."
With the newer OS, there is none of that when you use the Start Search textbox to run your command. When I type "putty" it starts my Putty app even though it is not in the search path. This is because the text box is tied to Windows Search which indexes the entire hard drive. I know people (including me) used to turn off Indexing to save PC horsepower, but since the system requirements for Vista are higher anyway, it you have the horsepower for the OS, you have the horsepower to run indexing.
Also, you don't necessarily need to know the executable's name. When I type "VMWare" into the Search box (client executable is "vpxclient.exe") I get a categorized list, updated in real-time, of everything on my PC with the word "VMWare" in it, and Programs are at the top of the list. I get VMWare Converter, VMWare Infrastructure Client, and VMWare Server Console, and single click opens the app. The same listing includes recently viewed websites, files, and emails that contain the word "VMWare", categorized in that order.
By the way, if you like, you can install a similar real-time PC search function that appears on your XP taskbar. More information is available from Microsoft at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/choose/windowssearch4.mspxNote, however, that in XP, Windows Search does not have the Run function combined with it, and the search results are not as conveniently sorted as they are with Vista.
In any event, in evaluating the Run function, I believe Vista is better than XP.
