Way back in the days of Wordstar, I used to reconfigure nearly every option, colors, backspace buffer, highlights etc. It was really easy, all the settings is in just one file. The single program instance helps a lot. When I changed OS to Windows 3.1, the fun of the reconfiguration is taken out. you can change how a program looks with out changing the entire environment. At the same time I did not want to upset the spiffy new OS. Config file for Word? It was buried somewhere. Fast forward to Office 20xx, there are now multiple screens within screens (OL20xx) for configuration. Sometimes I got lost guiding users over phone and have to resort to stepping through my own config. Now on Windows 7, I might change the desktop picture and the hibernation. The rest I couldn’t be bothered.
Now over at UIE, they have sat down and analyzed some user settings. Seems that 95% of users don’t change their programs configuration or settings. A common reply was “Microsoft shipped it this way, therefore it must be good for me.”
Read about it here.