Come to think of it, the only shell extension that I do use, besides True Launch Bar, is the Send to X from Microsoft Power Toys because it lets me right-click on an icon and send its complete file name to the clipboard.

Most shell extensions suck. They are usually not very useful, and those that come from sources other than Microsoft are usually not very robust.

However, I’m in love with the True Launch Bar. It’s a simple replacement for the Quick Launch toolbar that adds hierarchical menus, like this:

I’ve decided to stop using Radio and update my weblog by hand using FrontPage. This does away with my RSS feed, which is unfortunate, but at least I don’t have to wrestle Radio any more.

Radio is a great example of why the ‘browser is the interface’ concept is problematic. I want WYSIWYG, not a little edit box where I’ll type both my text and HTML tags. So using Radio is a frustration. It could also be designed better. Setting up updating to a FTP server is a challenge, especially because of the non-existent error reporting.

Along the same lines, I wouldn’t be caught dead using Hotmail. I like my industrial-strength e-mail client. I like having all of my several thousand e-mails stored locally on my computer for easy manipulation. In theory using Java one could do all that inside a browser, but then how does that differ from a standalone app?