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Software bloat
Mar. 28th, 2008 04:22 pmGary asked me for the new version of Openoffice.org software. He always wants the newest release of things as soon as they come out. No way are we going to download that thing over dialup, so I figured I'd download to a USB flash drive at work and bring it home for him.
Well, the flash drive I carry around is only 128 MB. The Windows version of OpenOffice is now up to 127 MB. You can guess what happened. It didn't fit.
So today I brought my Zen Nano (MP3 player, 512 MB) and stuffed the stupid thing in there. Is there no end to software bloat? What could a word processor possibly need to excuse making it so huge? I think I won't be bothering to upgrade my Linux copy of the software. If necessary I'll switch to ABIWord, or just go back to using old reliable vi. A thousand fonts and clip art and bizarre graphic abilities do absolutely nothing for one's writing ability. They just waste time and processor cycles.
Well, the flash drive I carry around is only 128 MB. The Windows version of OpenOffice is now up to 127 MB. You can guess what happened. It didn't fit.
So today I brought my Zen Nano (MP3 player, 512 MB) and stuffed the stupid thing in there. Is there no end to software bloat? What could a word processor possibly need to excuse making it so huge? I think I won't be bothering to upgrade my Linux copy of the software. If necessary I'll switch to ABIWord, or just go back to using old reliable vi. A thousand fonts and clip art and bizarre graphic abilities do absolutely nothing for one's writing ability. They just waste time and processor cycles.
