Windows XP SP3: Pretty damn good actually. Windows Live Installer: Sucks like a vacuum.
I was originally going to base the title on The Scorpions' "Rock You Like a Hurricane" but then I realised that "suck you" was open to all kinds of misinterpretation and wouldn't end well.
Still on with what I really wanted to say. I've just done a clean rebuild of my XP desktop machine, partly because it hadn't been done for about 2 years and was due, and partly because I wanted to install XP Service Pack 3 now it's been released.
So XP SP3 installs very quickly, seems nice and snappy (much more so than Vista, despite my hardware easily being towards the top of the "vista premium capable" territory, and all is good. It's funny how XP with just a few of the apps I use on Windows installed feels much more like "home" than Vista with all of my Windows apps. Office 2007 installed well and everything is working nicely with ActiveSync for my phone, iTunes is working and if I can manage my day and listen to music while doing it then I'm pretty much happy.
Except... I've been trying to get used to Windows Live Writer and I'm certainly a big fan of Live Messenger, and if you go to get these apps at the moment, you need to download the Windows Live Installer, a 'wrapper' for various Windows Live apps, all of which are similar to Live Writer and Messenger (supposed to be small and lightweight, with a focus on doing a job and doing it well).
Now I've got to agree with Lloyd and Rory here, the installer is fundamentally broken, and frustrating beyond all reason if you only want one or two apps from the Live 'bundle'.
Yesterday I downloaded a 2Mb installer "wrapper" and ran it, and straight away I was bombarded with questions about whether or not I wanted to make Windows Live my default search provider (no thanks, I like to find things when I'm looking for them) or install some kind of toolbar (Sure, I like having my browser window half-covered in useless buttons and widgets, it isn't like I loaded my browser to read web pages or anything), and something else I can't remember right now but I said 'no' to.
After this, it went into some kind of mode where it started searching my hard drive for live apps. Apparently, rather than checking the 'known' places on the hard disk, check the registry to see if the apps were registered there or even do an efficient search of my hard disk, it apparently wanted to do a bit by bit comparison of everything in my computer room. With this done, it then spent a while 'downloading' my selected apps and finally, 20 minutes later, told me the install was "cancelled" which was a surprise to me as I hadn't done anything to cancel it, and then offered to dump a copy onto my desktop so I could try again later. Hmmm. Despite being "cancelled", the installer managed to install itself (huh?) onto my computer so that each reinstall attempt produced odd error messages like the first "cancelled" except much less 'helpful'. I gave up yesterday and it was only after much swearing and cursing today, that I finally managed to get messenger and live writer installed.
Let's be clear about this... Windows Live Installer took longer to fail to install messenger and live writer than Corel Paint Shop Pro X took to install, and PSP X is hardly a lightweight application. Microsoft, I've got to ask... what on earth was the thinking behind this? I can see how it might be nice for someone who wants all the Live apps to be able to get them in one download, but this installer is a cranky, unreliable, little ***, and that's when it actually works. It's a painful awful experience for someone who just wants to grab live writer, or messenger or mail to have to sit through this crap. Live Writer and Messenger are both great little apps that I <3 love <3, even if messenger winks do make talking to my teenage niece an adventure in frankly incomprehensible popups and txt spk (love ya really KC!), but the problems with the installer really do need to be addressed. If I didn't already know how much I liked and really wanted messenger and writer, the chances are I'd have given up and used something else after the first time it crashed and burned.
If you want to download a copy of Windows Live Messenger directly, without having to bother with the installer wrapper, you can visit the website of Windows Messenger MVP Jonathan Kay and grab a copy from his links. If I get to hear of work-arounds for other live software I'll post them here too.