Whose PC is it anyway? - The Test Bed

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Whose PC is it anyway?

Shutting_downWhy is it certain applications delight in restarting your PC without warning when you uninstall them? What’s wrong with giving you the option of restarting later?

Yahoo Messenger is the latest to make our black list. Just moments after we hit the uninstall button it merrily began closing applications and other windows, ready for a restart. We didn’t even get so much as a warning. Is Yahoo punishing us for uninstalling its application?

While we’re on the subject, Windows Update isn’t much better. Okay, so it doesn’t restart your PC automatically when new updates are installed, but if you opt not to restart immediately it will pester you with a pop-up window every 15 minutes until you relent. Microsoft will no doubt argue patches aren't effective until you restart, but it’s not always convenient to restart whenever Microsoft demands it.

The point of all this is you paid for your PC, surely you should decide what you can and can’t do with it.

Have you been infuriated by software taking over your PC? Are you fed up being told you don’t have permission to delete certain files? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Comments

I had something called Securom create two files on my hard disk and now I cant delete them. theyre marked as system files. can anyone help me?

Posted by Annoyed | November 6, 2005 6:16 PM

A root cause is that every vendor seems to embed in small print T&Cs 'your' acceptance of responsibility for what 'their' program may do!
Plus, there is no mechanism to collectively say "change this to what we expect or we'll not use your software". So we seem stuck with it.

More subtle ownership and control issues crop up everywhere and end users unaware of implications can get the worst of the deal.
We all use many applications and in principle we accept that we don't actually own these, just the right to use them.
What about the datafiles you generate, as a result of entering your data into those applications? Are they your property?

Take bookmark lists as an example. You might expect to be the owner of the personal list you maintain.
Some ISP's may have a different view, especially if this normally sits on their server. Take AOL as a specific instance, since v8.0 in 2003, your active bookmark list (called favourites) is now kept on their server. The advantage is that it is available wherever you login from. An important difference however is that you no longer have exclusive access to the list content, and file 'ownership' is now less clear.

Under such an arrangement an ISP can ensure you always have the latest set of what they consider some of your favourite places should be, by adding these at any time. Not everyone welcomes this 'feature' but you have no choice. If we don't want folders named 'AOL member benefits', 'Meeting people and staying in touch', 'My favourites', 'Help and Security' etc. we seem to not be permitted to get rid of them, at least not permanently. I've erased these in the past to find they reappear. (rename them and extra replacements appear). If there was just one top level folder (called AOL) it could just be kept closed, but 'inserts' come as several top level folders leaving less space in the window for 'your' list folders. When the favourites file was copied to the server during the upgrade process it seems to have changed status, from being 'your' file to becoming 'their' file to which you are allowed to add data - rather than on a 'right to use unchanged' basis. You can of course keep 'your' copy on your PC, as backup, but it's the server copy that is active. If bookmarks on the desktop/laptop files were the active ones, (ISPs could still keep a copy of the most recent one for you to download if it was newer) it would seem less acceptable to us for the ISP to control some content.
The potential 'marketing opportunities', by scanning and compiling millions of bookmark files, cannot have escaped the ISPs.

A related issue here, where file formats are proprietary (e.g. not something portable such as an html file) is how do you export your date for use in another browser? Proprietary mail store formats, such as 'personal filing cabinet' in AOL, may not provide a facility to export your mail to a non-proprietary client mailstore. People faced with these issues find changing ISP is a two stage process. The many computer magazines that run articles about finding a better ISP only seem to address stage 2 i.e. helping you decide who to move to (based on costs, performance, value). How about PCW doing an article that addresses stage 1? - i.e. how to easily get 'your' data out of proprietary bookmark/mail storage files (in particular AOL's) and into something more portable.

Posted by Melvin | November 12, 2005 8:58 PM

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