Over at ZDNet, Jason Perlow and I are having a debate over the Windows 7 interface. He hates it, I say he’s just too stubborn to ditch his old habits.
You can read both articles and participate in the discussion yourself.
Jason’s post: Windows 7: Mojave My Ass
My response: If you love Windows XP, you’ll hate Windows 7
During the course of writing my reply, I stumbled across a shortcut I had never noticed before, one that works in both Vista and in Windows 7.
One of Jason’s complaints is that Microsoft removed the Run shortcut from the Start menu when it released Windows Vista, and the Run box is still MIA from Windows 7.
If you mastered the Run box in Windows XP, you probably missed it, at least for a while, when Vista came out. But as I explain in my ZDNet piece, it’s not gone, just hidden. And I explain several alternatives and workarounds for it:
First of all, the Search box at the bottom of the Start menu does nearly everything the Run box did, and much more. If you begin typing a command, it appears in the Start menu, where you can click or press Enter to run it. With the Run box, I have to type a command in full and possibly even include its path. If I mistype the name, I get an error message.
[…]
Still not convinced? You want the old- school Run box? So just press Windows key+R. That shortcut has been around since the mid-1990s and still works in Windows Vista and Win7.
Not good enough? Fine. Customize the Vista/Win7 Start menu to add the Run command and you can party like it’s 1998. Right-click Start, choose Properties, click Customize, and select this check box.
![win7_for_xp_user_02[1]](http://www.edbott.com/weblog/images//win7-for-xp-user-021-thumb.png "win7_for_xp_user_02[1]")
![win7_for_xp_user_02[1]](http://www.edbott.com/weblog/images//win7-for-xp-user-021.png "win7_for_xp_user_02[1]")
And that’s when it dawned on me. In both Vista and Windows 7, the Run command is actually a system-managed shortcut in the Start Menu folder of your user profile. So, if you want to open the Run dialog box, just click Start, type run, and press Enter.
Hilarious, and yet … for those who have occasional uses for the Run menu, a nifty productivity tip.
I’m interested in your feedback on the transition from XP to Vista and Windows 7. Leave it here or over at ZDNet.
I know I shouldn’t encourage the drive-by posters, but really? Complaining about buggy behavior in a beta? That’s the point of a beta, so you can find bugs like that. You know what happens when you don’t beta test? You wind up releasing software where real data loss does occur.
Ed, excuse my last comment, if it even got through. I haven’t even gotten to Vista and all the talk about 7 has left me with the feeling of being left behind.
Happy new year to you and all the regulars here!
@cool
I’m not using Vista RTM. I *was* using Vista RTM before SP1 was released and UNC paths *were* a problem on that version, at least in my experience. If you actually read my comment, you’ll see that I used the past tense when referring to the problem and acknowledged that it has been fixed in the current version.
Have to agree with you Ed, I was reading Jason Perlow article and was thinking most of the points you made. I also agree with Mike Galos about how some people do not seem to want to learn anything new, they want to stay with what they know. Fear of change?