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Geek Culture / Bloatware is out of control

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SirFire
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Joined: 4th Apr 2005
Location: North America
Posted: 5th Mar 2009 06:16
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I was just sitting here ranting to myself about a few things that really truly annoy me about modern computing, and after thinking about vista annoyances and adware and information mining and all that, I decided to do something productive and upgrade my video driver.

And everywhere I look, it's a 77MB download. For a video driver. 77MB!

They bundle 94 card drivers into a single package, I just don't see the logic in this. How many people have 10 or more video cards residing on one motherboard? I have only ever had 2 at most.

Can anyone remember the days when a video driver download was about the size of a MP3?

Oh sure, I understand that the complexity of video cards has skyrocketed, but is it necessary to bundle nearly 100 different drivers together, along with their various front-end interfaces, just so you can use only 1 out of that package?

I'm just saying that honestly I don't believe more than 5MB compressed is required for a video driver, even though almost everyone is on broadband and has huge drives, that's no reason to say "awe screw it" and package your entire company database into a download rather than only distribute the peices that are truly needed.

Does this bother anybody else, or am I just an old fogey from the days of monochrome monitors?

_____________________
Windows Vista: Just say no.
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jasonhtml
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Joined: 20th Mar 2004
Location: OC, California, USA
Posted: 5th Mar 2009 07:04
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i think this partially has to do with people not knowing what's in there computer. this way, they just select what "class" of graphics card they have and download the drivers for it. the computer handles the rest (which consumers like). i remember years back when downloading graphics drivers was a bit more complicated than it is today...

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Benjamin
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Location: France
Posted: 5th Mar 2009 07:28
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I don't understand why they don't just provide a web installer.

Multisync - TCP Server/Client Multiplayer Plugin (DBP/DBCe)
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 5th Mar 2009 08:13
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Bloatware most definitely is out of control. How is Adobe Illustrator 800mb? It's a vector image editing tool. You know, drop points, drag points, stick in some colour? You could write this in BASIC. Sure, there's a couple of extra features like image import, etc. and a decent help file but nothing that constitutes 800mb.

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Fallout
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Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 5th Mar 2009 10:19 Edited at: 5th Mar 2009 10:20
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I use SameTime at work. It's the Lotus version of MSN Messanger. It requires 1GB of RAM, and takes approximately 60 seconds to load.


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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 5th Mar 2009 10:21
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I blame object orientated coding simply because I have an inexplicable hatred for it.

Not because I have any proof that it unnecessarily causes RAMDEATH.

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SageTech
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Location: Orlando, Florida
Posted: 5th Mar 2009 14:26
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You think that's bad? Try Adobe CS4 Master collection. The Install EXCEEDS 8 gigs, that's insane! I understand the complexity of the programs, but really, that's retarded. No one bothers with optimization anymore.


The world is doomed...unless you >>>>>> Click Here <<<<<<
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Roxas
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Location: http://forum.thegamecreators.com
Posted: 5th Mar 2009 14:28 Edited at: 5th Mar 2009 14:30
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Get some of the linux distros, if your hardware is compatible with it, then you have the dream OS.

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hyrichter
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Location: Arizona
Posted: 5th Mar 2009 15:00
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I personally think bloatware can be a good thing for us indie coders. We have an opportunity here to make our programs stand out as being small, fast, and effective. I found that when I was playing around with DBPro on an older computer, I would optimize things until they would be fast on that computer. With a faster computer, I have to admit, I'm not as careful.

I've been using more and more light-weight programs developed by indie coders or very small companies than the more commonly known programs. For example, I refuse to install Adobe Acrobat Reader. Instead, I'm using Foxit. Every time I have to open a PDF of someone's computer that has Acrobat Reader on it, I cringe. I had to "upgrade" to Quickbooks 2008 last year so I could use their payroll tax tables. Talk about a serious loss of performance! Quickbooks 2000 was working just fine, other than I had to figure out paycheck taxes manually (it was perfectly capable until Intuit decided they would no longer provide tax tables for it, forcing you to upgrade.) And it ran FAST on a 400mhz computer with 128 MB of RAM. QB 2008 is sluggish even on a 3 Ghz computer with 2GB of RAM.

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David R
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Posted: 5th Mar 2009 17:31 Edited at: 5th Mar 2009 17:36
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I would say bloatware is symbolic of the bureaucratic process which produces such software - just look at Vista, for instance. So yeah, as hyritcher said, as indies we can exploit this to our advantage

Quote: "I blame object orientated coding simply because I have an inexplicable hatred for it."


Good luck getting a programming job in literally any field with that viewpoint

Quote: "And everywhere I look, it's a 77MB download. For a video driver. 77MB!

They bundle 94 card drivers into a single package, I just don't see the logic in this. How many people have 10 or more video cards residing on one motherboard? I have only ever had 2 at most."


Being fair to driver developers, adding some tolerable size in exchange for the installer automatically determining the correct driver from a bundled list is a pretty good trade off in my opinion (especially since they have to cater to the lowest common denominator of user, who probably doesn't even understand what a driver is, much less know which one they need)


09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 5th Mar 2009 18:58 Edited at: 5th Mar 2009 19:10
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Quote: "Good luck getting a programming job"


Well I suck at programming so I'm not going to.

It's not really object orientated that I'm against, just the overuse of it. Think about it. Objects should be reserved for things inside other things. Cars. People. Buildings. Windows. Buttons. Not a font file. ( GLFont 2 ) Not filesystems. ( Boost Filesystem ) Not events. I use Actionscript as an example; why is everything tucked away in cryptic little classes? More often than not one has to guess whether a class or a proper struct was used.

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AndrewT
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Location: MI, USA
Posted: 5th Mar 2009 21:04
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I just downloaded a 900MB Flash CS4 Demo and found out that 500MB of it is completely unrelated Adobe software. Couldn't that just be offered as a separate download?

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z i l c h vortex
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Posted: 5th Mar 2009 21:12
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Dude i know this sounds out of the question buy my webcam driver is 3 gb its a tiny camera to.

life is short but so am i
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Quirkyjim
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Location: At my computer
Posted: 5th Mar 2009 23:25
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Well, I guess the guys down at whatever site you're downloading from is deciding between 3 downsides:

1) Do I leave the user to find the EXACT right file fro their driver or do I give them all of them and let the program do the dirty work?

2) Do I make them frustrated with a huge download or do I make them spend the same amount of time looking for the right file?

3) Do I give up precious advertising?

~QJ
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