Allow me to take the opportunity with this issue to vent some long term teeth-grinding issues I have never understood about the entire Stardock Delivery, Install, and Operations Architecture. How does a company that has such dominance in the marketplace, with such an incredible array of killer apps and products, so bork the way it jerks its customers around with splintered, and dramatically inconsistent delivery, installation and operations protocols?
Simple case, to come to the point. If the Product is Adobe, it has its home at C:\Program Files\Adobe. Periodo.
If it's a Stardock product, at least when I came aboard in 2002, it all loaded to C:\Program Files\Object Desktop. With other stray stuff going other places. I have come full cycle since then, prepared to make brand new purchases and take another enthusiastic run through this quagmire environment. My old stuff is still sitting at the above pathname, some inop, others not. So I started to download the latest goodies. Low an behold they were all going into a SINGLE parent folder at C:\Program Files\Stardock\Object Desktop. Ray-Ray I said. And Whaaahooo! IconDeveloper, IconPackager, SkinStudio, SoundPackager. Wow! I'll be able to just uninstall all the old stuff at C:\Program Files\Object Desktop. Piece a cake. New beginnings. Then along came CursorFX to C:\Program Files\Stardock. Ahh--ok. Then came WindowBlinds and WinStyles. Did they smack themselves in right alongside the other guys? Ahh---NOOO! They installed along the OLD pathname at C:\Program Files\Object Desktop. This is just totally borked and out of control architecture. I now have double shortcuts for the same product, pointing to TWO different pathnames and TWO versions of the same frigging product, still running side by side each other. Reminds me of an engineering meeting at Space Systems Division of General Dynamics, the day a myopic, anal retentive engineer, with incredibly convoluted logic, proved his case that on the new GUI Interface RED MEANS GO and GREEN MEANS STOP. Only in closed, sweaty, boring, and insular corporate hot-air staff meetings does this kind of stuff actually come to pass. Where virtually ANYTHING, however INSANE, can, and is, justified. Think I made my case on this issue. But, we're not done yet.
Whether from Stardock or WinCustomize, doesn't matter, some downloads allow you to SAVE initial install resources to your own target download folders. Do they all do that? Ahh--NOOOO. Some now don't even give you ANY OPTION AT ALL, they just download where they're hard-wired to do so. You're not given ANY OPTION. Did I get the resource? Where'd it go? Never even got a chance to touch it, must less confirm its arrival. Worse than this, some of the apps deposit USER resources in their own PROGRAM FILES locations, while yet others deposit their user resources down the long, ugly pathname at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents\Stardock\ and then FINALLEEE, into app-specific target folders. So I now gots stuff in my C:\+Downloads folder. I gots stuff in my C\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents\Stardock folders. I gots stuff in my C:\Program Files\Object Desktop folders. I gots the early stray stuff at yet other stray Program File locations. I gots stuff in my C:\Program Files\Stardock folders. What a BORKED RAT'S NEST of NEW and OLD PRODUCT items, spread all over Hades and back. And this is 2008, SIX YEARS since 2002, and NUTHIN HAS CHANGED. And now you speak of IMPULSE. And now you speak of the ability to blast 2 GIG bullets into my hard drive, wherever you d-well decide to? My flesh crawls.
Whatever happened to the clean, direct, short pathnames at the top of C:\ huh? Top of C? Where's dat?
I know there are some corporate types, and software engineers, that can give me impeccable logic for the way this rat's nest is organized. Well, I just don't buy it. Last time I checked the traffic lights, GREEN still meant GO, and RED still meant STOP. I jus don wannah hear the arguments. Get with it. Clean up your act kk. If it's Adobe, it goes to C:\Program Files\Adobe. Periodo. Kapeesh? Does it take SIX YEARS PLUS for the simple exquisite logic of this to sink in? Not yet it hasn't. Not by any fresh observations and experiences I am having ramping up for this new run on Dodge.
If it's a Stardock Product, ALL APPS, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, have a SINGLE, TOP-LEVEL child folder install at C:\Program Files\Stardock. Periodo. If it's a USER GENERATED RESOURCE, or a program app generated USER RESOURCE, they ALL USE THE SAME TOP-LEVEL, PARENT REPOSITORY, EXTERNAL to the Program Files Architecture (Stay OTTAH THERE!), at some clean, and short folder pathname, say at the top of C:\+Stardock, with again, an IDENTICAL, SINGLE, TOP-LEVEL set of child folders directly inside it. Let the customer make the initial call defining the SINGLE path for ALL USER RESOURCE GOODIES, at a SINGLE TARGET PATHNAME. There are beaucoupe provisions for shared resource file setups that permit targeting anywhere on the HD. And not just in those silly, hard-wired-default My Documents, My Music, My Potty, My Blah-Blah folder architecture that drives people to drink, tearin their hair out, running up and down those mile long pathnames. Just utter nonsense.
Comments from the Peanut Gallery, pls. I have a thick skin, and a tender heart. Depends on which one you wannah target.
Take care.
P.S. Yeah, I'm a grumpy ole man in his late 60's, retired, and hard-wired to simpler times, and simpler solutions. I was mesmerized by Pong. Einstein put it so well, paraphrasing him: The most complex and profound issues of the universe ultimately resolve themselves in elegant simplicity. Case in point: E=MC2. Like to see WinZip compress that puppy any further.
