Case study in annoyance

7/9/2006

Adobe Acrobat is pretty much an essential application on any computer. PDF files are common formats and the reader is a necessity to view PDF files. For many years I have had a favorable opinion of this software, or at worst a neutral opinion. However Acrobat Reader is quickly becoming one of my most hated pieces of software that I wish I could get rid of. How is it possible for Acrobat Reader to become so annoying? Are they on a mission to annoy us? All I want to do is view PDF files. And just for those that think I am picking on Acrobat becuase I work for Microsoft, search for my posts about Outlook and you will see I simply call it as I see it.

I have been using Acrobat since at least version 4.0. In fact until very recently I stayed with 4.0 which is several years old because newer versions are slow and use a lot of memory. I just launched Acrobat Reader 7.0 now and did not even load a document and it has consumed more than 19 megabytes of memory. Is there some unknown competition going on between Acrobat Reader and Outlook to see who can consume the most memory and CPU cycles? It is amazing how fast 4.0 loads up and displays a document. 7.0 however is noticeably slower, even when using its "speed launch utility". Loading documents with 7.0 can often be compared to zipping a multi gigabyte file. For several seconds my machine becomes paralyzed while Acrobat loads and spends time displaying to me all of its plug-ins that it is loading. Is it simply to much to make Acrobat Reader slim and trim again and just display PDF files? There are many PDF third party utilities, if anyone of them simply makes a slim and trim reader and widely distributes it they can easily make quite a name for themselves.

Update, Reboot, Repeat

How many times does Acrobat need to update? It seems that nearly once a week Acrobat wants to update itself. Worse yet, every update requires a reboot of my system. Why? Its not a device driver. Its not even a critical or core part of my system. Most other vendors have figured this out and even Windows Update is requiring fewer and fewer reboots. So why must I reboot my system to update Acrobat? I am rebooting my system more frequently for a utility I use infrequently, than I am to update my whole operating system.

In fact I just rebooted my system for other reasons, and when I logged in I received a message "You must reboot again to complete the Acrobat upgrade." Huh? Two reboots? Am I the only one that finds this excessive and invasive?

The Startup Roach

Acrobat is something I use daily, but not something that I use even hourly. So I do not want its speedlaunch taking up memory. It consumes about 3 megabytes, and has no noticeable effect on making Acrobat load faster. And for something I only use once or twice a day, why should I consume more RAM for no noticeable effect? So I removed speed launch from the my startup group. However after every upgrade Acrobat puts it back in - never notifying me and never asking me.

What more can it do?

If Adobe is looking to annoy us users even more then I expect next they will do what many printer and other hardware vendors do. Add an icon to our system tray that adds little or no useful functionality, but displays their company logo and consumes space. My system tray is now in competition with my task bar for space. Note to vendors - the system tray is not a billboard! And while we are on this subject - Why have printer drivers grown to 400+ megabytes? Do we really need all of that? Is there a competition to become bigger than Windows itself?

And your point is?

Consider this a case study. As you write your software, do not annoy your customers. We are developers, but we are users too. Software should not be annoying. Forcing updates on your customers, reboots, and mandated features will not make your customers have a better image of your company. They certainly might remember your name better, but not in a good way. Not alp products are simple, but if you have a simple one, keep it simple and fast. If I just want to pick up a loaf of bread from the corner store, I should not have to fill out 18 forms to buy it.

Bye Bye Acrobat!

A reader wrote to me with a solution after I posted this blog. There are free third party slim and trim PDF readers. More info

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