Worst things (that I turn off straight away on new boxes):
- "personal menus" more usually know as "where the bloody hell has my menu item gone"

Oh, agreed, for sure.

- "fading menus" more usually know as "the menu will be along shortly, please be patient"

That irritates me slightly, but I leave it on because it's a good work-around for an older irritant that never went away. Let me explain:

The fact that the sub-menus appear automatically is sometimes a problem for me in navigating multiple sub-menus. If you don't make your mouse move in the correct maze-like path on the screen, your desired sub-menu often disappears in favor of another sub-menu (because your mouse accidentally passed over the wrong sub-menu on the way to the desired icon).

So when I'm traversing menus quickly, I have been known to pick the wrong menu item. (And no one has any right to make fun of me- I know it's happened to you, too.)

The nice thing about the fading menus is that they fade out, too. So if I pick the wrong menu item, I get a fade-out picture of the item I selected for a second after I've done it. Then I at least know what I did wrong and can start thinking about corrective measures.

It would be neat if the menus appeared instantly but still faded out, that would be cool.

Of course, the best option would be to make it so an actual click is required to make a sub-menu appear, but that annoyance has been present since Win95 and doesn't show any signs of going away.

___________
Tony Fabris