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Libraries use the index beneath the surface, but work in the opposite way to search folders. They bring together multiple file system branches. That’s it. I think Andy thought they were more sophisticated, but there’s only filtering if you do a search: the 4 default libraries which link together 4 of the “MY” folders with their “Public” counterparts. So now it doesn’t matter if something is in “My Music” or “Public Music”, I can find it in the “music” Library. And this isn’t limited to folders on my computer - You can see on the left that my computer belongs to a Windows 7 HomeGroup and I’ve added the music folder from another member my Music library – this wasn’t the best staged demo because the netbook I’m connecting to only has the Windows sample music on it – which I’ve removed from my laptop, that’s the one non-blurred item . Adding a folder to a library is a simple matter of going to the library’s properties, and clicking “include”. Any of the folders which comprise the library can be set as the default location for saving. In effect, the Documents folder is “My Documents” with the extra ability to find public documents. You can change the name of library so you could call it “All Documents” or even “My documents”. If you neither use the public folders anything there would be no harm in deleting the default libraries. Conversely if you’ve built up a complicated hierarchy of folders, so you might have “letters 2008”, “Letters 2007”, “Letters 2006”, “Invoices 2008”, “Invoices 2007” and so on, you could create new libraries for letters and Invoices. Now, Andy’s complaint was essentially that he knew users for whom any change is bad. And my previous post I owned up to the fact that my first reaction to any change is “What did they do that for” He says unless totally new to computers, the addition and forcing users to default to libraries adds another level of confusion to non-tech savvy people. My mother… has been using PC’s since the 8086 days and had got to grips with DOS/File Manager/Explorer/My Computer/Computer for years before you introduced ‘My’ documents, pictures etc. I then had to spend time explaining the concept of a virtual pointer to a set of folders held elsewhere. We got there in the end although the desire to navigate to them via the C: drive remained for a while. When we do make these changes we spend thousands of hours in usability labs to makes sure different categories of users can pick them up easily, and if we made everything exactly the same as it always has been it would be a brake on progress. Although Andy emphasised “forcing users to default to” when I did a quick check, everything I tried remembers the last folder things were opened from or saved to. I also have a vague memory that the pre-release versions of Windows 7 opened explorer at the libraries folder but the release version on machine opens at Computer – of course you can have shortcuts to open any folder you want. For some people’s' machines “MY” in front of documents isn’t needed, you can rename the “MY” away. All the “My” folders are actually pointers so if you have always used C:\Documents, you can navigate via the Hierarchical path in the file system as before, if you can re-point the default location, any program which calls the Windows API to say “where is the default location for Documents will go to there and not keep trying to take you back to somewhere under users Now, following that, some bright spark decided to demonstrate to logical human beings that had spent years learning how a hard disk could be navigated that logic and common sense is not required for using computers and in fact is detrimental to their use. I write of making the hard disk subordinate to the desktop in explorer when Vista was launched. Andy’s point actually applied prior to Vista. On the Desktop you have a computer Icon, if you open computer it contains drives, if you open a drive and navigate to your user folder it contains the desktop. Where once we had a tree structure with the some root which contained all the drives, now we have a loop. I understand what he means though, having spent years with learning ways to impose a logic to cope strict hierarchies we’ve now said “you don’t need to force yourself into thinking that way any more”. No one forced to change how they organize their files: that’s important. Personally I navigate to my documents via libraries, the “my documents” link in my home folder (which I have as a favorite) via the C: drive, and from Cmd and PowerShell prompts. | 