Battle of the Needlessly Updating Programs!

[benheck]

Which of these programs requires the most seemingly needless (and seemingly endless) software updates? I can't believe Quicktime came out in 1992 and is only up to version 7 - if it weren't for the decimal system it'd be version 42,000-X by now.

Both annoy me, and I swear Reader gets slower every day. People rag on Windows and its patches, but these two programs, man, can't swing a dead cat without hitting an "Update Now!" dialog box.

Also, what programs have you used a long time that NEVER rag about updates? Games don't count, I'm thinking more like freebee things (Web browsers and the like)

[dj-spuddy]

AOL 9.0 Updates constantly for me in the form of little pop-up messages and allways requires me to restart my computer. On the other hand Macromedia Flash 8 never requires updating.

[cennar]

A?O?L? wtf???

[paul4990]

steam.

and what never rags me is windows

[Wayne Venomous]

Zone Alarm - every other day I get a pop-up saying "A new version of ZA is now available" I always keep on top of security and I understand firewalls have to be updated but it's a bit excessive when I have to do it every other day. And it won't allow me to set up an automatic update.

Close second is Adobe Acrobat reader though - I have never seen any benefit to updating it.

[wallydawg]

Winrar.

[Jeff]

Tuneup Utilities needs an update less than once a year.

[marshallh]

Quicktime is probably the most bloated piece of monkey excrement I've ever seen. When you call the init function for the main dll, it takes 10 seconds just to load the thing. That's because it basically loads a subset of the entire Mac OS!

Next is Windows Media Player - I have version 9 and I don't see why the heck I'd want to waste another 200MB hard drive space with another version.

The gosh-darned nuisance pesters me with barrages of incessant reminders, like "Would you like to upgrade to WMP 10? It's much better and only takes up half your hard drive!" No, I promptly refuse. To my blocked list that program goes!

[collingall2005]

Microsoft XP, every week i get a new update and takes out the time i use on the internet. It is the worst!

[cowsgoquack101]

Dell DVD burning software, it trys to update about every week. The most I'd say is firefox. Why would I want version 1.5.02, when 1.5 is all I need.

[Skyone]

Shoo, I say that Adobe Acrobat has pointless updates:

"New! Version 9.6.22.45.02.3! Now with the US 'cent' sign!"

[timmeh87]

Microsoft XP, every week i get a new update and takes out the time i use on the internet. It is the worst!

most of those updates are security patches. they are released as vunerabilities are found. you dont have to install them if you dont want to...

MSN messenger. "there is a new version of msn avaliable do you want to update now". no. no i dont. because i have the messpatch to make your piece of crap software bearable in the first place. and i dont want you to take that away from me.
MSN 8 has a memory leak eh? i had to ditch it because at times it was stealing FOUR HUNDRED megs of ram from me... and i only have 256!

[Sparkfist]

Adobe Acrobat reader, that thing was fine when I first came in contact with it... ah about 8 to 10 years ago. Really that thing is just a pain now. In some files I've opened it immediatly goes to download updates, I just want to see the damn image. And yeah once done downloading it askes me to restart my machine.

I'm stating to think the KDE, Gnome and xPDF views are better. They do exactly what you want them to and nothing more.

In second place for me is Windows, an version. When is there no need for security patch or a service pack? Never the OS is about as secure as a delapidated, burned down house. And the all the patches we might as well call it "XP Patchy".

Quick Time might have had some pointless updates, but the addition of the 264 video codec isn't. What's the point of having video on an iPod if you can't run it on your machine outside iTunes? Really no point.

[SpongeBuell]

Dell DVD burning software, it trys to update about every week.

So far, I think that deserves the prize of "why the hell would that need an update in the first place, let alone ever week?"

[vb_master]

FOUR HUNDRED megs of ram from me... and i only have 256!

Then it used virtual memory (page files) on yoru hard disk. No matter how much RAM you have, you will always have page files.