You know how you get folder views in Windows Explorer?

This is a continuing aggravation for me.  I click on explorer (this is what Windows uses to display your folders) and up comes a view that shows a bunch of folder icons.  So I have to go up to the "View" entry on the menubar and pick List or Details, my preferred way of compressing the view so I can see as much as possible. Now, I know how to change explorer so what I assumed was ALL the explorer views showed the list view.  However, it didn't do it for all folders; it seemed so arbitrary.  Well, I found a really good tutorial on this, + some suggestions on alternatives to explorer.  It is a little "geeky," but take a look:

How to see the same view in all Windows 7 folders.