One of the biggest complaints that new users have with Windows is that although it’s fun (relatively speaking) to click-and-drag files and folders and drop them on new locations, they can never figure out whether the items are going to be copied or moved. There are, of course, rules for this kind of things:
If you drop the item on a folder in the same disk or partition, Windows moves the item.
If you drop the item on a folder in a different disk or partition, Windows copies the item.
The only bit of help Windows offered novices was to make a slight change to the mouse pointer (the addition of a tiny plus sign) when dropping the file or folder would result in copying the item.
Windows Vista improves on this by making the result of a drag-and-drop operation explicit when you’re in mid-drag. As you can see in below snapshot, when you’re dragging an item, the mouse pointer changes to display text that tells you exactly what will happen when you drop the item (”Move to Desktop” in this case).
September 18th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Vista seems to grab files by itself and move them. This is very annoying as it will drop the file anywhere unless I hit the escape button to halt the procedure. Is this normal and can it be turned off. I use a laptop with the touch pad.