Adobe Reader installer/updater

2007's most idiotic installer for Windows XP

Like most people, I have the free Adobe Reader installed on my computer. It's used for viewing PDF files, which are now very common across the Internet. I have a Windows XP computer and the Adobe Reader installed was version 7.0.

Last week I booted up my computer and got a notice from Adobe, saying that my Adobe Reader program was out of date. It appears that it check the Internet for updates automatically. Fine. The installer told me that numerous updates were available, including versions 7.0.1, 7.0.2, 7.0.3, and so on. So I clicked next. The installer fetched some updates from the Internet, installed them (after what seemed like 20 minutes), and then told me I need to reboot. This was annoying, but fine.

When updating software, is one reboot enough?

After rebooting, a few minutes later Adobe Reader popped up again. This time it said that I have version 7.0.1 installed, and I needed an update. It listed several updates but didn't let me chose them, so once again I clicked next. It fetched the update, took a looooong time to install it (despite my very fast computer... as of this writing it's a dual processor Core Duo running at 2.0Ghz, with lots of RAM). Again it asked me to reboot. Annoyed, I decided to reboot later. I then put Adobe Reader out of my mind, since I don't use it so often.

The next time I rebooted my computer, several days later, Adobe Reader once again popped up. It seems that it is installing each little update one-by-one, then requesting that I reboot my computer. It is maddening. It was time to install the update to version 7.0.2. Okay, let's go... I clicked next.

Second and third reboots...

It's now more than a week later. I'm up to Adobe Reader 7.0.8, and I just installed 7.0.9 (and again, I'm asked to reboot - fuck that!). Not only is Adobe Reader's brain-dead installer one of the most annoying programs I've ever used, when I finally do want to view a PDF document it seem to take forever to load up. When I use my Mac running OS X on the same hardware, PDF documents open up in a small fraction of the time - because Apple wrote their own PDF viewer, and made it several times smaller (and faster) than Adobe's behemouth.

I'm so annoyed with Adobe Reader's idiotic, incremental installer that I might just uninstall the program altogether. It's pissed me off. Yes I know version 8 is also available, and also free, but I shudder to think about how bad the installer on that program is, or how much slower the program is likely to run. Newer isn't always better, and in many cases it's a good degree worse.

So, the award for the most idiotic installer program for 2007 goes to the Adobe Reader's update utility running on Windows XP.

It's a damn good thing I don't need to use Windows that often, as frustrations like these are quite commonplace. Most of the time, I open all my PDF documents in my Mac (they don't needs Adobe's stupid updates, and they also open much, much more quickly).

Printed 9-Feb-2007

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