No doubt, the massed choirs of Windows 95 users are singing from the rooftops, because Office 95 under Windows 95 allows long filenames. They think this is going to be of so much more use to them; 8+3 was a dreadful limitation, even 15 years ago.

But what narrow thinking! Going from an 8+3-character filename to a 256-character version of the same thing is progress only in as much as it's a move from disastrous to meagre on the usefulness scale.

Let's look at ...