OneAndOneIs2

It's a shame that, of all the many ideas MS has ripped off from other OSes, the Linux package manager concept hasn't been one of them.

There are a number of advantages to installing all your software through a PM. The PM keeps track of everything you have installed, checks for updates, and thus can ensure that everything on your computer is kept up-to-date. Instead of every app having to either reinvent the wheel and check for its own updates; or just not do it at all and require you to check manually.

Another is that a PM only installs the software that you asked for, and any dependencies it has. Whereas independent software updates these days tend to mean giving software companies yet another crack at installing crap you don't want on your machine.

Seriously, have ANY of the big names in software resisted this trend? Any time you want to grab something, whether it be a codec or an IM client, they always try and sneak in extra crap at the same time. "Hey, you're installing an antivirus! That must mean that you really want the Ask.com toolbar on your browser as well, huh? Huh?!? Go on, you know you want it!

It's annoying to me directly, because it seems like every time I install a security update I have to go through the settings to find where all the poxy checkboxes have been hidden. But it's also annoying indirectly, because from time to time I get asked to look at someone's computer and figure out why it's not running as fast as it used to. And the amount of crap they've got on their machines because some other piece of software sneaked it in when they weren't looking.. I swear, I've seen browsers that had more screen space dedicated to unwanted toolbars than they had to actually display the webpage.

And it's not just performance that suffers. Take this piece of advice from Microsoft, a company that knows *all* about computers being infected with malware:

There are a number of ways spyware or other unwanted software can get on your computer. A common trick is to covertly install the software during the installation of other software you want such as a music or video file sharing program.

Yes. It's a dirty trick, isn't it, sneaking software onto someone's machine? It's unwanted and it compromises security.

For example, last time I updated my rarely-used IM software (Mostly I use Pidgin but I like to have the real clients around for occasional use), MS's offering presented me with these stellar dialogue boxes:

Here we see that installing an IM client is, in MS's opinion, a justified time to attempt to also install NINE of their other applications. Look at the bottom-left corner. All I was trying to do was update to the latest version for security purposes, and yet the update seems almost to have been tacked-on as an afterthought. Installing a plethora of new applications was far more important than the trivial upgrade that was all I had actually asked for.

And then on a later screen, they tried to replace my search engine with their own crappy effort and over-write my home page preference.

If I wanted MSN as my browser homepage, I'd have SET it as my homepage. I don't need a bloody IM client screwing up my browser settings.

But hell, what can you expect from a company that created a browser update that wiped out their own OS?

Maybe the competition is better? How about Yahoo's instant messenger?

Well, at first glance, it does look a bit more promising. Still determined to meddle with my browser settings - and not only to change my search engine, but make it hard to change it back again - but at least they don't seem to want to install extra crap at the same time.

Or do they..? Look up!

Oh yes, there it is. It's going to install the Yahoo toolbar, and not only is it installing it, it's doing so quietly and unobtrusively and without giving me any apparent way of NOT installing it.

The only way to get the option of not installing the taskbar is to give up altogether on the "Typical Install" option and go through the "Custom Install" pathway instead, something that the average user is very unlikely to do.

Seriously, guys.. I'm all for software being made available to the end user. And I don't even object to software with built-in advertising, like both MS and Yahoo's IM clients. But software that overrides my settings and tries to install stuff I never asked for? And tries to make it hard for me to change my settings back, or to not install this crap?

Give it a freaking rest!