S1dd.com » Software

Get Rid of Adobe Reader, Flash is next?

Sidd — Wed, 05 May 2010 17:51:44 +0000

I’ve been using Foxit for some time (maybe a couple of years) now because Adobe Reader had become a bloated piece of crap that slows down my machine, crashes browsers and uses way more resources than it should.

But now Adobe has gone one step beyond just making a crappy product – they want to covertly install other crappy products that you didn’t ask for. Click the image on the left for a screenshot of the Adobe reader download page. It wants to install “Acrobat.com on Adobe AIR” (no option to opt out) and McAfee Security Scan Plus (you can opt out by checking the box). Adobe has gone so far as to do this with Flash too and that even installs McAfee without giving the user an option to deselect it.

McAfee Security Scan Plus is just a piece of crap software that gives you the same information as Windows Security Center i.e. if you have your Antivirus, Firewall etc. turned on. If not (or sometimes even if you do), it tries to sell you McAfee stuff.

So do yourself a favor, uninstall Adobe Reader now and get Foxit Reader. Foxit also seems to have fewer security issues and it patches holes faster. It doesn’t annoy you with startup items, doesn’t install other crap without your knowing and is much smaller in size.

So far I haven’t been forced to get anything with Flash upgrades but it that happens, Flash is next to go. And thanks to Steve Jobs and his hatred for Flash, more and more websites are begining to move to HTML 5 or at least begining to offer that option. Adobe really needs to get their act together. I’ve been hit by a fake antivirus at work from what was possibly a flash (or maybe pdf) exploit and it is nasty. If McAfee suddenly appears on my machine out of the blue along with Adobe reader, how does one tell it apart from the Fake AV software?

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VMWare + Win 7

Sidd — Fri, 22 May 2009 20:59:40 +0000

I just got Windows 7 installed and running in VMWare Server IT took a while to install but is running pretty smoothly. The only app I installed so far is Opera 10 Alpha. As I add more and play with it a little more, I’ll make some new posts in the near future.

BTW it is Win7 64 bit and the host OS is XP 32 bit!

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Excel 2007 Bug

Sidd — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:43:25 +0000

I have a simple spreadsheet with a few floating point numbers. All two decimal places or less. The total of the numbers is zero. But Excel displays the total as 2.32832E-11 (which is nearly zero but I’d rather just see a zero).

It does resolve itself if I change the format of the Column from General to Number but it is annoying to have to do that.

Click to download the file.

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Kubuntu 8.10!

Sidd — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:44:29 +0000

All this while I’ve been using Ubuntu on my Thinkpad and have been very happy with only a few minor complaints such as the non-functional multi-monitor utility and compiz fusion not working until 8.10. Now I decided to give KDE a try so I installed Kubuntu-desktop and logged into KDE 4.1!!! Oooh drool!!! The unreleased Windows 7 (scroll down to milestone 3) is already behind. See my new desktop after a few minor tweaks and adding a few plasmoids (screen widgets).

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After Vista

Sidd — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:44:35 +0000

Windows Vista has many new nice features but it faces severe criticism and omitted several announced high profile features such as WinFS and now it seems that the next Windows (Windows 7) will be out next year.

IMHO, because of Vistas failure and everybody wanting XP, maybe Microsoft should hire the guy who made this – BricoPack Vista Inspirat Ultimate 2 and make XP + BricoPack + a few of Vistas good features the next Windows. Personally I’ve not tried Vista because none of the computers I own are even “Vista Capable”, forget Premium ready and XP runs just fine on them. My Computer at Work says “Vista Capable” (but was ordered with XP and I do have the option to upgrade to Vista) but our internal processes are not Vista ready yet and a majority of our users are currently being upgraded from 2000 to XP!

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Another nice Ubuntu Screenshot

Sidd — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:05:40 +0000

Here is Ubuntu’s (Hardy Beta) window switcher (using compiz) on hardware that won’t even run Vista with Aero. 2GHz processor, 512MB RAM, Intel Integrated Graphics with 32MB memory.

