If you believe Microsoft, something as modern as Vista should be a shining model of efficiency.

Well, I recently found an example of inefficiency that seems to go back to the days of windows 95 (or maybe even earlier).

Yep, I’m talking about the temp folder(s).

As Microsoft has waded through the various versions of Windows, the location of the temp folder (or folders) has changed, but the lack of housecleaning hasn’t.

With Vista, I recently got a slow laptop from a customer, and I decided to take a look at:

c:users{username}appdatalocaltemp

And what did I find?

over 4,000 temp files… some over 2 years old.

Sure, you can install something to cleanup the temp files, but average computer users don’t know about computer maintenance… they just assume it get done automatically.

Its amazing how a company will put so much effort (and money) into advanced new features… yet some simple maintenance like cleaning the temp folder at startup time, is totally ignored.

Out of curiosity, I took a look at the latest Windows 7 beta… and it also has the same issue…

It makes me wonder if anyone at Microsoft actually cares about the long-term usability of their windows products.