You bring up some interesting points. I suggest you look at "About Face" by Alan Cooper, who also questions the whole idea of "saving." His main point is that the concept is an artifact of the file system, where there are two copies of a document: one in memory and another on disk. This doesn't fit the user's model, so he thinks the idea should be abandoned.

>I was looking at an application yesterday that was very annoying. Everytime you saved a data change a wait window came up with "Your data has been saved - press any key to continue".

Fortunately, this model isn't as prevalent as it used to be. I think it stemmed from users not trusting computers, and wanting positive confirmation.

>It got me thinking "why do we need a save button at all?" When I fill out a physical form I don't have to save it. It is saved by virtue of having filled it out. So why do we require users to 'SAVE'?

I tend to agree, but I've heard good points made by others to the contrary. For example, when should the form actually be saved? When you go to a different record or close the app? What if you don't do either of those things, but just leave the computer on while you go out to lunch?

In a situation like this, it might be useful to replace the word "save" with "commit" or "submit."

>If you look at some of the forms that change settings in Win95 or IE4 etc. You don't have to save. You can cancel, but the boxes you check etc are saved automatically.

But you have to click OK or Apply for anything to happen.