I have this enabled for all folders, which is something I would probably recommend;. It's also mentioned in the jaws help as a recommended setting in Windows for use with Jaws, since we can't see the icons that normally show the file type to sighted users.

Scary that many sighted users don't even know these extensions actually exist.

Personally, I default to not having the extentions shown and only enable the ones I want specifically, sinse otherwise I found things slightly irritating, but probably just a personal feeling there.

generally, the only file extentions I choose to show are those for zip folders, ---- so that I can tell the difference betwene zipped and unzipped folders, ---- also pdf, sinse generally I prefer to convert pdfs to plane text and I don't want to confuse the two sorts of files.

Other than that though, I just go with the standard text (I can always examine the file properties if I get stuck on a particular occasion).

Well as I said, I prefer to do things on a more personal basis through the file extentions property sheet in the folder options off the control panel, ---- selecting each type I want shown there, but to each their own.

Well, the annoyence for me comes when i'm looking through lots of files with extentions that I already know like mp3 or word documents for my phd. I don't particularly care what extention they are as long as they work.

I do have windows set to display unknown file types, so whacky file types don't particularly matter too much as long as their not too similar to something I had previously.

for instance, one game I play has great music which can be extracted, but the extention needs to be changed from something odd like pmx to mp3 in order to get them to play in winamp or whatever.