I spent nearly an hour downloading Microsoft Office Plus 2010 after purchasing and Firefox stopped responding. The download had reached 621MB of the 650MB. Eventually I found a hidden dialog box asking me to update Firefox to 3.6.11. I clicked the button to "Ask Me Later", but Firefox still was not responding. My only choice was to kill Firefox which I did.
Firefox restarted and I chose to restore the previous session which it did. Finally checking the download manager I found it was back to downloading the Office download at about 285MB. It quickly completed the download successfully in 5-10 minutes.
I've grown used to clicking on a link in an email message and receiving a "fatal error" message from Firefox only to find Firefox wants to update some totally unrelated add-on. Performing the update gets Firefox to finally start. However, interrupting a 650MB download for an update is totally unacceptable. Mozilla, the Firefox developer, along with all the software development community have got to get this update madness under control. Each piece of software seems to think their software is the only software installed on a computer and must be updated immediately regardless what the user is doing.
Last week proved to be incredibly annoying. It was Micro$oft Tuesday and they wanted to install a massive number of updates. In the midst of the M$ mess, Adobe Reader decided it needed to be updated immediately. Then Norton Internet Security wanted to update from the 2010 version to 2011. When this happens on a weeknight while trying to update five (5) home computers and all your trying to do is read your day's email, it becomes overwhelming.
So what do you think? Has this update madness gotten out of control and do software developers need to change their paradigm on when to tickle a user to update?
