[vox-tech] windows support, unfortunately

[Jeffrey J. Nonken]

On Mon, 6 Feb 2006 14:19:39 -0500
p at dirac.org (Peter Jay Salzman) wrote:

> This morning a bad thing happened.  Adobe Acrobat wanted to install an
> update 7.0.5 on my work computer, and stupidly, I allowed it.  It
> wanted to reboot to finish the upgrade, and again, I allowed it.

A lot of the Windoze programs want to do things like that.

1) Put up a "start center" or something that claims to save time
loading. Actually it uses 10% of your CPU time 100% of the time but only
saves you 0.000000001 nanoseconds of loading time the two times a month
you actually run the thing.

...OK, I exaggerate. I have no real figures. But I've sped up
my Dad's Windows system by removing and disabling a bunch of crap like
that, and made my own systems more stable. And let's not forget the
extra memory they're tying up for no good reason.

(It's not just the commercial stuff, either. Mozilla has one of those,
as does Open Orifice IIRC, though I believe in both cases they are up
front about it (unlike other programs like, say, Real Player).)

2) Leave these little "let's stay in memory and check for upgrades." I
love my HP 5850 printer but it leaves memory resident programs that a)
keep checking for upgrades for my drivers -- a useless task if I've
ever seen one, the old drivers work fine -- and b) reset the default
printer to the 5850 on every boot (and then stay resident). Swear to
God. I mean, WTF are they thinking?!?! Any time I do a new install I
immediately run The Ultimate Troubleshooter (www.answersthatwork.com)
and disable them.

Not all programs that check for upgrades leave memory resident update
checks, but I'd be wary of the on-execute checks too. What did Acrobat
Reader need to update that was so important? I bet you'd have happily
gone on with your life without it. (The contempt is not aimed at you,
it's aimed at Adobe et al.)

I always turn them off when I can. Exceptions are things with live
databases like antivirus.

I forget if I was able to turn off Adobe's automatic upgrade crap, but
if not, I manually ignore it when I see it. You've just given me a
really good reason to continue that policy.

I highly recommend TUT as a valuable tool for keeping Windows systems
tuned. It's worth buying the full version, it really is, though I
understand it may not be practical (or even possible) at work.

Wish I had something of more immediate value, but it sounds like you're
already doing everything I could think of. Good luck.