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Ubuntu as Vista + Mac

Sidd — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:15:01 +0000

Here is a screenshot of my Ubuntu Desktop at work. Check out the vista menu and the Mac Dock (install awn-manager from Synaptic)

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Installation Woes Part Deux

Sidd — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:03:43 +0000

I inserted my XP CD again and selected Setup instead of Repair. It didn’t even recognize the Windows partition as NTFS. So basically Windows update destroyed more than just a few files. I formatted the partition, ran XP setup again. Ofcourse now XP destroyed my MBR and I couldn’t get to Ubuntu. So I fire up the other computer, google is my friend, find a way to restore the ubuntu MBR, boot into linux. Copy all the downloaded drivers to another NTFS partition (not the Windows one in case I lose it again). Finally I have internet going. This time around, I skip doing all the Windows updates together, install Zone Alarm and AVG and turn on automatic updates. I can wait a week while the updates can go on in the background.

If Windows XP fails again this time, I’ll just have to live with not doing any VS.NET development on the laptop – like I have been for a long time now. I do have some other options like the Mono VB.NET Support but that remains a task for the future.

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Reinstalling Everything – XP vs Ubuntu

Sidd — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:28:57 +0000

Finally I replaced the dying hard drive on my Thinkpad and went on to install both XP and Ubuntu. First I installed XP because I’ve had trouble installing it second before. I couldn’t use the XP that came with the Thinkpad because that was on a corrupt partition on the old HDD that was dying. So I found another XP CD and installed. It didn’t have the drivers for either the wired or the wireless ethernet so I couldn’t go online to download the rest of the drivers (video, audio, touchpad etc.)

Next I installed Ubuntu. It found drivers for everything and was working right out of the box. This new 7.10 version finally fixed all the problems I had with 6.06 (such as crappy wireless settings, no hibernation etc.) and nearly everything just worked right out of the box. Once Ubuntu was installed I managed to download all the windows drivers for the laptop. I got the wired lan working on the thinkpad. XP refused to accept that the wireless drivers were correct so I had to force it to use the drivers that I gave it. Finally the wireless was working and I started Windows Update after activating the copy of Windows.

At some point during the Windows Update, a power failure made the internet connection go away and Windows Update stopped downloading further updates and started installing all the downloaded updates, then asked me to reboot. So I reboot and now Windows will not start saying it cannot find ntoskrnl.exe. I boot in Ubuntu and look for the file. The file exists but it is of unknown size and of unknown type (other exes are all labelled as DOS/Windows executable) which means that Windows update put in a corrupt file.

Back goes in my XP CD and I select Repair this time which puts me at a command prompt. I type “dir” and I get an error telling me it cannot show me the directory. So my Windows is completely busted. I have been living without Windows on the laptop for over a year now because my previous Windows installation also died thaks to HD corruption but Ubuntu lived on and was able to atleast boot in command prompt and I could run fsck and fix hard drive errors and reboot with a gui.

The only reason I need Windows is to run Visual Studio.NET so I will give it another try, maybe I’ll just give VMware a try and install Windows in a virtual environment and do away with a separate install.

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Life Without Windows – Welcome Ubuntu

Sidd — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:12:19 +0000

A few months ago, the Windows installation on my home laptop crashed irrecoverably. Windows will not boot in regular or safe mode or any other way. I have no intention of reinstalling Windows and I could not repair it from installation disks. In fact even the repair partition on the Thinkpad will not boot. Thankfully I had an Ubuntu Linux (6.06 LTS – Long Term Support – Dapper Drake) partition with which I dual boot.

I’ve started using Anjuta for web development. I have Opera and Firefox for web browsing, Thunderbird for Email, Open Office for Word/Powerpoint/Excel, VLC to play movies/music etc. So far I don’t miss any applications that I had under windows except SQLYog (there are Linux replacements but SQLYog is my favorite) and I have that working very well with Wine. I can also get to my Windows partitions and get any files that I need.

My first minor complaint is inconvenient wireless setup – the Dapper Drake wireless is good enough for my purpose but not really very nice. It seems Ubuntu has improved the wireless features in their latest release Fiesty, however I will wait for the next LTS release before I upgrade.

My only other complaint – not so minor – is that Hibernation does not work.
Hopefully a future version will fix that.

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