Instant Messenger install – give me a break!

I am going to alert you to a grumpy developer warning in advance. I am back from a restful vacation and finally, after a week of catching up on the various tasks put into the background, I have time for a blog post.

Most people who know me understand that I am usually a fan of Microsoft products. It is not that I automatically adopt all Microsoft technology or that I drink the marketing kool-aid, rather I prefer mature Microsoft products that make my day-to-day computing experience enjoyable. MSN Messenger is one of those products.

I often get pulled into debates with friends on how Microsoft is trying to rule the world, and how Bill Gates is the current incarnation of Satan, and how feeding Microsoft my hard earned cash is the stupidest thing I could do. Normally I thank Bill Gates for the roof over my head, and the Microsoft geeks for providing a stable platform, and more importantly the capability for my software creations to run on hundreds of millions of computers without too much hassle. Today provided me a clearer glimpse into the negative viewpoint so many others have on how Microsoft forces themselves on their customers.

Before I go any further, let me state for the record that I fully understand the viewpoint of my friends and clients who would rather use another office suite, different email clients, safer browsers, etc., I just philosophically disagree with them. I refuse to make emotional business decisions, and try to pick technical solutions to my needs based on feature sets, technical support, reliability, stability, and ease-of-use.

Today I got notification that Microsoft released the latest version of MSN IM. I have been using this tool for more than four years now. I read about the new features and because I have not been burned in the past with upgrades I decided to download it and install it. This will not be a story of woe with the product (unlike Andrew MacNeill’s trouble with Windows 2003 SP1), it is working flawlessly so far. My gripe is purely with the installation.

The installation is the typical wizard stepping you through some choices. This is where my complaint is centered. There is a page where you select additional features and settings. I am upgrading, therefore I believe it should respect the settings I made during the last install or upgrade. I might want to change, but why should I have to uncheck the settings I unchecked the last time?? I do not need the MSN Toolbar polluting Internet Explorer (even though I only use IE when exploring Microsoft.com pages). I am perfectly happy with Google Search so I don’t need MSN Search at this time. My browser home page is FoxCentral. I see no single reason to have it automatically changed to MSN Home. Lastly, I already have enough shortcuts to MSN Messenger configured and having the installer add more means I have to delete them later. So instead of hitting the next button, I have to click four times to uncheck these options before proceeding.

It does not end here. After the install I have to explore the MSN IM Options to see what other options it has tweaked on me. Sure enough, despite me turning this off previously, the installer decides I need to see MSN Today every time MSN IM is started. I don’t think so! So I again, uncheck this option.

Come on Microsoft, stop making decisions on my behalf! I am perfectly happy and capable making my own decisions. If I want to switch these options, I can go into the Options Dialog and make the choices. Sheesh! At least the installation did not pollute my desktop with an unnecessary shortcut.

Before all the anti-Microsofties get overly excited by my flirtation with the dark side, I will not be scrapping MSN IM anytime soon because it is an app I am dependent upon. Maybe Microsoft is just trying to be compatible with AOL Instant Messenger. Each time I have upgrade AIM, I have the exact same issues, and it keeps adding several shortcuts to my desktop despite my selection for the installer not to do it. AIM keeps trying to add the Weatherbug applet and other applets each time, and turns on the AIM.com page during startup. These two apps keep ignoring my preferences during upgrades. This is a complete waste of my time. Microsoft and AOL (and other software vendors thinking about tweaking my preferences) need to get their act cleaned up with respect to their software installations. Deployment is supposed to be easy for the end users.

Okay, time to get ungrumpy.

You may be wondering why I use IM, and three of them at that (Skype is the third one). Well I have friends who have asked this question recently and plan on blogging on this topic soon. Stay tuned.