(ctrl+alt+shit+~)
man, it must suck everytime you need to use it.
Windows 8 parapraxis :-)
@ mdwh:
About my thingie on deleting files: Deleting a folder with 50,000 files (and a few hundred or so folders) inside is the most obvious and easiest to explain example of how what Explorer is doing is a stupid approach. It applies to all other operations (move/copy) too, however.
The correct approach for deleting a folder would be to rename the file record ("inode") representing the folder to something that Windows does not display (or to a different location, similar to $RECYCLER). This does not delete the files within, but from the user's point of view they are instantly "gone", which is what the user intended (you can indeed manually get this effect by moving it to the recycler first, and then emptying the recycler -- except that this can spectacularly fail as below, and except this will also delete everything else in the recycler, which is probably just not what you want).
Explorer could then access check the files in a background thread, and if they're all accessible, delete them one by one. Since NTFS has transactions, you can probably even skip the access checking alltogether (I have admittedly never used NTFS transactions, but if they work as I'd expect, you could do all deletes in one TXN and this either fails or succeeds).
Finally it removes the stale folder. It does not matter how long this takes, and if the computer crashes/reboots in between, it can just continue its work afterwards, safely and consistently. If access check fails for one or several files, optionally prompt for UAC to override, or fail the operation (which renames the folder back to its original name, or if that is taken, to an alternative visible name, so it pops back into existence -- with its complete, consistent contents).
Instead, Explorer first traverses the entire folder hierarchy only to show the stupid "found 50,000 files, deleting file 1 of 50,000..." message which nobody wants to see in the first place. You want the folder and the files inside gone, *poof*, you're not interested in spending time watching a message and a graph of how awesome the computer is at deleting a single folder, which takes so long you wonder if it's working punch cards.
Gathering the metrics alone can take a second or two (it's admittedly faster under Win8, but bleh). Then Explorer deletes each and every single file one by one, and only after this finally removes the folder. This can take minutes, and worse, it can fail.
This is of course a kind of correct and acceptable behaviour for network or removable media like an USB stick, since you cannot control whether the user will just pull the plug the next second without doing a "safe remove" (though in this case whatever happens is the user's own fault, and deleting files one by one will not work reliably in that case, either). It is not really acceptable for local, non-removable store or removable store where you have control over the tray (like DVD), however.
If accessing or deleting a single file fails for whatever reason (sharing conflict, write protect, access rights) it all completely fucks up. Half of the files are deleted, the other half isn't. This is not so much a problem with deleting files (the user wanted them gone, so who cares if they're messed up, you can always delete the rest again), but it also happens with copying/moving files and what's worst with moving files overwriting existing ones.
If anything goes wrong, Explorer leaves your files/folders in some inconsistent state with half of them overwritten and half of them not touched, or some other thing in between. And, there's no easy and straightforward way of reverting this mess to some sane state -- both the source and the destination are now unusable (though I guess NTFS transactions should probably be able to trivially handle such a thing).
There is also no way you can use the folder's name or copy files to it (unless you're positive that they don't conflict with existing ones, which would cause great grief) while this is running. From a user's point of view, there is no good reason for that -- I've told the computer that this folder is "gone" 2 minutes ago already, why is it still doing something and why can't I still use the name?
Copying and moving is admittedly somewhat more complicated, but not impossible. What's needed for "instant" copying is already 90% implemented in junctions. You would only need to add some kind of copy-on-write logic on top of that, in case someone modifies the original while you hold a junction instead of a deep copy. Add transactions onto move-overwrite, and you're almost there (this entire paragraph is a gross simplification, it's indeed a little more complicated, but you get me. There's ten thousands of man-hours being spent on "improving" Windows with stupid animations and unnecessary messages, it shouldn't be much trouble implementing such a thing instead).
That's where one could truly improve, not by adding fancier animations, more stupid progress messages, and a pause button. If things happen "instantly" (or nearly so) you have no need to pause and you have no need for a progress graph. That would really make Windows more awesome.
I'd really prefer the copying/moving/deleting being awesome rather than a fancy dialog telling me how awesome it is.
My office stinks when I'm searching... 
