Re: thanks for nothing - a look at the uninstaller

[Michael Ross <michael e ross gmail com>]

Good software incorporates human factors.  

Has anyone else seen the paragraphs of text where each word is shown only with the correct first and last letters - all the rest are jumbled? http://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/can-you-read  

We (well maybe natives to a language) can amazingly, read this apparent gibberish and make very good sense of it, at lease with English... (I wonder if all manners of writing support this?  Chinese logographs for example. Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_systems )  It is effortless once you get going.  Our minds lever what is essentially a lack of attention to detail into a method for comprehending messed up information.

That ability also messes us up for proper comprehension of detailed information.  I have examples of spec sheets and manuals that are so concise as to be unreadable.  I have some instructions from a German company that are sort of beautiful in their sparseness, but it is incredibly hard to sort out if you are not already fully understanding the system. The information is too dense and not enough context is given.  You almost have to diagram the sentences to make sense of it. 

Dialog boxes that pop up for quick review definitely need to be otherwise.  There text needs some white space. Imagery is helpful (ideograms).  Anything to shake us from a jaded autonomic response.

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 3:19 AM, Andrey Repin <anrdaemon freemail ru> wrote:

Greetings, Octavio Alvarez!

>>>>> IIRC, Beatrice said that she uses separate directories for OS and apps
>>>>> because of the use of an SSD; an explicit directory selection occurred.
>>>>
>>>> Well, that was a wrong way to do it then.
>>>> You MUST install applications on the same partition as your OS to avoid
>>>> unnecessary writes. This is how WinSxS works.
>>
>>> I'd guess the SSD was for the OS. And what if the SSD is not big enough
>>> to hold all the C:\Program Files?
>>
>> As I said, installing applications somewhere else is a quick way to overflow
>> your primary partition due to the way WinSxS works. (Basically, when you
>> install your application on different partition, it has to COPY libraries,
>> instead of making hardlinks to them, as it usually would.)
>> It SHOULD have enough space for your applications. Smallest SSD I saw was,
>> like, 60gb? In my experience, half that space is sufficient for a quite heavy
>> workspace (3DS, Photoshop, ArchiCAD, AutoCAD and quite a ton of plugins and
>> additional tools supplementing the workflow).

> Disclaimer: I know nothing about WinSxS. Found about it because of your
> comments. I hope no to sound too pedantic.

> I found this [1] from Microsoft which actually suggests offloading
> program files from the system volume.

This only helps in case of applications, that store more data, than actual
executable code (i.e.: games), or applications, that are not designed to work
in multi-user environment (poorly written programs from previous century,
mainly, again, games).

> I'm just trying to make a use case for choosing a directory other than
> C:\Program Files and why having the RmDir /R so exposed is more harmful than
> helpful.

This goes without question. Uninstaller should not remove any files the
installer did not created. And should not confuse the user with stupid
questions, creating false perception of safety.
Under normal circumstances, that would be the only things needed to be
removed, as application should not write into it's installation directory
throughout the normal operation cycle. Application updates fall under
installation category, rather than "normal operation".

> [1] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2795190 - How to address disk space
> issues that are caused by a large Windows component store (WinSxS)
> directory .

As you may have noticed, WinSxS normally contains HARD LINKS, as the article
specifically mentioned, and it's real size usually much smaller, than it's
perceived size as shown in different file managers. (In our tests, real space
used was anywhere from 1% to 10% of perceived space. That is, 10-15mb out of
1.5Gb "used space" reported by Explorer.)
But in the event of inability to create a hard link (f.e., the link target
being on a different device), the WinSxS will contain a real copy of the
object, which will take real space.
See the note above about moving applications to a different partition.


--
WBR,
Andrey Repin (anrdaemon freemail ru) 04.02.2014, <11:26>

Sorry for my terrible english...

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Michael E. Ross

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