Windows 7: One week, two bugs

Well, I've been dabbling with Windows 7 for just on a week now, and I've found two bugs.

First, it has the same "auto hide task bar" feature that Windows XP. Except that in XP, the task bar hides automatically. And in Windows 7, it usually doesn't. Don't know why. Sometimes it does. But, it seems, after a while it gets tired, or bored, and stops hiding.

Great.

Second, it has unnecessary and un-documented interaction between features.
Specifically, Windows 7 introduces two new features: Aero Snap and Aero Shake.

Aero Shake is a brand new feature. If you use the mouse to start dragging a window by its header bar, and "shake" the window, it will minimise every other window, leaving the one being dragged and shaken the only one open on the desktop. So you can see it clearly and, I guess, get at other things on the desk top at the same time. Shake it again, and the others go back the way they were. Kinda neat, I guess.

Aero Snap is a feature that, when you drag a window into the top or bottom of the screen, maximises it, while if you drag it into the side of the screen, it "half maximises" it --- that is expands it to fill half the screen. Now, XP has something like this, too, but I've never understood it. All I've noticed is that when I try to move a window, it sometimes maximises itself. Which is, to a very good approximation, never what I want.

So the Windows 7 mechanism is an improvement, in that I understand what it does. And, moreover, it only does the resize when you release the mouse button. But it does an animation the moment the mouse hits the edge of the screen, so you get warning of what is going happen, and can prevent it by dragging the mouse/window back away from the edge of the screen.

But, best of all, it can be disabled! There is a registry key (hey, it is windows, after all), and Google will find you any number of people telling you how to set it.

But there is also a tick box, which appears on several screens within the "Control Panel" hierarchy, that controls it. The box is labelled thus:

"Prevent windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen"

A 14-word description that does not rely on terminology, like "Aero Snap", that may be unfamiliar and off-putting to the novice user. Probably the result of much attention to usability, and no doubt the subject to extensive user testing and evaluation. Just the sort of label that one would hold up as an example of how to do interface design, if it only described what the tick box did.

But unfortunately, it doesn't: the tick box doesn't just disable "Aero Snap". It also disables "Aero Shake" --- a facility which has nothing whatsoever to do with dragging windows to the edge of the screen.

So the 14-word description of the tick box is clear, friendly, and wrong.

Thanks, guys...