I say not really about Nero because I don't think they are the worst example of what I am complaining about, but it just so happens that they are the ones that set me off this morning 
.
I've been using CD Burner XP Pro for a long time, and it's sort of clunky and unfinished, as everyone who uses it knows. I recently received Nero 7 Essentials with a new drive, and I figured I might as well have a professional shrinkwrap burner program, so I popped the disk in.
Now really, I always thought Nero's claim to fame was as a developer of burner software, but I've never used their stuff before. Going through the custom install options.. no, I don't want your photo editing program... no I don't want your video editing program... no I don't want your media streaming program... no I don't want your on-disk media management software... don't want your unspecified and unexpounded-upon special features (ugh, especially not those) ... got it boiled down to just the burner and the tools package. Hit install.
Install finishes. I have a new integrated control on my task bar. I didn't ask for a new integrated control on my taskbar. Click the new integrated control. Up comes something called Nero Scout that says it is waiting to index my hard disk. Really? Thing is, I don't need my hard disk indexed. I just want to burn media when necessary. At the bottom of this window it shows buttons for integrating web and other searches. Now they're a search company, too. You bet. I would love to use your spiffy application for all my future searching needs. My first search will be "alternatives to bloatware."
Go into options. Tell it not to display new integrated control. Look for way to disable the Scout program. The only thing I can find is to uncheck "all" under the files to index heading, and check "specified" but leave all of them unchecked.
I go into program setup to see if there is a way to uninstall Scout, since I could find no way to disable it. The setup tells me there are updates available. Maybe one of the updates is to disable their search program? I elect to install the updates (I have a flawless record so far, don't I?). The program tells me it must first uninstall the old version and then restart my system. Oh cool. Good thing I didn't want to burn any media like... now. So it does the uninstall, and restarts my system, and now it is downloading 280 megs from some slow-ass site at about 75 kbps. Time to completion: historical.
I didn't really want to burn any media anyway. It's way too complex. In the future I will just transcode all the individual bytes to punch tape. Anyway, kudos to all those software marketing execs who never met a feature they didn't love ("Ok, team, we're expanding our text editor into the point of sale transaction processing segment"). Just think how boring life would be if we didn't get regular opportunities to review and attempt to reject all that good stuff you put in.
Edit: after the upgrade completed, during which I was not offered any opportunity to customize, I found that it had installed all of the stuff I rejected during the initial install. The whole package.
. I've been using CD Burner XP Pro for a long time, and it's sort of clunky and unfinished, as everyone who uses it knows. I recently received Nero 7 Essentials with a new drive, and I figured I might as well have a professional shrinkwrap burner program, so I popped the disk in.
Now really, I always thought Nero's claim to fame was as a developer of burner software, but I've never used their stuff before. Going through the custom install options.. no, I don't want your photo editing program... no I don't want your video editing program... no I don't want your media streaming program... no I don't want your on-disk media management software... don't want your unspecified and unexpounded-upon special features (ugh, especially not those) ... got it boiled down to just the burner and the tools package. Hit install.
Install finishes. I have a new integrated control on my task bar. I didn't ask for a new integrated control on my taskbar. Click the new integrated control. Up comes something called Nero Scout that says it is waiting to index my hard disk. Really? Thing is, I don't need my hard disk indexed. I just want to burn media when necessary. At the bottom of this window it shows buttons for integrating web and other searches. Now they're a search company, too. You bet. I would love to use your spiffy application for all my future searching needs. My first search will be "alternatives to bloatware."
Go into options. Tell it not to display new integrated control. Look for way to disable the Scout program. The only thing I can find is to uncheck "all" under the files to index heading, and check "specified" but leave all of them unchecked.
I go into program setup to see if there is a way to uninstall Scout, since I could find no way to disable it. The setup tells me there are updates available. Maybe one of the updates is to disable their search program? I elect to install the updates (I have a flawless record so far, don't I?). The program tells me it must first uninstall the old version and then restart my system. Oh cool. Good thing I didn't want to burn any media like... now. So it does the uninstall, and restarts my system, and now it is downloading 280 megs from some slow-ass site at about 75 kbps. Time to completion: historical.
I didn't really want to burn any media anyway. It's way too complex. In the future I will just transcode all the individual bytes to punch tape. Anyway, kudos to all those software marketing execs who never met a feature they didn't love ("Ok, team, we're expanding our text editor into the point of sale transaction processing segment"). Just think how boring life would be if we didn't get regular opportunities to review and attempt to reject all that good stuff you put in.
Edit: after the upgrade completed, during which I was not offered any opportunity to customize, I found that it had installed all of the stuff I rejected during the initial install. The whole package.
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