I initially thought the same thing. But on my WinXP systems I keep the Task Bar portion of the Quick Launch GUI as small as the settings allow (which it seems I recall is the default), leaving room for only 3 icons, none of which are folders in my case (i.e., Show Desktop, Launch IE, and Winamp).

The rest of my Quick Launch items are displayed in the menu that slides up from the Task Bar when I click the chevron (double arrow) to the right of the 3 Quick Launch icons on the Task Bar. I have several folders in the slide-up menu, all of which slide open to the right upon mouse-over, and do nothing if single-clicked (but they do open the selected Quick Launch sub-folder in a new Explorer window if double-clicked).

However, I found that if I drag one of those Quick Launch sub-folders from the slide-up menu down to replace one of the 3 icons on the Task Bar and then single-click on the folder, it Opens in a new Explorer window as described above. So maybe the “fix” is only relevant (and necessary) if/when one places Quick Launch sub-folders on the Task Bar portion of the Quick Launch GUI. In WinXP (at least), Quick Launch sub-folders on the slide-up menu already behave as intended by this “fix”.

…I haven’t tried the above “fix” for folders on the Task Bar portion of Quick Launch yet, as I don’t need it with my configuration, but this may clarify what was puzzling to Julia (and to me) about whether this article is relevant to WinXP. [Looks like it is, if one has Quick Launch sub-folders on the Task Bar portion of the Quick Launch GUI. :)]