The definition of "bloat" - RE: Software

[Lashiec]

So, is Nero itself a bloated application or is the nero SUITE bloated? I would like to see a burner only option too, but I dont consider nero ON ITS OWN to be bloated. Quite the contrary. Yes, I have to download ~200mb of data, but I only install about 20-30.

-Josh (February 07, 2008, 07:15 PM)

Look at it from another perspective, then. Why do you have to pay $75 for a burning utility? That's all I want from Nero (and the analysis tools, although you can get them for free). I use and like Nero, but only because it came with the burner. If I had to buy it, I'd say "No, thank you" and choose another option, like CDBurnerXP Pro + ImgBurn. Besides, the "killer app" within Nero Suite is Burning ROM, the rest of the programs are mediocre. If Nero paid attention to the customers that demand Burning ROM as a separate product...

Also, as f0dder says, not everyone has fast connections. This particular point worsened a while ago, because Nero packed all languages in the same package, so now we have a 350 MB file. And update packages are quite big as well. BTW, the Nero burner alone it's not 20 MB, but something like 200. The complete Nero 7 installation nears 2 GB, Nero 8 must be even worse.

I long adopted the habit of using software that was lean but powerful. It's not that I lack disk space or memory, but why waste both with huge apps when you can get the same functionality with much smaller software?

[Hirudin]

I love imgburn! I can't say I've used it in the last 3 months or not, but it's great!

Bloat...
In the case of Nero the bloat came in the form of leaving their core product (the burning rom) virtually unchanged while tacking on additional little programs and calling it a "suite", increasing their version number, and charging increasingly exorbitant amounts. $100 for Nero? They gotta be out of their mind!

Also, the majority of the "tack ons" were released into a market flooded with alternatives. Why make a Nero media player when there's SO MANY other (superior) choices out there? WMP, WinAmp, BSPlayer, Real Media Player, WinDVD, PowerDVD, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc?! A photo viewer in Nero? WHAT? Who was the first douche bag that said "hey I got an idea: lets make proprietary audio and video encoding formats that only people with Nero can use!"?

I must say, I was glad to find the cover designer. At the time I was burning a lot of audio CDs and it was nice to be able to print the ID3 tags to a playlist formatted to fit into a CD case. Even though this has been used as an example of bloat in a lot of the posts here, I don't think it is. When it was added there was virtually no alternative and IMO was also very related to the typical Nero user at the time: people who wanted to listen to the music they pirated from Napster.

[Josh]

OK, Nero aside, what else can define bloat? It seems this thread has gone off on the nero tangent, but what about other programs?

[f0dder]

Windows

Look at size increase from NT4 -> Win2000 (NT5.0) -> XP (NT5.1) -> Vista (6.0?).

[Lashiec]

iTunes, for example. It started as a (loaded) audio player, now it's used to sync mail with the iPhone and to rent movies.

Windows

-f0dder (February 17, 2008, 01:02 PM)

LOL. I'll try to better that, er, Linux

[Josh]

Linux comes with far more than any windows install does. Yes, you can get a BARE BONES (Read: No functionality) linux install done in about 20-30mb, but what would you be able to do with it?

[Lashiec]

Em, I know that, but...

-Lashiec (February 17, 2008, 01:08 PM)

[J-Mac]

Without getting into any specific programs for now, I see as bloat any application that increases its overall size (mainly in memory, but also in CPU usage) primarily because it can, and to add so-called "new features" for the purpose of marketing and to be able to release a new version "on schedule" - meaning at least annually - when they do not have enough truly improved or added features to justify a new release.

Like adding a new, pretty UI, if the existing one is functional, purely because the disk space is there.  And they have no or not enough new features for a new version.  Hmm... I will mention one app after all:  Mind Manager 7 comes to mind in that MindJet overhauled Mind Manager's UI and made it a Ribbon that matches Office 2007.  And not much else in the way of functionality.  Why?  Well for one, they were required to do so in order to maintain their Windows Logo Certification.  That's an internal problem as far as the end users are concerned, as it doesn't really add functionality to the product.  But they also had very few new features developed yet.  And it was that time of the year when they always release a new version.  Revenue must increase, or at the very least, not decrease. Regardless of what they have to offer to users.

So that is one example of what I consider to be software bloat.  As disk space and memory becomes less expensive and thus more widely available, software developers make their products expand to fill it.  Used to be for some that the programmers were happy to be able to do things they could not afford to include in the past because the benefit did not justify the memory and disk space hits. That accounted for some early bloat.  Now it is the marketing and accounting folks finding reasons to add just about anything they can without expending a lot of programming time so they can release and make more money.

Jim