The Lab Guys grow tired of ill-behaved
software
The weekend was typical for the Lab Guys. We ignored the bright, sunny skies
and slinked into the artificially lit Lab to putter around with some
non-mission-critical products. Tinkering in the Lab on the weekend is how the
Lab Guys usually relax, but this weekend was different.
A couple of products that just didn't work quite right in the Windows NT
environment were plaguing us, so we decided to dirty our hands and figure out
why. We're sure you've seen such products before--vendors develop them for
Windows 3.x or Windows 95, but only half-heartedly port them to NT. Our
experience with such products over the weekend resulted in a list of demands for
software vendors.
Demand 1: Provide an Uninstall Component
We are not amused by the lack of an uninstall component in a
software product. You may think your product is so wonderful that users will
never remove it from their computer, but you are wrong.
We spent Saturday trying to get a serial port-sharing package to work on a
server. (We won't tell you the package name because this column is not an
objective product review.) The software installed fine, the port-sharing service
started, but we couldn't configure the ports we wanted to share (and yes, we
read the documentation). We even searched the Registry for port settings.
After hours of fruitless experimentation, we decided to remove the product.
That's when we discovered that this software did not have an uninstall
component--we had to manually delete the directories, files, services, and
related Registry entries. Later, we learned that an .ini file could have solved
our port-sharing problem (we'll explain how we made this discovery later). This
discovery takes us to our second demand.
Demand 2: Get Rid of .ini Files
We hate .ini files! They are physical evidence of the shortcuts
companies take to get their products to the NT market. Commercial-grade NT
software packages shouldn't use .ini files; they should use the Registry to
store system configuration information.
On Sunday, we decided to try out the beta NT driver for the Connectix
QuickCam color camera. You can use this small desktop camera as a source for
video conferencing via Cornell/White Pine's CUSeeMe, Microsoft's
NetMeeting, or similar conferencing packages. With all the high-end video
products coming to the NT market, we assumed the low-end consumer products would
be ready for prime time.
The QuickCam driver installed without problems. However, the installation
procedure created a program group with two program items that didn't exist. The
documentation warned that these program groups would install, but why would a
vendor want its software to install references to programs that don't exist? The
answer is easy: The vendor is using its Win95 installer procedure and wants to
modify it as little as possible. But beta code is beta code, so we just deleted
the obsolete icons and moved on.