The Most Annoying Program EVAR!
 

Long ago, a program called "Adobe Acrobat" (maybe you've heard about it ) , started becoming one of TheApps that had to be installed on your computers .PDF files are just popular , websites use them , universities use them , companies use them, they're on CDs, they're everywhere !And that wasn't a problem , Adobe Acrobat was a nice little program , that kept to itself, was free, fast and useful .


Skip a few years to today : Adobe Reader 6 (aka Adobe Acrobat 6) .

Arrrghhh!!

What can I say ? It's a LOT slower, you only have a 50/50 chance that it'll work fine with the "nifty" (though old) option to have it integrated in your browser .Otherwise , it'll freeze/crash on you and just won't end unless you use "End Task" in the Task Manager (from here on known as pulling a Task Manager on it) .

Another "feature" of Acrobat 6 is the nice little (but very useless) "My eBooks" folder it creates under "My Documents" (or whatever you call that folder) , that you just can't remove. You delete it and every time you start Acrobat 6, it recreates this folder. It's not like all those Microsoft products that create those folders and then forget about them if you delete 'em. There's no option in the settings to disable it or change its destination, it's just there to annoy you ! (How can you be so rude and expect us to allow you to keep your ebooks or whatever in some other folder??)

Now, I'm not a mean person (really! ), I thought I can live with this, come on, just a little freezing and stuff and annoying folder that won't die, the usual sacrifices to run the newest version of a program. And Acrobat 6 has been around for some time, why am I complaining now ?

Well, this happened :

I recently switched to Miranda instead of having both MSN and ICQ running and did that little trick (rename Messenger folder to something else... yes, you can also uninstall it, but I want to have the option to rename it back and have it running if I should need the real MSN client) to remove MSN from my computer.Even Outlook Express that used to pop up MSN every time I start it, didn't complain (and MSN stopped appearing when I start Outlook).

So, I want to read some PDF and start Adobe Reader 6 (how naive of me ) and BAM! "Installing Messenger" (cancel button included).I think, wtf, and click on cancel, sure as hell, the Messenger installation starts again, and again and again every time I click cancel.I pull a Task Manager on "AcroRD32.exe" (that doesn't seem to be starting if you cancel the Messenger installation), rename the Messenger folder back to how it's supposed to be, click on the PDF file and voilà, Adobe Reader 6 starts.


OK, so here's the question: What the hell does it need Messenger for?!?!?!

You're a lousy little viewer! You don't need Messenger powar! Not even the big bad Outlook is complaining! And what's with that annoying "Do more with Adobe PDF"/"Simplify your communications"/"Create documents anyone can open" etc. add at the top right of the program?? (Are we supposed to go OMG OMG! What a nice tip?) And why are you so sloooow? Where's the improvement over Acrobat 5 beyond being so incredibly annoying!? What the hell happened to "high quality Adobe products"? Why is there STILL no option to "uncompress" PDF files so they don't go "chop" "chop" "chop" when your viewing them (though you're using a P4 2.8HT)???

Damn it ... I hereby award Adobe Reader 6 with "The Most Annoying Program EVAR!" award .

Now where was that Acrobat 4/5 installation ? ;)

What is the most annoying program you evar came across ?

My pick:

MusicMatch 8.0

MusicMatch 7.2 is an awesome MP3 program. You can use it to rip, record, or just play music on your PC. It also has a radio section so you can listen to all kinds of streaming music while you work. The program also has a library that stores all your MP3s for fast playback, the ability to convert music files from one type to another, or simply create new files at a lower bit-rate (useful for storing them for home playback at 256kps, but transferring to an MP3 player at 128kps). It even has built-in EQ, different sound plug-ins, etc.

The one part I hate so much that I'd kill it if it were alive: THE FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT VOLUME LIMITER!!!!!! GOD DAMMIT, WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO ADD THIS STUPID FUCKING "FEATURE"?!? Here's what it does: as a song hits a loud peak, such as bass drums or vocals or whatever, the program turns down the volume so that the peaks are no louder than the rest of the song. It's supposed to keep you from damaging your speakers, but all it really does is detroy your music. In versions previous to 7.5, you were able to uncheck the box that turned the limiter on and enjoy the music the way it was supposed to be heard, but starting with v7.5, they have the limiter on by default with absolutely no way to turn it off.

I've emailed the retards who made the program about 20 times, but they don't seem to care about my opinions. It'd be nice if more people would emial them, too, so maybe they'd get the message that people don't want this shit on by default with no way to turn it off. What's amazing is that they completely destroyed an awesome program with one little checkmark and there's nothing you can do about it. I continue to use v7.2 because of this very reason, and I will never waste another dime on MusicMatch until they fix this issue.

