Grrr to mere cosmetic changes

I'll be the first to admit that change is not my favorite thing to experience. I'll go new places and try new things, listen to new music, eat new foods, learn new languages, but when i'm in the mood to do it. Other days (at least half) i want what i know i like, in familiar places, where i know how long things will take.

Facebook is not one of my favorite things, although i do waste an inordinate amount of time there. This latest cosmetic change to rearrange the profile is annoying, the missing status bar is confusing (especially when the program itself used to figure out if you were posting a link or a status) and i can't see the point, other than to mix things up for change's sake. Well, what a about making a significant change to content, such as not rearranging our privacy settings every once in a while?

(Which reminds me, since they've changed the profiles, i'd better go check on my privacy settings again. I really am close to quitting.)

My anti-virus software also was updated recently to a new version. I can see a difference, but only visually. It works less efficiently. It wants to reboot every time it gets a definitions update. As far as i can tell, this is a cosmetic change and not a beneficial one.

And last but not least, the impetus to this rant, my word processing software program. When my old laptop died, i got Windows 7 on the new one. The new word was a little tricky to navigate, but fortunately, we'd had it at work for a while so my time learning how to use it was spent there and not while trying to finish my thesis. However, now my toolbars disappear. That means i have to click on them to get them to come back, which is an extra mouse move and click EVERY SINGLE TIME. That's a lot for a designer, or a thesis writer, who has to make a lot of tweaks to font sizes, font colors, line widths, and image placement. When i went to the help (also hard to find: who looks for a tiny blue question mark instead of "HELP"!?) to find out how to lock my toolbars down, this is what i found:

"Learning new things can be stressful, but if you follow the demos, training courses, and of course, some of the advice I dole out, you'll probably begin to see why we made such a radical change in the UI (and you'll be happy we did).....After spending some time using the "interactive command reference guides" (a fancy term for ROAD MAPS), I began to see the beauty of this new UI. See, the commands and features we think you use most are grouped together under tabs so that you don't have to go hunting through the old-style menus to find what you need." -The Crabby Office Lady Column

See, I don't want to spend time watching demos or taking (and paying for!) training courses to use something as simple as a word processor. 'You' apparently did not know which tools i used most. And lastly, this didn't solve any problems for experienced users: I knew where the toolbars were, i knew how to customize my toolbars too, and it didn't take me any time to find the tools...unlike now, thanks to the ever so helpful cosmetic changes.

GRRRRR.

I think i shall go make a squash for dinner.