[wardenclyffe]

They are still fighting the popularity of Windows XP which is a tough act to follow. I upgraded to Windows 7 about 6 months ago, and despite tweaking it to get it very close I still suffer bouts of profound exasperation when using it.

I'm not saying that XP was flawless by any means (and I was using the much reviled 64 bit version), but it accomplished an excellent balance between simple ease of use and access to more complex features, which no Microsoft product has managed since.

There has been a gradual shift toward automation which in a few cases is welcome but in others has become an impediment to actual use. The automated functions just aren't up to task at this point, either technologically, or because of the assumptions the designers have jumped to about what you want to do are just wrong.

In addition some people don't cope well with context sensitive menus (and I am one of them I freely admit), they are messy and unintuitive after a certain point. Sure once you learn them they can be helpful but if you have to learn something it's not intuitive.

Nowadays there should be no reason to learn technology, it should just work.