XP Annoyance

Windows Explorer in XP, or whatever XP calls the file manager, is trying to be helpful. That means it is really being annoying. On the desktop is a shortcut for "Documents" that opens the file manager to a documents directory. This directory is, however, not the one I really want. I want C:\home\neubauer instead.

I figured I'd just change the shortcut and give it the properties I want. It almost worked. It will give me direct access to C:\home\neubauer\ BUT that's now seemingly a ghost of the real thing. I'm not really there in the directory tree where I can, if I want to, easily jump to another directory, like C:\usr\bin or some other that I want to get to fast from time to time.

Instead of doing what I want, the system is trying to guess what I need and getting it wrong. It wants to be helpful in the worst way. And it is that: helpful in the worst way. I don't want this incompetent help. I want it to get out of my way. The Win95 box's Windows Explorer comes up at C: and shows the whole directory tree. That is acceptable. At least I can navigate directly from there without having to go through the extra step of clicking a "Folders" button. Even Windows 2000 got it right. But XP just had to go improve things the Microsoft way. The result: it sucks.

I've put up with this silly XP behavior for a few weeks now and my patience is running out. Anyone know how, or even if, the XP file manager can be whacked into doing the right thing? I haven't looked into replacement file managers just yet, but it may come to that.