h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This, actually, is a good thing. Too many Winbloze products leave traces of themselves scattered all over your registry and dll libraries, so you have to have uninstallers. And you don't want to have uninstallers installed on your hard drive for every stupid piece of software. It's just another of the many nuisances of dealing with the Software Trust, but this one is pretty minor.

Hmm - it's incredibly infuriating if you look after a number of machines where all of the software originals are stored centrally. I normally find I only uninstall software when it hasn't been used for a long time, therefore can safely get rid of it. However, if I haven't used it for a long time, I've generally forgotten where the installation CD is, and plenty of time has elapsed for someone else to come along and borrow / hide it...

The sad fact is that even with uninstallers, there's a strong chance that various layers of cruft will be left behind anyway; that's part of the 6-Month Windows Reinstallation Plan, I guess.

The Redhat package manager works a treat; why can't Windows have a standard method of installing and uninstalling software, rather than the myriad different versions of InstallShield et al. that have sprung up?

(Okay, so I'm not expecting an answer to that last question... )

Azimuth