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The Most Annoying Software Out There
superglaze writes "ZDNet UK has a very entertaining round-up of the most annoying software out there, and everything from RealPlayer and Adobe Reader to Java and Norton Antivirus gets a kicking. 'The internet has brought us many joys. It's rewritten the rules of business and pleasure. And pain. For it allows what may have seemed like bright ideas at the time ('let's use it to make sure our customers have the latest software', for example) to turn into a stinking pit of misery — usually, but by no means always, after marketing gets its fangs in.'"
The worst has to be the Norton XXXX products. I installed Norton 360 v2 on my laptop as an "upgrade" to Norton AntiVirus 2007, and I think that intentionally installing a few viruses and malware would have resulted in better overall system performance.
Symantec tech support was, of course, useless:
"Sir, you have a virus or malware."
"Yes, I know: the malware is called Norton 360 since my problems didn't appear until I installed your product. What I want to know is how to stop Norton 360 from using 100% of both cores and incessently accessing the DVD drive for no apparent reason."
"Sir, you need to run a scan for virus and malware."
At least I got the damn thing uninstalled and got a refund. Never again...
I'm almost to the point where I want to remove Quicktime from all of my machines, because I'm so tired of being asked to "upgrade" to Safari and iTunes.
Update apps are a pain in the backside, but they are a symptom of the way windows and osx are designed...
There's no question that your system should be aware of what software is installed, and what the latest version is, and make the user aware too and give them the option to install the updates.
On linux you rarely, if ever, get problems like this because the updates are handled centrally.
The problem with windows and osx, is that there is no central way for third party apps to register to the automatic update mechanism, the supplied update functions are only for the original vendor's apps, not third parties, meaning every third party has their own update service wasting memory and informing/annoying you in different ways.
The linux approach is orders of magnitude better, centralised package repositories, a centralised method of informing the user, you can choose how to be informed of updates, and you won't be hassle any other way. To further help matters, the package manager knows of packages you don't have installed too, giving you single click access to the latest versions of a whole host of additional applications.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The most annoying thing for me? The stupid little bubble that pops up to inform me that wireless networks are in range, even when I am running through a wired connection. The only way I've found to really get rid of this is to disable the connection, a hassle for whenever I try and go anywhere. Of course, this particular annoyance only really hits me nowadays when I need to boot into my small windows partition. Ubuntu FTW.
09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0
You should try to remove Norton virus checker. It has pieces of itself everywhere, and it over writes Windows system files with its own.
So you get a brand new machine, and during the first login, the Norton installer runs. You have NO choice in this. Some deal was reached between the machine distributor and Norton, and that is just the way it is.
If you make a mistake, the entire Windows system goes sideways. We alway do an image FIRST, then try to remove it. That way if something blows up you have a fallback. Then we make an image for the rest of the same type of machine, and we re-image every new one that comes in the door.
Hey Norton: go stuff it!
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
"Stop using Windows" isn't a bugfix.
Yeah, and the Safari "update". If I wanted yet *another* browser, I'd have installed it myself. Don't include it as a quicktime update. WTF? Seriously apple, WTF?
You'll have that sometimes...
Why should I change my usage? They're the ones that suck.
(unless you want to click through about 10 pages)
I hope I'm not the only one struck by the irony of this article formatting given that this it is criticizing bad UI design...
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Because you're doing it wrong??
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Simple?! Two reboots, a non-disclosed password (as far as I know), and an additional removal tool just to uninstall a piece of software?
NOT in order of annoyingness:
Quicktime - It's both a terrible media player and it is insanely unwilling to be removed. Apple's central design concept seems to be preventing the user from doing what he wants. If I delete qttask.exe, it means I don't want that file anymore, not that I want it to be resurrected. If I disable it in msconfig, it doesn't mean that the next time Quicktime runs I want it to get a new startup entry.
iTunes - ituneshelper.exe is about the same as qttask, and iTunes is even worse at playing music than Quicktime is at playing movies. It's the single most bloated piece of software I've ever used. The iTunes store is another reason to avoid it, not to use it. It also crashes way too much on a new MacBook Pro, and since I don't know what Apple compatible software is a good replacement for it, I can't just replace it for my friend as I would if he had Windows.
Apple Updater - Everyone I know just installed Safari. They didn't mean to.
Flash - Thank you, Flashblock, for making the internet useable again. Thank you, bad web designers, for sticking retarded flash "intro pages" on your sites so I can see that they've been blocked and then avoid your company on principal.
HP Printer Philosophy - Thanks to you, too, HP, for making a printer that needs an IP to be set via a web interface in order to access that same web interface. Thanks to my neighbor for having a parallel cable sitting around so I could access it in a more traditional way.
Windows Desktop - Why do you lose my icon placement every time your resolution changes? Luckily, there are countless little freeware apps to save icon positions.
Real Player - You basically invented the Apple "if you uninstall me but I will grow more powerful than you can possibly imagine" routine, so you get extra evil points for originality.
Logitech Mouse Drivers - My mouse drivers are now 100 megs. Finally they fixed the two year problem of needing to run them manually after booting (running on startup caused them to fail), but they still involve two separate taskbar icons and take up a ton of RAM.
Word - I know how to make you do what I want, but it took years to learn how to both stop your autoformatting and then put in the formatting I want. I hate the way you place images. I hate the way you resize my stuff after I've already locked it down.
Verizon Phone UI - My phone had a great UI and lots of nice capabilities when it was made. You removed bluetooth file transfers so I'd have to pay you to get photos off my phone, and you made the interface ugly. You removed the ability to vibrate and ring at the same time. I'm glad my phone was so easily hackable.
Flash (again, but bear with me) movie players - The only reason you exist is to keep me from saving video to my hard disk. Guess what. I can still do it. Meanwhile, you're slow, often not resizable without using a magnifying tool to manually zoom onto your little box, and you require me to enable flash.
I know how to fix or replace all of you, but you kill me every time I have to use a new PC and wade through your bloated code again.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)