The stated goal of Office 2007 was to alter the way people worked (which is why they had no “revert to the old way” button), so it’s not too surprising that they’d try to change the way we use the OS.
I read an article way back, in which Microsoft developers were surprised to learn that Windows users had workarounds for many of the features of Windows.
Who puts their documents in “My Documents”?
Only an underworked dilettante that writes very little. Most handle multiple documents under multiple areas. Try sifting through a thousand "My Document" entries to find that "Goldberg and Inklestein" (or other) file.....
I put pretty much everything in “My Documents” then put shortcuts on the desktop.
This is because our computers are leased, and “My Documents” is the default folder that they move over to the new computer. You have to specify the rest and sometimes they miss stuff...
So, since I lose my computer every three years or so, all the stuff I need to reconstitute a new working system is “My Documents.” Its a bit over 40GB, now... Takes about day or two after I get the new computer to get it back into working shape.
Currently we’re on XP and I’m happy with it, but it takes a couple of months for me to stop cursing every OS “upgrade.” Microsoft seems to change the names and locations of applications, apparently just for the hell of it. I don’t really appreciate that...
I do (or used to before I started keeping most things in Dropbox instead). But with lots of subfolders, and of course having the "My Documents" folder mapped to my directory on an NAS.
I put my documents in “My Documents” - but only because, after years of fighting with Windows over the issue, I finally relented and let it put them where it wants.
On a related tangent, I’m upgrading from WinXP to OS X. With all the anti-user UX misfeatures, Vista wasn’t happening. Hardware requirements, just to get no additional software benefit, meant Win7 was pointless. And now Win8 is going to take millions of pixels and terabytes of storage and give us ... AOL. Hello, Xcode...
I do, albeit usually in individual project subfolders.
Where do you put your documents?
Then Office 2010 changed the way Office 2007 worked.
I swear that Microsoft changes their interfaces just to justify the existance of all those interface programmers.
“Who puts their documents in “My Documents”?”
People who work in enterprise environments and want their redirected profiles to be backed up.
For me, the problem was violation of a cardinal rule we used live with -- directory and file names do not contain spaces. So, MS came up with names like "My Documents", "Documents and Settings", and "Program Files" instead of "Documents", "Profiles", "Programs".
I have a fair number of scripts that manipulate directories and files. Everything had to be changed to add quotes around the names lest I confuse something.