I don't understand all the problems people are having with Acrobat 6 Pro (which btw is not the same thing as Acrobat Reader 6) and I've not had any of the problems people keep complaining about. I've had it installed on 4 of my machines since it first came out and has worked pretty much flawlessly since then. I also don't have these speed problems people keep complaining about nor do I have any probs with it trying to do anything with Messenger. I'm not sure about everyone else, but I really like Acrobat 6.

RealPlayer. Nuff said.

RealPlayer !!!

Bloody sheit program... you spend ages (33.6) dowloading a song, but can you save it ... no no no no .. lets give him lots of commercial instead ... sure he wants that !

The only good thing about me getting a virus a few weeks ago and having to format my hard drive was I got rid of Real Player.

RealPlayer was the virus that made me have to reformat my hard drive.

marco, most likely the problems is because you are screwing up the OS by circumventing how it operates, its looking for a hooked api (which messenger exposes) so when a program that may or may not, or one that launched, sees its installed, it tries to load it but since it appears broken (which it is) it attempts to repair it.

you can kill the ebook thing by removing the ebook.api but it'll remove ebook functionality from acrobat.

when i load developer studio for instance, it looks up the yahoo im dlls, even though they don't get used, its just the way that these programs hook into the system, lots of things depend on other things.

i

Realplayer. One of my classes (History of Jazz) requires us to use it to listen to some of the pieces... I try to find as many of the pieces as I can on P2P services so I dont have to use it, but some of the really old ones are impossible to find so I dont have a choice :(

At least it is almost time to reformat anyways, so there wont be any problem getting rid of it when I am done with the class.

Everyone knows the most annoying program ever is...

AOL

Real Alternative

I've been using this for a little while and it works great. I haven't had RealPieceOfShit installed on my PC in so long that I can't even remeber when I last had it.

QuickTime. i hate how it loads up on startup and how it likes to take control of file assosiation.

once u get the formats back, it's not so much of a pain in the ass.

it still loads up on my startup and asks me to update every fuckin time.

i know 'bout the alternative on the kazaalite site, but i'm happy w/ status quo.

Yeah, the Real-stuff sucks much ass.

Quicktime I think is pretty good. Its not as annoying as Real Player or anything. I agree with you Boco....Volume Limiter was probably invented by very stupid person. My least favorite program though is anything that helps Gator or anyother thing piggyback its way onto my comptuer. I installed a different Divx Codec on my computer a while ago and since then the damn gator pop ups keep coming. I hate it but I need my divx support damnit!

Most annoying program ever? Windows. Any version.

Gah, RealPlayer is damn annoying, even on Linux. I went to the trouble of unpacking thier install package and copying the files I wanted manualy to prevent it from screwing with things.

WMP. I hate most of the programs on the list for many of the same reasons, but what I hate most about WMP is basically the problem with Quicktime only worse. It will give you file assosciation options during install but no matter what you choose it will try and assosciate itself with everything anyway.

Nah worst thing has to be something like Gator, those programs are satans gift to computing i swear

*shakes fist* damn you gator, damn you

I love pdf's never had a problem with any adobe product

soggy it sounds like you installed the divx codec used for encoding and playback. there is a free version of this codec which it seems you installed which comes with adware/spyware, if you are not into making the movies and only want to view them then get the free codec that is only used for playback by hitting the following link


FREE DIVX PLAYBACK CODEC ONLY

once you get that installer you can choose to either install the codec alone or the codec and the divx playa its up to you.

Realplayer, its so bad is should be classified as a virus.

Sixate, thanx for the real alt. tip. I've done without playing realmedia format for a long time to keep from installing that pain in the ass real player.

Solved the problem by unistalling 6 and installing V5 . I used it all morning without a hiccup !

Realplayer, Quicktime, McAfee AntiVirus. There's more but I have a lot of homework.

-Lasereth

RealPlayer without a doubt.

I even (I'm profounding embarrassed to say) even paid out good money for "RealPlayer Pro", thinking all that crappiness would be addressed in the "commercial" version.

BIG mistake.

I use tools to check my registry and background start-up programs (jv16 Powertools anyone?!) and I am CONSISTENTLY finding and removing REALSCHED...

Feckin' BULLSHIT app.

How on Earth are they still in business?!!


Mr Mephisto

Thanks for the divx link, MontanaXVI. :)
I've been meaning to reinstall mine for a while now.

The most annoying program for me is Windows Messenger, the chat program one.

When I try to exit the program, it tells me,
"There are other applications currently using Windows Messenger. You must close these other applications before you you can exit Windows Messenger. These applications may include Outlook, Outlook Express, MSN Explorer, Internet Explorer."

