windows woes

It's days like today that I'm grateful I'm only a minimal Windows user... I decided to reformat my Windows XP virtual machine today, and I've spent half my day installing updates, rebooting, installing more, over and over again. I literally don't think I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to reboot. Which seems crazy to me considering I started out with SP3.

Then I get to deal with the frustration of downloading software that's bundled with other software I don't want. Take Adobe Reader, for example. First of all, it comes bundled with some Mcafee software I don't want. Thankfully that's an easy fix: I just uncheck a checkbox. But then, it tries to force me to install a browser plugin. Not seeing an easy way around that, after some Googling I found this page, where I could download the redistributable installation files, although (unless Adobe Reader's just really big), I'm pretty sure I ended up downloading way more than I needed. As if all that wasn't enough, it configures AdobeARM and Reader_sl to load on startup. I have no idea what they do, but I disabled them.

I'd prefer to use something like Foxit, but Adobe must be getting wise to the mass defections from their bloated software, because they seem to be continually inventing new ways to force you to use their software.

Then I look at my hard drive, and I've already used 10G, just for Windows itself, Forefront security client, vmware vSphere, and MS office. I really don't know how all you windows folks do it. I'm guessing it's because you haven't realized there's anything better out there (which in my opinion constitutes just about anything else) ;)

Well, gotta go. My VM just finished another batch of updates. I need to reboot and do it all over again...

Edit:
after posting this I realized it's pretty whiney. I probably should have waited until I was less frustrated to post. obviously not all of my complaints in this post even deal with windows itself, and are directed more toward crummy, bloated apps like Adobe Reader. of course, it's still nice that GNU/Linux only makes me reboot for kernel updates, and that it takes up less space :)