Blog for hpHosts, and whatever else I feel like writing about ....

Wednesday 27 October 2010

Dear Microsoft: Is "No" in your dictionary?

I do sometimes wonder what some of the folks over at Microsoft are smoking. Sure, they're mostly obsessed with "social media" (aka social networking - YUCK!), but this does not excuse their trying to push things like this down my throat.

Take Windows live Essentials 2011 for example, I'm not annoyed it's being pushed through MU (Microsoft Update), it's a Microsoft product and WLM is installed. However, when I untick it, that means I DO NOT WANT IT!

I've unticked WLM 2011 in MU several times, and each time, Windows decides it wants to re-tick it and offer me it all over again. What happened to being able to "hide" updates you don't want? "Restore hidden updates" is still there in the MU dialog, so why won't it hide this one?

I have actually tried 2011, and it lasted under 5 mins. I want a messenger that's a messenger - I do NOT want a messenger that takes up damn near the entire screen, with a tiny little box where the contacts are, and the rest being what appears to be a browser - I've got a browser already, several infact (okay, so Avant, IE, Orca, Opera et al are shells not browsers, but that's semantics).

If you've not downloaded this "update" yet, do yourself a favor - don't. It's a waste of resources and screen space. If you want WLM, grab the older version (and the good news here, is you can use the old installer to install the old version - it won't try forcing the latest 2011 on you).

2 comments:

Janneman said...

Did you right-click in the list of available updates, then 'hide'? This is the way to permanently hide the update since Vista. It's very well hidden if you don't know this trick.

Jan Doggen

MysteryFCM said...

I didn't realise they had a right click menu now, cheers for the heads up :o)