Wednesday 12 December 2007

Software Install Hell - Why make me Reboot?

Rant of the Day - why the hell do so many applications require a reboot of your PC??? After having to reboot my new PC a dozen or so times last night just trying to uninstall 2 programs and install 2 new programs, I got pretty damn annoyed. As a home user, this was just an annoyance - for businesses with a large network, this could be a serious productivity impact issue.

So, why are these reboots necessary?

Googling revealed some Windows reasons, but apart from the "overwrites file in use" one, most seem to fall back to the installed program asking for the reboot. So why do the programs themselves think a reboot is needed? I can think of a number of alleged reasons:

  1. The install overwrote a file in use, so it is Windows that wants to reboot
  2. The reboot isn't really required, but the developers are just being paranoid
  3. The developers didn't spend the time to remove the need for the reboot
  4. Fundamental issues at the operating system level. Given the number of programs that don't need to reboot (some doing complex OS level integrations), I doubt this is the case

Reboots after uninstalling is an even bigger mystery to me - unless Windows is keeping a log of old file versions and trying to restore the previous version, the "overwrote file" shouldn't be an issue now. But if more than one update has occurred to the file in question, then this is just fraught with danger - which version do you revert to? I'd think the answer here is "don't do it!"

I think you should be able to just install some software, and it just works. No reboots. Even if it's necessary, be polite - don't force me to reboot.

From my experience, it seems to be commercial software that is more likely to exhibit this nasty behaviour - Open Source or software by 'enthusiastic individuals' seem less prone to require reboots. Is that because the former is more complex, or that the latter communities care more (or maybe get frustrated enough to spend the time to avoid the reboots).

Maybe in the commercial software development world, the issue of reboots fall into the low care factor category, as Company X assumes that their software gets installed once and that's it. Well, the reality is when I get a new PC and start installing dozens of my preferred programs, I get mighty annoyed having to reboot for every program thats so self-important that it thinks it's the sole reason I have a computer. Well, I'd like to point out that firewalls and anti-virus do NOT qualify for this - in fact you are a necessary evil and I'd happily dump in a nanosecond if it wasn't for all the cretins out on the net wanting to hack and wreck my PC.

Since I haven't seen much of a discussion about this previously, I'd be interested to learn more about the main reasons reboots are considered to be required, and how common this problem is on different operating systems - Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc.

Wednesday 5 December 2007

Excel Macro weirdness

Excel is pretty good most of the time, but this is just weird. Apparently having pagebreaks in a print preview can seriously mess with macro performance. See Slow Response, Memory Problems, and Speeding up Excel for details.

Green Gadget of the Day

On the "gotta get me some of that" list...

Mains Power Meter ($39.95)
http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=MS6115

This intelligent power meter simply plugs into a normal power point (GPO) and turns it into a real-time power monitoring outlet. You can enter the local price of your electricity and the meter will tell you exactly how much the appliance is costing to run. In addition, the power meter tracks the power used and can display the instantaneous voltage or current being drawn as well as the peak levels that have been drawn. The meter has backup batteries so it will not lose the stored data during a blackout or moving from point to point. Simple to install and a valuable tool for monitoring you power consumption.

More On "The Future of Software Development"

Alex Iskold wrote an interesting article on The Future of Software Development. My former colleague Michael Davies observes that it doesn't mention Open Source, and makes some good points regarding the higher abstraction level.

From my time using C# and .NET, java, etc., I think the libraries themselves present us with a major challenge - how the heck to easily find what you need, so you don't end up re-inventing the wheel? The libraries are now so large, there is a very good chance that there is something that will help make your current coding task easier - finding it is another matter altogether.

Ideally, a constantly active search, using the current method being written as context, could provide the developer with a ongoing list of possible library code to call upon. The results could be broken down into logical categories, to help the developer interpret how the results might be applicable.

Think of your garage - there's lots of tools in there (since I moved house I can't even find many of hem now!!), and lots of different ways to use the tools you probably haven't even thought of.

Thursday 16 August 2007

StarOffice now available via Google

According to this Australian IT article, Google are now making StarOffice freely available.

