Yahoo Toolbar blows

One of my tasks at work is to setup new machines and resetup old machines. When we get a bunch of new machines in, I make an image so it is easier to propagate the software and settings to all of them. This is a perfectly normal thing to do in IT.

Today, I updated an old image. At some point Yahoo Toolbar ended up installed. I hate that. They sneak in by hiding their install in plane sight. They act like it is not just an advertisement portal stuck at the top of every single page to which you surf. Oh, some poor fools seem to enjoy their experience of being hand held around the universe by someone who is ultimately out to screw you and others who want to screw you out of money.

Of course, I had already made the image. It took two minutes to remove Yahoo Toolbar. I then got to kick off another image build. This takes a couple hours. Basically, it takes so long because it compresses the entire hard drive in to a single file. In this case, the file is about twelve gigabytes.

There is a problem with toolbars in general. They eat up space on the screen for not much return. Someone might install three of four of them and have a postage stamp sized sliver of screen in which to get everything else done on the web. This is ridiculous. I do not even leave the favorites or bookmarks bars up. They are useless to me. They just eat up space.

Once upon a time, Microsoft made a skin for Internet Explorer that they called Media explorer. This thing had a space dedicated to video. Everything you watched on the net was supposed to play in this tiny area. The idea that things on the net are different sizes and that you might not want to watch video at all times and there for might want that space to other things while it was unused did not factor in to their decision. Thank goodness they made this an option. It didn't last.

Microsoft is not the only company to fall in to this hole. it This is a test form from Google Doc seems like everyone and their brother wants to stick their widget on your screen at all times whether you need it or not. Nowhere is this worse than on mobile devices. In Google Maps, you have the search bar across the top of the screen at all times and you cannot turn it off, even if you do not have a search to perform at the moment. People are bitching about this on the net and Google keeps saying it is a feature, not a bug. Oh, and there will be no setting to over ride it.