As with the Start Menu, experienced users are going to find the Control Panel really annoying. Instead of opening right to the applets, there's a submenu that groups the Control Panels according to nine headings, like "Performance and Maintenance," "Appearance and Themes," and "Printers and Other Hardware." Quite frankly, we found it harder to find things this way, and it added another step. Microsoft's argument is that new users will find things more easily this way. We're not so sure that's true. With something like 300 million copies of Windows running today, changing things in such a way that adds mouse clicks in the name of ease of use is probably counterproductive. Easier for who?

There's more, too. All XP folder windows have picture smarts built into them. To enable this, right-click any closed folder, choose Properties, and click the Customize tab. Under the "What kind of folder to you want?" header, choose "Pictures (best for many files)" from the drop-down menu, and click OK. Then simply open the folder and click on any image file. You'll have a large preview of the image in the center of the file window. And you can scroll horizontally and click any image file to see its preview. The folder customize options include two types of picture folders, three types of music folders, and one document folder type. When you choose among these types of folders, you're also changing a list of context-sensitive clickable actions that appear in a column on the left side of the folder window. There's even an option to change the icon for any folder (not just a shortcut to it), and even make a new icon the default for all folders.

But that isn't the only trouble with the side panels. In your average folder window, they take up a lot of space without adding much useful functionality. We could use toolbar buttons that reach out to My Documents, My Computer, and My Network Places. That would take up far less space. Even worse, WebView side panels are not customizable on a folder by folder basis. You can turn off the feature globally, but when you do you also disable the advantages of special folders such as My Pictures. We think experienced users are going to wind up turning off the side panels because they just too big and unwieldy.

If you have any doubt of that, you have only to view a "two pane" Explorer window as it appears in Windows XP. In previous versions of Windows, the Explorer window (popular among more experienced users) showed the folder tree pane on the left with the selected folder contents pane on the right. It was a very useful file-management tool because the tree is the easiest way to walk your folder structure when you're looking for something. But in XP, the two-paned folder window is all but destroyed by the side panel, which wedges itself between the tree and folder contents panes as a third pane. WebView side panels have some advantages, but on balance, they're less useful than they first appear.