Its 2016, almost 2017 ... fix your application installer so it doesn't need to reboot my machine!
By joe
- 2 minutes read - 388 wordsThere I was running my windows in a window on my desktop. Running a nice little word processor from a company in Redmond, WA. Working on a document. About 15 minutes in, and I usually save at 30 minute boundaries … because … hey … they haven’t quite figured out that the word processor should do this for you … AUTOMATICALLY … Ok, I am shouting. Calm down. Anyway, for some reason, some little Cupertino company’s code pops up and says “hey, you wanna update me?” Sure. While I am typing, it is fine. BAAAAAAADDDDDDD MMMMISSSSTTTTAKKKKEEE. You see, this aforementioned … “froot“y company has its own little installer. Doesn’t use the Redmond companies installer. So they can do more stuff. Or something. Anyway … long story short. Go away to heat up my lunch in the nuke-o-wave. Come back. I am logged out. How did that happen? No problem. Log in. Fire up the aforementioned word processor and … WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT I know … I know … its my fault for not saving this. … … but free LibreOffice seems to have no trouble doing this. And why in Cthulu’s name does this installer for a device I rarely ever use with windows in a window think it is ok to reboot a machine? Sure, it might have a device driver in it or two. BUT IT SHOULD NOT ASSUME THAT IT HAS THE RIGHT TO REBOOT ITSELF. Yeah, lost a little bit of work. Definitely pissed. Folks: its 2016, almost 2017. Fix your installer. No rebooting needed. Fix your word processor so it is at least at the functional capability of the completely free one, so as to not spontaneously lose work. On the latter part, I had to console a distraught family member a few years ago over some presentation tool and its propensity to crash, taking all of her hard work with it. I gave her a simple algorithm to execute on a timer. Every 30 minutes save. Every hour, change the name to have (iteration++) at the end. This was for self protection reasons … if it died and took stuff down, you could limit the damage. The timer appears to be too generous. Maybe it should be every 5 minutes. Or after each sentence. And definitely don’t run installers in the background.