Windows 7 progress

I did a bunch of messing around and I've very nearly got Windows 7 looking and acting like XP. The latest success was shutting off the Search box on the Start menu. I hate the thing. I never want to use search, not ever. I know where things are on my computer, and having Search up and in focus by default every time I open Start is just irritating every minute of the day. Turns out there are ways to disable lots of this stuff but it's hidden, some of it in things like accessibility - apparently disabled people are my savior, since they want their computers to work the same way as always.

Getting rid of the oversized Fisher-Price bubble-style windows and buttons was pretty straightforward. Losing the ridiculous task switching stuff and the dock bar, making the system tray not hide stuff, getting screen elements down to proper size instead of taking up 4 times as much room as they should, all that is done. I'm still not 100% happy with Windows Explorer, but at least now it's got a proper menu and the ridiculous nav and preview panes are gone. Preview is just a pain that slows things down by always wanting to open up every file the cursor touches. Also getting rid of thumbnail view by default was a great relief.

Nice software alert

AVStoDVD - free/open source, decent user interface. Takes most any video file and makes DVDs including menus.
After lots of screwing around trying to make DVDs from MKV files, including installing software that didn't work, this ran perfectly the first time.
Just be sure to change the defaults from PAL to NTSC the first time you run it.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/avstodvd/