Three times today I had to tell Adobe Acrobat Reader that I wasn’t interested in its updates. Three times!

What annoyed me most of all, though, was that in spite of the first dialog box talking about critical updates, the window that subsequently popped up with an upgrade I didn’t ask for had PhotoShop Album as one of these seemingly unmissable downloads. What exactly is supposed to be critical about that?

I’m getting fed up to the back teeth of companies using a process that’s supposedly just to keep our software secure and up to date as some form of Trojan horse mechanism to swing in some other product it’s trying to flog. Installation routines are getting just as bad. Would I like to install the Yahoo! toolbar one application asked me recently, in spite of the fact that it had no relevance whatsoever to the web app that Yahoo! is trying to punt out? Well no, I wouldn’t. And don’t ask me again either.

At least these days with the Microsoft updates, you tend to get what you need and not a lot else. Yet even it has had its days, using automatic updates to bombard Internet Explorer 7 through the gates, irrespective of whether those who trustingly allowed automated updates to be set actually wanted it or not.

I fully accept that updates, particularly set against the perils of the online world, are a necessary evil now. But I do find it frustrating at best, and a betrayal of the trust I grant these companies when updating programs on my PC at worst, when some other unnecessary and unwanted product is shoehorned along for the ride.