I, for one, personally am getting a growing distrust and hatred of windows. There are way too many things in computers now that are defaulted to a setting that tries to be helpful. Things are so helpful, in fact, that you have to jump through hoops to turn them off. My list of hated windows options includes the following:
1) That freaking paperclip "helper" icon. I often use computers that are not my own, and this thing is all over the place. Try to open a new blank email message for writing, "how can I help you? What type of message are you trying to write?" Bite me. You can help by getting the hell off my computer screen and letting me write my own message. I hate having to click on you to tell you to go away.
2) You can't type a word with consecutive capitalized letters in it. Thus, everytime I write "UMass" I have to go back after I hit the spacebar and correct it, because the stupid spellcheck is trying to be helpful and changes it to Umass. This also works when you try to type things in (such as things that look like numeric dates) and the program "helpfully" corrects them automatically for you. Also "helpfully" gives you ready made lists and indents the text whenever you start making lists.
3) All the windows control panels. They are so dumbed down that you can't actually make any changes that matter. If you try to, you get warnings like "this may cause irreversible systems failure" and you run away meekly.
4) The tendency of windows and internet explorer to save EVERY FREAKING PIECE OF INFORMATION that it ever downloads. Even if you clear your memory, your computer hard drive is still clogged with a billion little programs and files. And you can't delete them, because every so often one of them is vitally important and your computer won't start without it. Curses. All it does is slow down the computer. Windows is like a packrat grandmother who saves every single thing she ever bought. I better save this receipt for my new toothbrush I got at CVS. Better yet, I will save it with my old toothbrush, just in case I ever need it!
5) Popup blockers that are installed on people's computers. Many important websites have popups as part of their function. But with these idiotic "helpful" things installed, I can't use them, and god help you if you try to disable the popup blocker. Are you sure? Are you sure? Do you really want to do this? Yes! Get off my screen you ingrate! And by the way, a lot of the popup ads have no trouble getting through!!!
6) These awful ads that require you to "download a program" in order for them to function properly. You know the ones, you go to a page and a little blue box pops up asking you if you want to download the appropriate components. Then, if you don't, everytime you come back to the page the same darn box pops up. If you do, they send spyware along with it and you get screwed with even more popups.
7) the fact that vitally important programs always have names like rejklgjkglrehj.exe so you ever know what you are actually seeing on your computer. Don't delete kldfhsgdfkllr.exe, your computer requires it in order to load windows. However, rhfusdfjkhgrjk.exe is a virus that slows down your computer. Find the bad program!
8) The 8 billion default options on every toolbar on internet explorer. I don't need a "Search," a "Media," or a "print" icon. I can find it in the stupid menus. Stop taking up so much hard drive space!
But anyway, to answer your question. I doubt you can turn it off. It's one of the helpful functions Skynet has installed to make things easier for us, pacifying us until the machines take over and we are all destroyed by our computers in the horrible armageddon that the prophet James Cameron hath forseen.
Bring back the macintosh. So much more user friendly.
