>> I'm told you can change some registry key (manually of course) to make 
>> this folder live somewhere else. 
> 
> You don't have to change things manually. You right-click on the folder, 
> select "properties", select "location", and give it a new location. 

And which version of Windows do you need for this option to appear?

> Everything respects that nowadays, unless you're installing programs 
> from the Win98 era perhaps.

Heh. On Monday, I've got to see if a Windows 2.0 program works OK under 
Windows XP. The fun part? To run it, you must replace SERIAL.SYS with a 
custom modified version. (!!)

It still amuses me that this program can't print on any network printer 
who's name is more than 8 characters long...

>> Yeah. The updater for Adobe Acrobat Reader likes to stuff the 
>> installer files in a temp folder inside Documents and Settings. For no 
>> defined reason.
> 
> Because that's where it has permission to write temp files. Putting it 
> in the local tempfile direcotry would have been better, yes.

Oh, sure, it could put the installer file in

   %profile%\Local Settings\Temp

But it doesn't. It puts it in

   %profile%\Application Settings\Adobe\Acrobat\Updater

The Java installer does something similarly retarded for some reason. 
Maybe it's an IE quirk of some kind?

>> I'm still wondering why no OS has yet come up with the idea of 
>> seperating "documents" from "settings", but hey...
> 
> They did. They called it "the registry". Everyone bitched about it being 
> separate from the file system. :-)

You can't put, for example, the Word "normal" template in the registry. 
But then, I guess it depends on what you consider to be "settings" and 
what is "documents"...

FWIW, I think the registry actually works quite well for what it's 
supposed to be for. You can lock it down with security, it's got 
seperate user and system sections, and so on. The only real flaw is that 
it's more or less impossible to do manual things like copy one user's 
preferences to another user account, but only for one specific 
application. (Because you will never, ever determine which keys to copy...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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