Weekend Open Forum: Bloated software you refuse to abandon

[Jos]

Microsoft recently launched a no non-sense campaign calling IE the browser you love to hate. In a nutshell, they know they screwed up in previous releases, but they promise they’ve grown up. And that IE “is actually good now” -- their words, not mine. To be honest, now that we have some great alternatives in Chrome and Firefox, I haven’t bothered to give them a fair second chance. Likewise, there’s other software part of our daily lives that might deserve being replaced and yet we stick to it for lack of a better alternative -- or knowledge thereof.

Today we want to ask: What's the most bloated, slow, or terribly designed piece of software you still regularly use? My prime example would be iTunes, though I’ll admit it’s gotten better since version 11. And though I don’t use them anymore other likely candidates would be Microsoft Outlook and anything by Adobe.

While we’re at it feel free to help your TechSpot peers if you know of a better alternative for the bloated or otherwise sucky software they refuse to abandon. Sound off in the comments!

Image via Scott Schiller on Flickr

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https://www.techspot.com/news/52758-weekend-open-forum-bloated-software-you-refuse-to-abandon.html

 

[Jad Chaar]

iTunes is my prime example also. It has been replaced by Spotify. I barely listen to music anymore on my iPhone so I just have no use for iTunes. But I have so much music from over the years, I refuse to uninstall it.

 

[VitalyT]

About "LOL WTF"... You are in the process of uninstalling Antivirus. Even in 2005 it was already considered ill-advised using Internet without any antivirus, hence that note, nothing funny or to get excited about.

On the subject of antiviruses... I was using Avast! for 2 years, and was very-very happy about it, how wonderfully it is designed, and works without any glitches. But then I became concerned after looking at antivirus charts, to see Avast rating being really low compared to some alternatives, while being expensive. So, I made a mistake, I went for the recommended Bit Defender, which first turned out to be not any cheaper, and keeps popping up bugs and often crashes. What a terrible choice I made... And the UI in Bit Defender is horrific. I hate it... will go back to Avast when buying my next PC. Sorry for this little off topic.

 

[soldier1969]

I can't get Itunes to work any longer even after multiple updates, uninstalling, reinstalling and nothing so its no more. I haven't used IE in many years, its been all Firefox and thunderbird for me.

 

[Guest]

Flash player.

but can't get rid off it.

you know: youtube, dailymotion...

 

[Guest]

The most bloated and time wasting thing I use on my PC is THE INTERNET.

I really should stop and uninstall it.

 

[BlueDrake]

The most bloated and time wasting thing I use on my PC is THE INTERNET.

I really should stop and uninstall it.

If only it was that simple.


Can I say Steam? lol

 

[slh28]

Flash Player, there's still no way to ditch it. Speaking of Adobe, why on earth does Adobe Reader take up 300MB of disk space?

I was very happy the day I switched to Android from several years on iOS and could finally get rid of iTunes. No more creating playlists, syncing resized pictures and converting videos, just drag and drop. Also cleared many many GBs from my SSD.

 

[Dawn1113]

Windows 7?

Flash player here, too. I've turned off a lot of the MS services and features -- although I'm not sure that helps to reduce the size of the OS on my SSD.

Google Chrome is getting bigger -- it's now at 290MB. I've redirected the cache but that didn't help much. I've likewise found a way to stop it from updating. It actually behaves like a virus -- doing stuff you don't want it to do. I'm thinking I should switch to another browser soon.

 

[dividebyzero]

Origin

Go.To.Hell.

 

[captaincranky]

With today's software, wouldn't it be easier just to identify what isn't bloated? For that, DVDshrink and ImgBurn are all that come to mind.

Everything else just gets worse with every new release.

With mobile OSes, the bloat seems to be in the amount of stupid "Crapps" that you're expected to install. An app to get the weather from each TV channel in the area. A Starbucks app, iTunes....ad naseum.

Something that really pissed me off, is Amazon now forces you install proprietary applications, (sort of like iTunes), before they'll let you buy MP3s. And of course, that s*** is set to run on startup....

Wait, maybe that's the "Instant video". Ah who cares, same company different sort of the same nonsense.

 

[captaincranky]

...[ ]...On the subject of antiviruses... I was using Avast! for 2 years, and was very-very happy about it, how wonderfully it is designed, and works without any glitches. But then I became concerned after looking at antivirus charts, to see Avast rating being really low compared to some alternatives, while being expensive. So, I made a mistake, I went for the recommended Bit Defender, which first turned out to be not any cheaper, and keeps popping up bugs and often crashes. What a terrible choice I made... And the UI in Bit Defender is horrific. I hate it... will go back to Avast when buying my next PC. Sorry for this little off topic.

You should be sorry. Just yank "Bit Defender" and reinstall the free version of "Avast". If you're that unhappy with Bit Defender, waiting to buy a new PC sounds well, a tad silly.

