Every now and again, I think… where’s the flippin’ Recycle Bin?! After a bit of searching around, I usually find the control panel which allows me to add the Recycle Bin to the desktop and voila!
…but hold on, didn’t I have a Recycle Bin already? Hmm…Ok, I’ve got bad memory so maybe I never had one.
Then, yesterday I twigged what was happening:
Look closely at the contextual menu on the Recycle Bin in Windows Vista. One option says “Empty Recycle Bin” and the other says “Delete”. The delete option is a new ‘feature’ which Microsoft kindly added to make it easier to get rid of the Recycle Bin. Nice one!
I’m not quite sure why Microsoft thinks that there is a big user case for deleting the Recycle Bin off the desktop, but they do…and they’ve included it on the new ‘improved’ version of Windows for the whole globe to use. How nice of them.
Now in case you haven’t guessed, I have been mistaking the ‘Delete’ function for the ‘Empty Recycle Bin’ option. Hence it disappears, and I’m left dragging files with no-where to put them.
Stupid boy you are probably thinking; but a quick search on the net shows I’m not alone. Thousands of people seem to be deleting the Recycle bin by mistake.
This sympathetic site which seems to be aimed at IT managers with poor grammar skills suggests…
an ideal solution for when you have an incompetent user, who keep on deleting their Recycle Bin, and then pesters you to cure their clumsiness.
How kind of them. I’m not entirely sure it is the users fault though – as stupid as we are. I believe its simply poor navigation logic, something that should have been corrected in the numerous product beta tests Microsoft must have conducted. Easily missed, but also easily corrected.
Anyway if you are suffering the same problem. You can correct it by executing a simple reg script. (Yet another hack to make a Microsoft product usable)
Hi Graham, I went through the pain of ‘upgrading’ my laptop to XP recently. I’ve completely lost the tablet screen functionality (pah, who needs it?) and found that the mic doesn’t work at all when I tried to skype the wife from Holland on Monday but god it is all worth it. The laptop runs much faster, never crashes and things are easy all over again. Worth thinking about.
Nice comment Andy.
I’m gonna persevere with Vista mainly because I got my copy free from Microsoft and I resent giving them any more of my cash (especially with recent events unfolding).
You might remember not so long ago that people we’re saying the same thing about Windows XP when that launched. “Go back to Windows 2000″ they all said. It’s stable and well…it just works. They had a good point, but its the same with all new software – there is always something the product developers didn’t figure on happening.
If I’m totally honest, I love using new software even if it is as flakey as a pensioner with eczema. There’s load to learn from seeing the faults – especially in my line of work!
So I guess I should be saying thanks Microsoft…ehem. Not that I will.
I had i computer with vist and it was brand new and none of the drivers worked on it and it got slower slower and slower and it got so slow i could not turn it on i had to buy xp and there was no problem atall.
the only reason it is so bad is that microsoft rushed making the software.
I too am an incompetent user.
“Unfortunately, in the case of the Recycle Bin they underestimated users’ ability to read and understand the menus.”
Well it keeps me in work