Vista x64 All Tasks aka "God Mode"

The recent hype over Windows' "God Mode" likely hasn't done much to put to rest the contention the whole operating system is little more than a rather cheesy game.

http://brandonlive.com/2010/01/04/the-so-called-god-mode/ (of ambiguous officialness by a Microsoft employee) goes into a little bit of detail; but the main point of interest is the general amount of hawing from Microsoft, and the tossing around of how goofy and silly people are for their use of this 'trick'.  Vista, and Windows 7 both illustrate this mentality of giving their users what Microsoft has decided they'll need, rather than what, perhaps, their customers actually want.

Sadly, no one in Redmond seems to be asking what the significance of all this interest being shown by so many less technologically-savvy and historically oblivious users in what should be system errata could mean.

An obvious answer, of course, is by hiding so many system settings and focus grouping ease of configuration into oblivion, users of Microsoft's newer versions of Windows have become so desperate for a way of getting at the options they remember from the older releases that the 'All Tasks' view must indeed seem diety-given.

Whatever the case, it's handy for not having to wade through the sometimes mind-bogglingly unintuitive depths of control panel applets when doing initial system setup by having most of the published settings in a simple list.

After all, as we all learned from random girls throwing themselves off rooftops after being bit by T-virus infected subjects, a little information really can save lives. (I'm not at all insinuating that the Umbrella corporation is in anyway controlled by Microsoft. Please stand the black helicopters down now..)

For those folks privileged enough to be running x64 Vista and would rather not crash their shell (if using Explorer), the following method perhaps will give more joyous results.  Create a shortcut, and use the following command line:
explorer.exe shell:::{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}


Then, simply pin to start menu and enjoy; a productive citizen is a happy citizen!


Some further reference:
http://www.windowsvalley.com/blog/windows-7-god-mode-behind-the-scenes/

A not so useful list:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee330741(VS.85).aspx