But downloading it wasnt so easy as i remembered. First they insisted i get a Firefox plugin, then when i installed the plugin i had to restart Firefox, save every tab and then the install process started. The worst thing is that it lasted almost half an hour to install Adobe Reader. The Nosso software wich takes over the installation is very slow!. And no, its not my computer, it has a very powerful CPU, 4GB of RAM and a performant hard drive, also my internet connection is broadband 20 mbps so you can’t blame any of these. It is Adobe and Nosso’s technology to blame for a half hour install process for such a simple thing as a PDF viewer.

Needless to say that even on this powerful machine the program performs poorly. It is slow and bloated. So i looked for alternative solutions.

A colleague recommended Foxit Reader. I downloaded it (it is 3.5 MB in size) and installed it in under 30 seconds. It performs very well, its fast, very fast and even has Firefox plugin to view PDF’s in the browser. So i uninstalled Adobe Reader and i will certainly won’t install it again.

I hope more and more people will do this, until Adobe realizes that usability and user friendly software are not only terms in the dictionary.

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For example Thunderbird was my email client of choice, i used it for a long time and i was happy with it. But in time my preferences shifted because i needed to access my email from a lot of places and i needed to have my emails accessible from everywhere. I started to move towards web based email. I had my personal mail on my own domain and i was still using Thunderbird for that, the only thing that annoyed me with the software itself was that sometimes it was very slow. But after moving my email hosting to Google’s Web Apps i had no longer a reason to keep Thunderbird. Web based email is my choice and the question that i asked some time ago is being answered. Desktop email apps are on the go. This is a case where the software cannot keep up with the evolution of users behavior.

The other case where perfectly usable programs were developed way beyond what is their main mission is represented by Acdsee and Azureus (now Vuze).

I used Acdsee only for viewing pictures and saving them in different formats. Acdsee was awesome for saving image files for web. It compressed very well. No other software that i knew of could compress images this small size, keeping good quality. The antique version 3 of Acdsee was in use on my computer 4 months ago. But as i changed my PC and installed Windows XP 64, Acdsee 3 won’t run anymore on it. The newer versions are not for me. I don’t like the way the software tries to do everything but manages to do much less. Usability is worse then for earlier versions and the package that tries to be an universal photo manager is becoming a bloatware. I started to use IrfanView instead, which is better, smaller, faster more usable and it is FREE.

About Azureus i didn’t made a final decision yet, i am still using it as it become Vuze and tries to be an offline player for online videos, community stuff and everything. I need the software just for the torrent downloads, i am not interested in watching the latest videos of some short lived emo band or promotional stuff from all kinds of enterprises. So Vuze might be on my PC for a while but i am having doubts about its future.

Do you had any programs that you really liked but you quit using ?

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