So I stepped through a portal and ended up back in 1995. - by lost_soul
lost_soul on 29/7/2011 at 19:00
Why in the world is it still necessary to reboot Windows if we do something like update Acrobat Reader? How is there any possible justification for this? It isn't like anti-virus, which has to interact directly with the kernel. In my volunteer PC repair work, there have been other programs that wanted a reboot after an update or uninstall too, but the names currently escape me.
My point is, this HAS TO STOP! I know John and Jane's laptops aren't considered critical server machines that require maximum up-time, but I like to think we have made some progress since Windows 95.
It really is quite funny that Windows users still suffer from frequently required reboots and we Linux users still suffer from an audio system that doesn't "just work" like the Windows one does.
Also, there was this Vista machine I was told to work on. I was just told that it was running slow. I turn the thing on and it proceeds to configure service packs for almost an hour before I can even log in. Then it denies login and tells me that the copy is not genuine, in spite of there being a product key on the bottom of the machine! It wouldn't even let me enter the key. At this point, I was begging to go back to DOS.
Nicker on 29/7/2011 at 19:59
Yay. Bitch thread.
Another issue Windows has failed to correct in more than twenty years is NOT checking for sufficient space before copying or moving files.
My old Amiga did that first thing and wouldn't let you copy or move until there was room at the destination. It made a copy at the destination and when the copy was verified, the original was deleted.
Makes sense.
Too much sense for windows, apparently, which will happily start moving a large folder, deleting source files as it goes, then announce the move cannot be completed, leaving you with files strewn over two locations and usually an corrupted file bleeding out in both places.
I do the space check myself now, and use copy / delete for large moves, plus I check the number of flies and the total folder size before deleting the source. But why wouldn't that process be automatic after two decades? Anyone know of an aftermarket solution for this?
Renzatic on 29/7/2011 at 20:06
Quote Posted by Nicker
I do the space check myself now, and use copy / delete for large moves, plus I check the number of flies and the total folder size before deleting the source. But why wouldn't that process be automatic after two decades? Anyone know of an aftermarket solution for this?
(
http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php) Bap. I haven't had a low disk space issue since Windows 98, so I dunno if it'll do anything different than the default Windows file system in that situation. Still, it works great for everything else, so you might as well give it a go.
Also, who the hell uses Acrobat Reader anymore?
Matthew on 29/7/2011 at 20:09
Quote Posted by lost_soul
Why in the world is it still necessary to reboot Windows if we do something like update Acrobat Reader? How is there any possible justification for this?
I would tend to blame awful programming discipline on Adobe's part as much as Microsoft's for a lot of that, but that is from the point of view of a programming illiterate.
Renzatic on 29/7/2011 at 20:21
Adobe is about as sloppy as you can get when it comes to installing their crap properly. Specially since they started bundling everything together in their creative suites. Have you ever tried installing Photoshop, and for some reason, you have to stop it halfway through? It will screw you over to prodigious degrees.
Try to resume it later and it'll give you an "olol, it's already installed" error. Try to uninstall it, and...well...you can't. There's nothing to uninstall. For some reason, Adobe thought it'd be a great idea to insert the registry entries right off the bat, and not remove them if you cancel out of the installation. The only way you can fix the problem is by going through the registry and deleting about 5000 lines from various places throughout. And praying. Praying really helps. It's so bad, I'll back up the entire registry just in case it screws up on me.
But you can't really blame Adobe on this, I mean they're just a small company struggling...no wait...they're an industry standard who charges a minimum $700 for their crap.The least I expect them to do is write an installer worth half a damn.
Matthew on 29/7/2011 at 20:26
I presume that's why they're also crying for the whaaambulance over the fact that Rosetta has been dumped from OS X, i.e. they never bothered rewriting half their shit.
Renzatic on 29/7/2011 at 20:33
Isn't Rosetta basically legacy support from Mac's PowerPC days? So basically, they haven't updated their installer for, what, 5 years now? Doesn't surprise me in the least.
Adobe makes some decent stuff, but damn they've become lazy over these last few years. If they don't absolutely have to bother with something, they won't.
Nicker on 29/7/2011 at 21:04
Quote Posted by Renzatic
(
http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php) Bap. I haven't had a low disk space issue since Windows 98, so I dunno if it'll do anything different than the default Windows file system in that situation. Still, it works great for everything else, so you might as well give it a go.
Also, who the hell uses Acrobat Reader anymore?
Thanks Renz, I'll check that out.
With today's enormous hard drives it's not much of an issue anymore but FFS, how hard would it have been to get right in the first place, after half a dozen completely new operating systems?
(
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/) I use FoxIt for PDF's. It's a fraction of the size of Adobe Reader and does way more. I have no need of their professional PDF software but it looks pretty comprehensive.
Yakoob on 29/7/2011 at 21:17
Quote Posted by Nicker
I do the space check myself now, and use copy / delete for large moves, plus I check the number of flies and the total folder size before deleting the source. But why wouldn't that process be automatic after two decades? Anyone know of an aftermarket solution for this?
Well, if you have a lot of subfolders with a lot of tiny files, then checking how big the root folder is can sometimes take even up to a few minutes as it iterates throuh all the files. So copying this kinda stuff would necessitate an initial lag for just calculating space in first place, which is unneccessary like 99% of the time when there is enough space for a copy.
All in all, it's the overhead of lots of tiny files vs one big file. note how much faster copying / moving / upload to a server / loading to memory /etc. one big file is compared to several hundred/thousands tiny files that add up to the exact same filesize. One of the reasons why some game devs pack their shit into "containers" rather than just leaving everything laying around.
heywood on 29/7/2011 at 23:44
Quote Posted by lost_soul
Why in the world is it still necessary to reboot Windows if we do something like update Acrobat Reader? How is there any possible justification for this?
Also, why does Adobe feel the need to start Acrobat and it's updater at boot time?
