HELP ME! this is driving me nuts...

OK, I've had my MacBook Pro just shy of a year now. I've upgraded the OS to Lion, the memory to 8 Gb, and the hard drive to 1 Tb. I've managed to sort some of lion's more annoying 'features,' like the resume 'feature' in safari (to me these things are bugs, but if apple choose to call them a feature, then who am I to argue?)

But theres one bug in the 2 flavours of OSX I've tried that I simply can't cure as all the tech sites and blogs either refuse to see it as a bug or are unwilling to look at it offering instead poor workarounds.

The problem? Its Finder. It mixes the folders in with the files to make an alphabetical list of everything.

Now my experience with various flavours of DOS, Windows and Linux over the years, is that for simplicity of arrangement, the folders/directories always come first, thus allowing quick navigation.

Finder NO! its a case of having to either jump through a series of search based hoops, or put up with the way Apple wants me to do find things. Theres not even an option to select which way I want to have my folders

Most die hard apple users on various websites are used to this, and thats fine for them, but this often seems to lead to them not seeing it as a problem, just a "windows user moan". They suggest ploughing through hundreds if not thousands of files, renaming all the folders (I've got better things to do with my life). Or running third party software (great until you see the "open in finder" link which brings you back to the same problem.

Does anyone know of a working plugin, or such similar that works in the background and allows folder to work the way I want?

You can sort by 'kind'?

Also try total finder - it is a finder add-on
TotalFinder brings tabs to your native Finder and more!
Main features for switchers
-cut and paste files
-put folders first
-tabs
-show all (hidden/system) files
It sits atop finder so open in finder still works.
It does cost $18 - but $4.50 per feature mentioned above isn't that bad.

I have to say that I haven't found ANY of Lion's features to be bad at all -- a couple (like natural scrolling) took a few minutes to get used to, that's it. The only significant new feature I don't "like" is Launchpad -- but I actually don't dislike it, I just don't personally have a use for it yet.

Mission Control is a classic case in point: at first I hated it because I already had my Spaces mastered. But then I re-approached it with *an open mind,* and guess what. Love it now. More efficient than ever.

The trick is to let go of pre-conceived notions and be open to change. In short, channel your Inner Steve.