The Installation Blues
Software is a wonderful thing -- but
only if you can get it onto your computer
My advice for this year: Don't install any new software unless you really, really have to.
Perhaps you're the kind of person who has never had a problem installing programs on your computer. Perhaps you've never gritted your teeth in frustration when a half-hour long installation session ends, as it did recently for me, with a message like: "Failed to update the system registry. Please try using REGEDIT." Luckily, I knew that Reg Edit isn't a person but a program that lets you edit something called The Registry, capitalized since it is the home of Important Software Settings if you use Microsoft Windows. Trust me: The Registry isn't a place you want to go if you are at all squeamish. It's like blindly sticking your hand into a bucket of crabs. This would probably explain why the error message didn't tell me what, exactly, to edit in The Registry. Because let's face it: If I knew what to edit I probably would have built my own computer, written my own software, have my own massively successful software company and not have gotten into this pickle in the first place. Perhaps you are unlike me: You're smart and have figured out that installing software is just asking for trouble.
I still haven't learned this. I still see a new program and think to myself: "Great! This sounds interesting!" I download it, or shove the CD-ROM into the CD drive and watch, mesmerized, as the miracle of installation begins. (The best-known software brand, I reckon, isn't Microsoft, but something called InstallShield, which is the software many developers use to deliver their wares to you and me. A lot of people sit and watch the InstallShield logo on their screens as the programs install and think it's actually part of Microsoft. Indeed, so for many years did a guy called Bob Corrigan -- until, that is, he joined InstallShield, now part of licensing software company Macrovision, and became its product manager.)
So the installation plods on and on, until either through some glitch the program actually installs itself correctly, or, more likely, an error message along the lines of the above appears. Or, as in the case recently when I tried, for the umpteenth time, to install a program that would let me download songs from a music Web site, nothing at all happens. The program, after an initial fanfare and impressive-looking "progress bar," just faded away until I was left wondering whether to applaud, reboot, or cry.
This time, however, I took action. I called Mr. Corrigan to find out why all software installation is so hard, and whether programs like InstallShield are part of the problem, or the solution. (Think of InstallShield as a third party packaging a raw software product so it's easy for the customer to set up.) Mr. Corrigan, unsurprisingly, blames the software developers who use his product. The way he sees it, many software developers spend too much time writing their software, and not enough thinking about how it might actually get onto your computer. (A trawl through some of the user forums of InstallShield's own Web site yields a different perspective: Not every software developer seems to feel that InstallShield is free of blame.)
The sad truth is that computers are supposed to be good at handling complexity, but in reality are lousy at it. You're sold a computer with the promise that it can do all sorts of things for you: All you have to do is load the software. And yet we quickly find out that the more we supposedly enhance our computer with new software, the more it goes wrong. Your computer, I'm afraid, isn't designed to accommodate more than a few programs. Add more software and conflicts will start to arise between programs as they jockey for space in The Registry. Then things start getting complex. Perhaps a better word is "messy." As Andrew Souter, director of systems engineers at U.S.-based software-management company Altiris Inc., explains, a common enough program such as Adobe Acrobat 7 (which makes those ubiquitous PDF files) inserts more than 1,100 little pieces of code -- called "keys" -- into The Registry, changing about 500 important system files. (These are files that other programs might use, too, so changing them isn't necessarily going to leave those other programs happy.) Acrobat may now work fine, but what about all the other programs that use those 500 files? "The chances of it conflicting with something else are pretty high," he says.
Mr. Souter reckons his company has a solution with software that installs programs "virtually" -- no changes to any Registry, no shared files, no lengthy installation process. Just activate the software when you need it and then deactivate it when you're done. It's a neat idea, and it could be the answer for big companies deploying lots of copies of programs. For individual users there's hope in so-called Web Applications, which let you access all the main features of spreadsheets, word processors and calendars cheaply or for free online. For an example, check out the recently launched Zoho Writer (
www.zohowriter.com), a sort of online version of Microsoft Word. And, of course, Mr. Corrigan of InstallShield promises improvements in his products and is busy picking up the phone to harass developers into improving the way they package their software using his products.
But for most of us these are small crumbs of comfort. The bottom line is, your computer is happiest when you take it out of the box for the first time and boot it up. It's all downhill from there on. I love software and would love you to like it too, but until things get easier, I'd suggest you think hard before you install something new.