Roughly like keeping a toothache just so you can complain about it. Jus' sayin'.

 

[Puiu]

On the subject of antiviruses... I was using Avast! for 2 years, and was very-very happy about it, how wonderfully it is designed, and works without any glitches. But then I became concerned after looking at antivirus charts, to see Avast rating being really low compared to some alternatives, while being expensive. So, I made a mistake, I went for the recommended Bit Defender, which first turned out to be not any cheaper, and keeps popping up bugs and often crashes. What a terrible choice I made... And the UI in Bit Defender is horrific. I hate it... will go back to Avast when buying my next PC. Sorry for this little off topic.

You are one of the few people who has problems with Bitdefender. I don't why you had so many problems, but I'm assuming that your PC wasn't exactly in tip top shape. If you have the money to pay for it then Bitdefender is great, if not then just stick to the free Avast or AVG.

 

[LinkedKube]

I read the title of the forum topic. More like "bloatware that refuses to abandon us!"

 

[Guest]

Nope, there is none of it.
SumatraPDF for PDF, Office 2003, and other small program that I use daily none of them are bloated.

The closest thing to bloted software that I use perhaps WMP12 and that because I can't find the matching equaliser setting for foobar so I'll stick with WMP.

 

[Elian]

Windows.

 

[captaincranky]

Windows.

Shhhh...! (You're not supposed to notice).

On the other hand, it is really a vicious cycle. As customers, "we want more and more features". From the Microsoft point of view, "and we've got plenty of bloat in which to package them for you".

If you think about, if Win 7's "Aero" wasn't bloat, why would M$ suggest you turn it off so that your computer will run faster?

 

[Per Hansson]

SolidWorks, you have to keep updating to the latest version, else it just says "future version" if you try opening a CAD file made in the latest versions, very clever of them...
AutoCAD too but it's atleast better because you have the option to save in the older, backwards compatible formats.

And yea, of course anything that Adobe makes...
I actually don't think MS Outlook is that bad though? But I only use it for work, for private it's webmail all the way...

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

I don't have any program on my PC I don't use and nothing starts with Windows unnecessarily. My phones a different story though. I wish I could remove all the garbage on it but I don't want to root it. I guess I'll have to live with that rubbish.

 

[Guest]

Several yeas ago I found a tiny program called wolf something or other. it prevented zero day attacks really well. Then it became a bigger program called threatfire, but not too big and I credit it though the years with preventing my teenagers from screwing up any of our computers. now it has been bought out by kaspersky which is a good, big piece of software that I do not want. so my advice is stop talking about the small free software that we all love or we will lose it.

 

[Guest]

Anything using java, netbeans for example...devs wtf are you guys building?

Firefox is bloating nicely these days, so going back to ie might not be so crazy if ms are genuine, haha.

Skype is bloated now also for no good reason.

Also, we should consider software that grabs inordinate amounts of RAM, loading a 1k HTML page in ANY modern browser claims many MB of memory, because devs don't give a **** anymore.

How about a piece of modern software that's unbelieviably tightly coded? Have a look at the music daw Reaper, it's around 10MB to download and uses a lot less resource than most browsers....for a professional production daw that's an impressive thing

 

[captaincranky]

...[ ]....And yea, of course anything that Adobe makes..

Photoshop Elements is particularly brutal. It's written by the lowest time, and probably lowest paid programmers the 3rd world can provide. It's just modules and modules of junk features piled on top of one another. I gave up on it a PSE-7, and it's up to I think version 11 ATM. None of the bugs seem to ever be fixed, there are never any worthwhile performance updates or bug fixes. The last time I got an "urgent update notice", it turned out to be an "update to the updater". Which simply would have turned out to be more f***ing adware..... !!!

Dear Adobe, "thanks, but no thanks", you keep it.

 

[captaincranky]

..[ ]...How about a piece of modern software that's unbelieviably tightly coded? Have a look at the music daw Reaper, it's around 10MB to download and uses a lot less resource than most browsers....for a professional production daw that's an impressive thing

I've heard of "Reaper" and not only does it have a stellar reputation, it's that rarest of things in the DAW world, a true bargain.

With that said, I think the software houses have me brainwashed, as I find myself in the occasional absent minded musing, "wow, look at the size of that installer, that must be something really special"!

Then I break out of my bizarre reveries and I am sore ashamed of myself....

 

[Guest]

This has something that has boggled me for years. Winamp3.x used to run fine on a pI/II with 64/128mb of ram. Maybe a 20mb overhead? How does iTunes, winamp5 (6?), WMP, or any other piece of software require 100s of mb of RAM to play mp3s? A codec which is 20yrs old now.

My phone was powerful enough to play mp3s ten years ago.

Developers, please, just because there is extra RAM there does not mean you have to use it. More "features" does not equal better.

 

[Tekkaraiden]

Not too fond of how bloated Acrobat reader has become.