LinLog

Linux has spoiled me. I've gotten so used to things "just working" that I sometimes forget just how miserable the Windows world can be.

That probably sounds weird to some people, but it's true. Granted, lots of hardware vendors and ISVs don't even pretend to support Linux, game companies largely ignore it, and many online services don't seem to be aware of its existence. But there is an up side to that - no malware or crapware.

This was driven home to me he other day when I had to "fix" a user's flash drive. The flash drive in question was a SanDisk Cruzer Micro which the user had purchased to replace his "official" one which broke. The short version of the background is that this user needed a flash drive to work with a system I'll call TCSFOUBTS (pronounced 'ticks-fouts'), which stands for The Crappy Software Foisted On Us By The State (not its real name). Since the "official" keeper of the flash drives had no extras and it would take days or weeks to get a replacement (welcome to civil service), he just bought one on his own.

As with all such cases, this didn't work out well. TCSFOUBTS, being a crappy Widnows application, requires an administrator to set drive letter at which the flash drive will be mounted. However, SanDisk saw fit to include something called U3 on the drive, which adds an annoying systray icon that allows you to install and run software from the flash drive.. This apparently adds a second partition to the drive, which Windows sees as a CD-ROM. Naturally, this is the first partition, so instead of the writable portion showing up as D:, it shows up as E:. Needless to say, TCSFOUBTS was configured to use D:.

The up side is that SanDisk was considerate enough to provide a removal utility for this crapware. It would be better if they didn't include it in the first place, but as crapware purveyors go, this makes them a good citizen. Most of the companies that push this stuff go out of their way to make it difficult to remove. Funny how even annoying things can look good by comparison.