In Praise of Advanced Options
One of the challenges in designing a program is to provide a user friendly interface for the user. If the program is too complicated then it will not be used as much. This has sometimes led to a reduction in how much the program can be customised and configured to the way the user likes it.
The main problem is, of course, that there are different users, who will each have a different amount of experience and expertise. Basic users will be confused by too many options yet more advanced users will want to be able to change many of the details to the way they want.
This is where I think the advanced options become useful. This removes the complicated configuration possibilities away from the basic users who will probably never look at the advanced options. Yet for the more advanced user there can be huge possibilities within the advanced configuration to do whatever they like.
I think this is probably the best way to deal with the conflict of keeping things simple and allowing for more advanced things. Now the only problem is working out what is simple enough to keep in the basic options and what is advanced enough for the advanced options.