Say you have Windows 98 or later with Active Desktop disabled. While browsing down the listbox of wallerpaper in the Display Applet in the Control Panel, you choose a JPEG image. Windows will then helpfully tell you: this image can be used as wallpaper `only if Active Desktop is enabled’. Well, that’s a lie. Even Internet Explorer can turn JPEGs into desktop wallpaper — it converts them into BMPs first. So do most users like myself — use an image editor like (a recent version of) Paint, or Photo Editor, and convert the bothersome JPEG into a BMP and lo! instant wallpaper gratification.

Here, the most charitable explanation is that the applet programmer never had a look at the (similar) feature in IE. The less charitable explanation would be that the programmer had orders to get the word Active Desktop in front of users’ eyes as often as possible, whether it made sense or not. Anyway, all the Control Panel applet makes us do is jump through a few hoops. Software which behaves this way — an I know better attitude — gets an arrogant mark from me.

Update: The old wucrtupd.exe had a similar problem — bustling with self-importance, it scanned for updates every five minutes, with no (good) way of changing the interval. Thankfully, the new Windows 2000 Automatic Update is much better to use. I guess someone at msft listens to all that feedback after all :-).