The only one of these I've even vaguely familiar with is Internet Explorer. I use I.E. as my browser, but why would I.E. need Messenger?

Exactly what he said!!!!

MM is a great product, but MM8 is crap. Hands down.

Real is a virus

Quicktime sucks IMO. Not as bad a Real but I just don't understand why it would take so much CPU time to play movs. I'm a dual display user so I do quite a lot of multi-tasking and I can't figure out why playing a stream from apple.com/trailers fullscreen on one of my displays would take 63% of the CPU time on a 3.0C with 1 Gig DDR400. It's even bad on my Dual 2.8 Xeon w/2 Gig of RAM!

Windows and Windows Explorer.

Want to empty the Recycle Bin without a warning? Sorry, you can't.

Want to sort an entire folder alphabetically by filename? Sorry, you can't.

Want your Windows Explorer window to remember where you were every time you open it? Sorry, you can't.

Want a document to open in the application that opened it (instead of whatever has that extension association)? Sorry, you can't.

Want to put your Taskbar at the top of your screen and have application respect that (eg not hide their title bar under the Taskbar)? Sorry, you can't.

Want your desktop icons to stay where you put them? Sorry, you can't.

I could go on and on. I am so glad to walk away from my Win2k computer at work at the end of the day it's unbelievable.

WTF bodypainter - your complaints sound so trivial and unsubstantiated. You can skip the recycle bin by holding shift when you delete, dunno wtf you mean by no being able to sort by filename (unless you consider a folder a file), make a shortcut to a directory for God's sake, USE A MAC if you want this type of application association, dunno what you mean by the taskbar thing (I have no probs with the taskbar), no probs with desktop icons either (maybe you have a goofy virus or an itchy finger when using the mouse). I don't see any of the complaints you made holding any water.

LNC: I've run into many of those problems myself. some have workarounds, some don't. you CANNOT empty the recycle bin w/o having it ask you if you're sure, w/o knowing the keystroke. you cannot sort folders & files together. As for shortcuts to finder(er explorer) windows... sure... if you're always goin' to the same place.
Taskbar: do you know it can be moved? it doesn't have to be on the bottom of your screen. if you put it on the top, windows like to get stuck under it. the OS shouldn't allow that to happen, but it does. Even in XP.

BodyPainter. rightclick on the desktop and uncheck the snap-to-grid option to take care of the icon problem. ;)

I hear ya, though. the best day of my college career was pulling those shiney new emacs out of the box for our comp lab :D:D

my taskbar is always on the top of the screen in win2k/WinXP/Linux

Some of my choices:
MusicMatch - any version, Realplayer, Both norton and mcafee antivirus, outlook, WA 3 (could almost tolerate WA 2.x now if I had to and foobar was not an option),
Xing software, and basically any other encoder beside a newer version of LAME that are used to create the crap CBR MP3s floating around out there.

anything programmed in java ..they eat your memory fast.. and graphics sux

Trivial, maybe - I was in a pissy mood last night when I posted that.

But they aren't unsubstantiated. They're actually things I can't believe MS hasn't implemented since they would be very easy to do (with the exception of ditching the filename extension model).

Add one more thing to the list. It's annoying as hell that Windows Explorer won't show me folder sizes in the list along with file sizes. Yes, I know I can get it from the Properties, but I'd like to be able to sort the list of files/folders not only by name but by size.

Seagate Info 7.5 / Crystal Reports.

This software is a pain in the arse!!!!

The syntax is rediculous for designing reports and it doesnt work half the time when installing it.

Rubbish!!

Gator!!!!!

bodypainter, I would like to apologize as I too was in a pissy mood when I read your post. I like Windows, OSX, and Linux all very much and having used both Windows and OSX from inception am very used to their limitations. I work on Windows PC's, Macs, SUNs, and Linux machines on a daily basis both at work and at home and to be honest with you the only OS I feel I cannot do without is the Windows. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love OSX (especially Panther), but I think I could get along just fine without it. I also understand that we all have different demands from our machines. Having said all of this I hope you will accept my apology for flying off the deep end earlier in this thread.

McAfee AntiVirus, AOL, Compuserve - Someone mentioned those before, but all of those were pre-installed on my pc and were a huge in the ass to get rid of, well that and MSN Messanger...

As I am sometimes relegated the exciting job of providing live tech support for my mom's powerbook, I have grown to despise and abhor the Mac OS. Seriously, that thing is just so cute and cuddly, but the team responsible for actual functionality for normal people must have all been abducted and replaced by aliens in disguise....