Hey Rico .. how about you spend your time trying to tie your shoes with just one hand?

Its a perfectly valid thing to do, who knows when you might loose a hand, and then you'll be ready to tie one handed..

Or how about we take away that nice QWERTY keyboard that you use, and make you start using a purely alphabetic keyboard?

I mean surely you know your abc's correct? So why would something that simple be so much different for you?

ASK YOURSELF .. why did microsoft have to change the way things have been done, things that have been learned through YEARS of similar repetative tasks?

You reach down to your turn signal in your car ... you expect it to be on the LEFT side in any car made for the USA ... so what happens when that turn signal knob is now on the RIGHT side? Or how about when you get into a rental car, and you realize **SOME** things never change ... horn is 99.999% of the time in the center of the wheel ... keys to the right, turn signal control on the left ... but then go for the radio and you have to actually LOOK at the controls.. that slows you down doesn't it?

Some of microsoft's modifications are helpful, OTHER modifications they've made are counter productive ... if you want to start a new instance of IE you have to RIGHT click the pinned icon down there, and choose so, rather than double click like you would normally ... I could right click on a blank spot of the desktop, do properties, and pull up all the graphics changing properties I needed ... but not under vista or 7 .. you get an icon layout rather than the familiar tabs ... and that's not to mention the screen resolution or the desktop icon size (which turns out to be controlled by holding down CTRL and rolling your mouse wheel ... yeah brilliant microsoft, the default desk top that allowed me 5 icons top to bottom rather than the 10 to 12 I need and at a more reasonable size) etc..

There's more to XP than just some 20 year old OS with extra wide collars like looking at some 70's shows.... there's not throwing the baby out with the bath water... that is.. you BUILD upon common knowledge.. not throw everythign out and force EVERYONE to go through re-learning what they've to do.

The Ribbon in office is *THE* classic symbol for this problem ... I could add columns or rows with a mouse or keyboard with my eye's closed if needed before the ribbon came along. And having *WORDS* for menu items rather than pictures.. if memory serves, Gerber Baby food changed many of their labels when 3rd world countries wouldn't buy their products as readily because the jars "showed babies as their contents", rather than carrots, peas, etc.. on the labels.

Visual estetics only go part way ... if the words aren't there it makes it more difficult to navigate or realize the menu item you need is shown only as some picture you can barely see on a micro-sized screen or the amount of space you loose in your programs from having a ribbon that's 8 to 10 lines tall (forget the hide feature, it only means that if you need to do something more than once, you've got to re-unhide the ribbon repeatedly wasting even MORE of your time).

You Sir .. like many other people out there need to go to the KISS school of learning (Keep It Simple Stupid), as well as realize that you build on a solid foundation, and you don't suddenly scrap everything just for the sake of making something "pretty".