I was going to do a plain old rant on mine, but to encourage activity, post a screen of your least favorite piece of software (that you currently have installed)

mine:

AVG antivirus: Free edition.



you may be thinking "but AVG is a good antivirus program" and to a point, it is. the thing that pisses me off is the random updates. playing a game? OOPS! update time! hope you saved, because I'm just going to crash it! oh, sorry, I just made you lose your progress in HL2 for nothing.

even more annoying are the 3 windows that pop up with an update. first is the "is there and update/download it!" window, then a few seconds later the "Hey, I"m updating now!" one, and the "hey, I updated! ain't that cool, huh, huh, huh?!" window. if this was a once a week occurance, that'd be fine. but don't you DARE take your computer anywhere without an internet connection for more than a day, or you'll get a massive whine-fest from it because it hasn't had it's heroin-laced update. oh, but this isn't before it tries to update, then tells you you're not on the internet. maybe after the first week you'd realise that I'm not anyhwere near the internet, and lose all function.

I find it horrendously slow at scanning, too. with my last program, PCcillin, not only did it have 2-window updates (one was just a dialog for saying you had updates, that would dismiss for about a day if you hit "no" to installing, and the other automatically closed when it was done doing everything.) but it also would scan our entire computer in ~1-2 hours. I left AVG going for about4, and it still wasn't done.

this also brings me to AVG's complex manual update system (from 7.2 to 7.5 was hell, it took me about an hour for the update, befoer I even installed it) and strange scanning system. it will check some of the c:/windows folder, move on to program files and documents, leave half-way to do c:/windows again, then finish. when I see the xfire folder being scanned, I think "good, it's almost done" nope, it does it according to some strange algorithim involving caged chimpnzees in diapers smacking at ferrets who land on letters in the order that it will scan folders.

then it double-checks.

yes, I know it's important to make sure you didn't go over anything, BUT you don't need to waste another 2 hours on a full scan.

up sides: it's free, and you can close it/uninstall. being free shouldn't even be on there, as there are better programs out there for free too.

Hmm, Microsoft yes I use it more than Linux but I HATE MICROSOFT!!!

Cant u just turn off auto-update? I'm not by my computer now or I'd look. AVG usually updates when I 1st boot. Never once has it done the update while playing.

Mine's a tie between iTunes and Norton AntiVirus 2007.

Both are equally evil to me.

I hate Quicktime.

It steals file associations and resists all efforts to change them back, and then it refuses to play said files.

RealPlayer is **** too, but thankfully no one uses it.

There are alternatives for both, though.

Oh don't even bring up RealPlayer!

It was installed on my parent's computer before we had to whipe it and reinstall (my brother tried to get a keygen with the antivirus software turned off ).
I remember multiple times accidentally opening various video/audio files in RealPlayer, and I never want to experience that horror again.
I can't beleive it takes more than 30 seconds just to start the damn thing (that means if you accidentally open it, you've instantly wasted half a minute of your life, never to get it back again).

Uggh, RealPlayer =

Mine is iTunes

@ IT, AVG auto updates can be turned off. I turned mine off due to that exact issue. IMO, AVG is great software considering its free.

I turned off automatic updates and stuff. and it is pretty good for being free. but I'm still mad that our pretty damn good pay one crapped out

iTunes isn't the best media player, in fact, I'd say it's pretty low on the list, but considering I have an iPod and I could never figure out windows media player, and I'm too lazy to get another one.

and realplayer is the computer incarnation of the devil. It's adware, slow, and sucks ass for streaming, ALL IN ONE, SEMI-FREE PACKAGE! The only reason that I re-installed it (for all of a week) is so I could watch some crappy, 80-s dance things for phys-ed. I used it for music when I was young, and WMP sucked more than it did now.

sometimes I want to strangle microsoft, but if it's just because of bugs in windows, I think of the sweatshop-programmers, spending 20-hour days making patches and stuff

Don't worry; it's not too bad. They only have the 20 hour sweatshop days once a month (the second Monday of each, actually).

IE 7 bugs me. All of the fancy stuff seems to have been added at the expense of stability.

I noticed that too. I also think it looks like crap i nthe classic windows theme (then again, it's ugly otherwise, but still...)

TBH, if I had to choose between a buggy FF, IE6 or IE7, I"d take IE 6.

it would be steam...

Quicktime (or perhaps the alternative version, I can't tell) is really pissing me off.

It has stolen the file association for playing an mp3 file inside of an IE7 window, and the sound glitches when I try to do anything outside of that window.