What Were They Thinking?

Microsoft Office checks for updates and offers the opportunity to install them when the user starts an Office program: "Yes, now that I've finally sat down to work, I would like to delay another five minutes while you download and install some software!"

What about checking when the user exits an Office program, i.e., when they are done working and the computer will be free for a while?!

Comments

  1. Do any programs do it that way? Every program I have ever used has either checked for updates at launch (e.g., Notepad++ and iTunes) or not checked at all.

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  2. Do you feel the bath water before or after you put the baby in?

    You aren't after all being forced to do it now, and if when you are done you might also be unwilling to wait, since you can't turn your machine off. And consider the case when you were prompted, and decided to do it later. Next time you sit down you might have forgotten. Repeat.

    Many people will react "What? You had a fix and didn't tell me BEFORE I spent hours working?" Are they obviously wrong?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ken and Phillip, it is not so much JUST that MS only asks at startup, it is that it is ALSO hard to find out how to do an update later at my convenience. (I've done it several times, but I always forget and have to look it up again.)

    All other Apple programs I use can be updated at once using "Software Update," or in the case of my Anaconda Python installation, using "conda update." My problem with MS is that if I don't update when starting... that's that. (Unless I google once again how to force Office updates on my own.)

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