10 November 2007

 

Software update hell

Microsoft has been diligent in releasing updates to its Office 2004 suite for Mac, largely to address security vulnerabilities. That's good. But their updater software sucks. Here's why:

Office 10.3.8 Update

Office 10.3.9 Update

The latest update is version 11.3.9. It turns out that I hadn't updated since 11.3.4 or thereabouts. Now, you'd think that the 11.3.9 update would update any version of Office to the latest version. Nope, here's what I had to install today:

Today's Office Updates

If you look at those screenshots above, you'll notice that only one update appears in Microsoft's AutoUpdate software at a time. That's right, I had to run the updater, apply the version 11.3.5 patch, quit that, run the updater, apply the 11.3.6 patch, quit that... and so on.

I fear to think how long it would take if I had to reinstall from my original-release Office 2004 (11.0.0, I guess) disc. I suppose I should be glad I didn't have to reboot each time!

UPDATE: I forgot to link to my previous rant from last year about the even worse procedure I went through with Adobe Reader.

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Comments:

It's absolutely terrible, and it's not just MS that's guilty of it. Adobe is just as bad, if not worse. I went around at work a few months back to update Acrobat Pro on the people's machines who had it installed. From 7.0 to 7.5 was 4 separate 35+ mb downloads, then each update/patch was installed separately... AND REQUIRED A REBOOT between each. I was not amused. :)
 
Check out my previous rant about that one.