So Hard To Say Goodbye

Everyone knows that companies hate to see you go. There is a special place in hell for the series of operators I had to fight through when I cancelled my AOL subscription back in 1997. So I am not surprised when I try to cancel something, and I am confronted with hurdles.

I recently encountered two interesting approaches on this theme with a program called Xobni. Xobni (inbox spelled backwards, by the way) is a tool I never even asked for, and was installed automatically when I installed another program called Digsby. Last week I got tired of Xobni running in the background and decided to remove it, like I should have done a long time ago.

Of course, there was no uninstaller in the Start menu, so I had to go to Add/Remove programs. Rather than just removing the program, I was first forced to reckon with this series of alternatives:

Arrrrrgh! Fancy choices! Buttons! Precious seconds of thinking! Maybe I should just wait until some other time. No, I made it this far, I must press on. Click "Uninstall Xobni".

Then they hit me with a new low - launching the sad dog web page:

I don't know what happened to that dog, but I'm pretty sure it was because I just uninstalled that program.

Stop the Registry Madness

Dear Microsoft,

Why is it that any time I want to change one of Windows annoyances, I find the only option is to edit the registry? Did it ever occur to you that some people can identify a shortcut by the little arrow in the icon, and they don't need the word "shortcut" appended to the icon name?

You know those commercials you keep running, "Windows 7 was MY idea..."? Did you actually consult any real users or perform any focus group research? I'd like to see you find one person that says they enjoy editing the registry to get Windows to behave the way they want.

Regards,
a slightly more dissapointed user