Celebrityscraps

Today one of the numerous Adobe applications that I have on my computer decided to add a nice little icon in the sys-tray. I clicked on it to discover that it had taken it on itself to download a 295mb update.

This ticked me off a little bit because it didn’t even give me the option of confirming that I want 1/33 of my internet download limit for the month wasted on updating a piece of software that I use twice a year and is also working fine!

I guess the main root of my anger at this is not Adobe’s software default telling me when I need a update (although that is annoying). But the fact that it would take up 1/33 of my download limit cos the UNLIMITED package my Internet service provider supplies me has a capped download limit of 10gb…… now does that sound like unlimited to you????!

It’s called an “acceptable usage policy”. It basically means they sell you the package as “UNLIMITED” and then in the small print say “we misled you… it’s actually a 10gb download limit”….. DOES THAT SOUND LIKE UNLIMITED TO YOU!!!

And to make matters worse our line is capable of 5mb download speed and was at that speed for 6 months… then they capped it at 2mb - probably so they could increase service in our area (more cash for them) at the cost of our download speed. When I called orange support they had the nerve to tell me the line was not physically capable of getting 5mb download speed….. er… wake up Orange….. we had 5mb for 6 months!

I give up with them I really do! I can’t be bothered to change to another either cos I have to speak to their “experts” in India to cancel…. *sigh*

So anyone who is a fan of software centralization will agree with me on this one… STEAM ROCKS.

For any of you who don’t know Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation who are the awesome brains behind the best gaming experience in the world…. the Half-life series.

Steam is used to distribute and manage (sometimes exclusively) a wide range of games and related media entirely over the Internet, stretching from one-man independent efforts to some of the world’s most popular games. Steam is set apart from its peers in terms of functionality primarily by its residency in the system tray, and the desktop tasks that the client software performs.

As of 2008-10-01, over 450 games are available on Steam, and as of 2008-10-10, there are over 16 million active user accounts.

The Steam Community also allows you to keep track of when your friends are on-line, what they are playing and (if it’s an online game) which server they are on. I’ve been an advocate of Steam for many years now but it only just recently struck me how useful it is.

I’d just bought a new laptop. I installed Steam and then left it to do its thing. 4 hours later Steam had installed over 70% o the games I had on my old PC. AWESOME!

Of course this type of software centralisation is not to everyones taste as the on-line store takes away the physical aspect of buying a game. I have no issue with this, but people like my housemate (who i have debated this with a lot) like the feeling of buying a game… getting home and opening the box and reading the manual while it installs… and i can see where he’s coming from.. however i value software centralisation as a better solution as you never have to worry about losing a game CD/DVD or losing the manual which has the game activation key in it.

Bottom line - Steam is a very versitile tool and I’ll definatly continue using it in the future.

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