UX/L

A few points...

1.

There's a reason why most operating systems that have windows with rounded corners still have context menus with square corners. When a context menu is brought up, it's almost always in relation to a location on the screen where a user clicks. The rectangular corners both make it stand out in contrast to the windows on the screen and can create a reference to the clicked location by having the corner relate to it. A menu is also essentially a list, and the rectangular corners emphasize that the menu is a floating list.

If a context menu with rounded corners pops up, you have less of a feeling that its relating to anything you did, and there's less emphasis that its there for the user to select from a list of choices in response to his click.

The designers probably said one day "hey, rounded corners are sexy", and decided to use them.

2.

I've hated the practice of putting icons in every button and every menu item since the days of the Lotus office suite. It makes the interface look childish and toyish. If the user is only given two buttons, "OK" and "Cancel", colorful icons don't help him make his choice, and in fact it confuses him, since it makes the message box look a lot more cluttered.

In Windows, only select commands on menus are given icons, and even though some consistency *s complain about it, it works and makes Windows look more elegant than it would otherwise.  Microsoft is also removing icons from command bars in Windows 7 to bring focus on the content of the window. I agree with the rationale in that case, but I disagree with their decision. I'd rather Microsoft did something else, like make the icons monochromatic.

The designers in this case probably said one day "hey, icons are cool", and decided to use them.

3.

Plasma containers are like widgets/gadgets, and a folder is just one type of widget you can have. That's a perfectly good feature, I wish Windows had that. The main problem I think is there is that they look mistakable for a type of window.

It would work better if they completely removed the container's border, and only made it show when the users mouse was over it. Or make the border lighter. Or, alternatively, if they just made the containers darker. Right now it also seems that the plasma container that's currently selected has a lighter color and the one that's not selected has a darker color. Get rid of the difference. If these are static containers fixed to the desktop, you don't want them having the ability to be active or inactive like windows.  Microsoft's solution of a set of hovering controls makes more sense as a visual cue.

But, hey its 'cool' how it is.

4.

One thing that was also good idea to consider is that in the context menu all of the actions have been moved to a submenu. This is probably a solution to a problem we see in windows, where the context menus are overwhelmed with commands.

But it also makes the actions a little harder to find for novice users, and it also misses the big problem. Actions like Play/Edit/Print associated with that type of document should be readily available to users. It's all that extra junk like 'Convert to PDF' and 'Add to ZIP Archive' (and 'Add to Live Mesh Folder...' and OneCare's 'Scan for viruses...' ) which third party programs add that need to be hidden away to a submenu based on the user's preferences.

A bad solution for a real problem, imo.