安装软件的烦恼
今年我的建议是：不要安装任何新软件，除非你是真的迫不得已。
也许你属于在电脑上安装软件从未遇到问题的那类人。也许你从未象我一样，经历过用半个小时安装软件后却出现“无法更新系统注册表，请使用REGEDIT”这类令人恼火的情形。还好，我知道注册表编辑器(Reg Edit)不是一个人，而是让你编辑所谓注册表的程序。相信我：注册表可不是闹著玩的。这就如同闭著眼睛把你的手伸入一桶螃蟹中一样。这也可以解释为什么这个错误信息没有告诉我怎样编辑注册表。如果我知道如何做，我可能就自己组装电脑，自己编写程序，成功拥有我自己的软件公司，而不必像现在这样痛苦不堪了。也许你与我不同：你聪明好学，并把在安装软件过程中解决问题当作乐趣。
我还是做不到这点。我仍然是看到新软件后，心里想：“太好了，这个软件不错。”然后就下载，或是把光盘放到光驱中，随著安装的开始，专注地等待著。（我认为，最知名的软件品牌不是微软(Microsoft)，而是InstallShield，这是很多软件开发商帮助我们安装软件的程序。不少人坐在那里，看著屏幕上的InstallShield图标，都以为这是微软的一部分。事实上，很多年前鲍勃?柯瑞根(Bob Corrigan)也曾经这么认为，直到有一天他加入了InstallShield，并成为其产品经理。InstallShield目前是授权软件公司Macrovision的子公司。）
因此这种安装烦恼一次一次地重现，直到不太顺利地安装完，或是遇到类似上面所述的错误信息。要么就像我最近遇到的那样，安装了一个能让我从音乐网站下载歌曲的软件，却根本不工作。这个软件在最初令我感到兴奋后，很快地从视野中消失了，只剩下我不知道是应该高兴、重启电脑，还是哭泣。
不过这次，我采取了措施。我给柯瑞根打电话，希望了解为何所有软件都是这么难安装，像InstallShield这样的软件究竟是产生问题的根源还是解决方案之一。（InstallShield是作为第三方软件同新软件产品捆绑到一起的，目的是为了便于用户安装。） 毫不奇怪，柯瑞根将责任推到使用其产品的软件开发商那里。他认为，许多软件开发人员在编写他们的软件方面花了很多时间，而没有用足够的时间思考如何安装到电脑上。（在InstallShield自己网站的用户论坛上，大家的看法却并不一致：并不是所有软件开发人员都认为InstallShield毫无责任。）
可悲的事实是，电脑普遍被认为是擅长处理复杂事物的，但现实却令人感到苦涩。你买电脑时得到的承诺是它能为你做各种各样的事情：你需要做的就是安装软件。但我们很快就会发现，我们越是希望用新软件来提高电脑的性能，它出现的错误就越多。我觉得，你的电脑恐怕不是用来安装过多软件的。安装的软件越多，不同软件间的冲突也就越多，因为它们在注册表中相互干扰。然后情况开始变得复杂起来。也许用“混乱”这个词更恰当。就像软件管理公司Altiris Inc.的系统工程师主管安德鲁?苏特尔(Andrew Souter)所解释的那样，Adobe Acrobat 7（用于阅读pdf格式的文件）这样一个再普通不过的程序就要在注册表中加入1,100多条小代码，修改约500个重要的系统文件。（而其他程序也可能使用这些文件，因此修改这些文件可能会干扰其它程序。）Acrobat可能工作正常了，但使用这500个文件的其他程序呢？他说，同其它程序发生冲突的概率相当高。
苏特尔认为，他的公司拥有一套软件解决方案，就是“虚拟”地安装程序，不需修改注册表，没有共享文件，没有繁琐的安装过程。仅在需要时激活软件，并在完成任务后关闭软件即可。这个想法的确不错，这也可以适用于要大量安装同一软件的大公司。对个人用户而言，一种叫做Web Applications的应用程序或许能够带来希望，它能让你低价或在网上免费获得数据表、字处理和日历的所有主要功能。比如，最近推出的Zoho Writer (
www.zohowriter.com)就是Microsoft Word的一种网上版本。当然，InstallShield的柯瑞根承诺改进他的产品，并也在忙于打电话，告诫软件开发商改进使用他的产品制作软件的方式。
但对大多数象我们这样的人来说，这终究有些不舒服。现实常常是，你的电脑在第一次从包装箱中拿出来并开机时是表现最好的，然后就一直走下坡路。我喜欢软件，也希望你也喜欢软件，但在事情变得更简单些之前，我建议你在安装新软件前要三思而行。
