Windows 7 – Libraries Rant

As you may have gathered from previous articles that I have written regarding Windows 7, on the whole I quite like Microsoft’s new operating system.  However, it is not without it’s issues.

When Vista was released a couple of years ago, it was met with all sorts of opposition, and it is still complained about today.  Buyers looking for new PC’s are still turning down many available models because they don’t want Vista, mostly because of something they have heard from a friend (of a friend), however a great deal of this opposition is, in my opinion at least, unwarranted.

Complaints of high memory requirements, and lack of hardware support is the same complaint many made about XP upon it’s initial release, and many were unhappy until Service Pack 2 was released a couple of years later.

Moving forward to Windows 7 though, and I have what I believe to be a very real issue.

Libraries are Microsoft’s new idea of how files should be organised.  Basically they are a reference area for files based on type (Documents, Pictures, Music, Video etc) and pool these file types from wherever they are stored on the computer, thus making a good, well organised folder structure within Documents (aka My Documents) irrelevant.

Based on my usage of Windows 7 Beta, and previo9usly Windows 7 Build 6801 though, Libraries just do not seem to work.

Unless I have dumped a shortcut to a file within the correct Library, Documents for example, then there is no reference to that document there.

For a new feature such as this to work it has got to be automatic, especially since the default browsing action calls upon Libraries are the first location when looking for a file!

Hopefully Microsoft will have fixed this before the final release, if not I hope they publish a good guide/explanation of how to use Libraries in Windows 7.  A tutorial within the OS would be good.

For now though I am working on a way to make Windows 7 ignore Libraries completely, I have not found an option within the OS yet, or a guide online, but as soon as I have I will publish it on this site.