StarOffice is Sun's commercial version of the freely distributed OpenOffice suite. It has more features than OpenOffice and typically includes technical support from Sun, though the free Google version won't.

There are various articles to compare the OpenOffice, StarOffice and MS Office suites - such as this one from opensourceacademy

I'll have to give it a go sometime.

Tuesday 31 July 2007

As one door closes, another opens

Today was our last day with Mother MOTO. I still find it hard to believe that I was there for 11+ years. I learnt lots of new things, but most of all got to work with a great group of people - and that's what I will miss the most.

On the plus side, I'm writing this on a crusty 'old' notebook that work decided to auction off - which I picked up for $51. (Yes, that's fifty one bucks.) Dell Latitude, 500MHz, 256 Meg RAM, 20 Gig HDD, 802.11b wireless. OK, so it's no rocket, but good enough to set up as a games machine for the kiddies. Also good enough to surf the web from the comfort of the lounge room in front of the TV and remain semi-sociable with the family.

So it's now time for the next great adventure - I should be able to say within the next week or so to where...

Thursday 14 June 2007

MOTO-RAZR'd

Well, at long last it's finally happened. After 11 years and 3 months with Motorola, they have announced Adelaide Software Centre to Close. Or the same thing from a different new site.

Oh well, on to the next great adventure...

Friday 25 May 2007

Believe it or not...

So, after 11 years working for Motorola, I have at long last been on a project that has resulted in a real product that I can say to my friends "this is what I helped make". Woohoo! There's even a nice brochure.

So what the heck is it you ask? Well, think of it as a kind of "email over a 2-way radio network". We wrote the 'email' application.

[edit: forgot about the 'previous' project from which MOTOTRBO evolved - the Hong Kong Police's CC3 system]

[edit: also forgot about the ill-fated FLEXgateTM smartcard product. Damn shame, probably one of the most technically challenging and stimulating things I've worked on. Great team of engineers too!]

Tuesday 27 March 2007

William Lucas


William Lucas Haines was born on March 26th 2007 at 1:24pm. He weighed in at 6lb 7.5Oz (2.934 kg).

Rachel is recovering well, and is up and mobile already. She is just dying for a decent feed!

So far, William has had a couple of little feeds, and a first bath which he cried through, but his favorite pastime so far is sleeping. He and Dad had a good sleep last night, but Rachel didn't get any sleep at all - must be something about hospitals, as she did the same thing when Amelia was born. (Yes, I did get up during the night to help with nappy changes, feeding, etc - but I'm lucky to be able to get back to sleep very easily)




Charlotte and Amelia came in yesterday to see Mummy, Daddy & William - Charlotte was happy to look at him a few times and showed some interest, but Amelia didn't really care at all - she was far more interested in being carried around the corridors by Papa and Pa! I guess little babies don't rate very highly in the life of a 21 month old.

Thursday 15 March 2007

Pause, Rewind, Replay

Go to the official Rush website, and check out the first single "Far Cry". 'nuff said.

Ever wondered how fast your real internet access is? Go take a SpeedTest. I now need to figure out why my home connection is so slow - in theory it should be able to do 14mpbs, but yesterday I was getting 1mbps at best! The monitored alarm is the most likely culprit. Finding the time to investigate however is another story entirely.

Wednesday 14 March 2007

Test for Echo...

Well, this is my first ever attempt at blogging. This was prompted by Rob & Candi's cool idea of setting up a CarePage after the recent birth of their 3rd son. It seemed like a nice way to be able to share news without worring about accidentally leaving anyone off of the email chain. Of course, CarePages is somewhat us-centric, so I thought I'd check out what Google had to offer...

Other recent excitement in my life includes:
  • moving house (yes, we are still unpacking boxes!)
  • buying a new VCR/DVD Recorder combo unit yesterday (it's hooked up and playing, haven't tried recording anything yet)
  • impaitently waiting for the release of the brand new Rush album "Snakes & Arrows". The first single "Far Cry" is naturally already on YouTube, and lots of news is on RushIsaBand