Lazycoder

Installing apps on Windows is the problem

Installing client applications isn’t the problem, IMO, it’s installing client apps on Windows.

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger: “Well, just think that if you needed to install a piece of software just to read a new blog. Wouldn’t that be frustrating? Yes. So, having things available in a ‘no install’ way is very important, and very cool.”

I think the biggest problem is with how installing Windows applications works currently. That’s where a lot of the cruft in Windows installs comes from. How many times have you had a dialog box pop up and tell you that the install program is trying to overwrite a newer file? How many times have you said “keep the newer file” or “overwrite the newer file” and crossed your fingers? I haven’t had any problems installing applications on OS X. .NET is a big step in the right direction as far as solving the install problems on Windows.

Lets face it, the reason that people like web apps is because they don’t like to have to reinstall their Windows apps everytime that they have to re-install Windows. It’s an extension of the whole “OS on one partition, data on another partition” solution. If the primary applications you use aren’t even installed on the system, who cares if you have to re-install. I successfully upgraded my OS X install from Panther to Tiger without having to wipe my partition. I upgraded Ubuntu in the same fashion. Back when I was running Mandrake Linux on two machines at home, I was able to upgrade them through two installs without having to wipe out the installs and start from scratch. I’d say 80% of my application installs on OS X consist of mounting the disk image and drag-dropping the application into my “Applications” folder. Although in truth, I could drop it anywhere or even run it directly from the disk image itself. I can’t think of too many Windows applications I can do that with. They all involve a wizard and file copies of DLLs. Who knows if they are system DLLs or just important to other applications?

When they fix installation under Windows, more people will see the value in client side applications.