Let me shorten up a long paper about this. I make no apologies about that or for this OS's designer.
In the design of Vista and 7 it was decided that computer users were put off by displays that came up and the lists of file names went whizzing by. In fact, it's a common Hollywood scene where bad things are happening when computer screens do that.
A decision was made to not show file names as they were copied.
The same for reducing information given in other areas.
All this was intentional. You are not alone in noticing it.
If you want to ask why, the answers are simple. It's a change to make the OS more acceptable to non-technical people. If you present 10 items of information, you get to explain 10 items during a tech support call. If you reduce this to just 2 items then it may avoid the call altogether.
Bob
Yes, Vista has been out for a long time, but I'm not just noticing this now; it's only taken me this long to get around to asking about it. In XP, and other Windows before, the RB (Recycle Bin) display showed only the recycle bin contents--which could be ordered in a number of different ways--but it also showed what you would see if you selected Properties on any other folder or file, THAT IS...the number of folders, files, and bytes. So, when files are deleted one could see the number of bytes that have actually been deleted.
The RB under Vista, in addition to showing a handful of other folders I don't care about at the moment, displays the actual RB folder but no volume data. Looking at "Properties" for the RB yields several numbers I don't care about (perhaps I should?).
Where did the stats go?

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