I love Windows, it's a great family of OSs, but it has it's awkwardnesses. The one that bugs me the most is the installation subsystem.
Not everything on the installation subsystem is wrong. It's ok to have setups and settings in the right place. Uninstall is another story, but it could be worse. To be honest, the problem I have probably has more to do with application co-existence than with the installation sub-system...
Isn't it strange when can't have more then a version of an application installed on the some system? I've installed Mozilla Firefox 3 beta 3, and their they are, Firefox 2 and 3 working on my desktop. Why can't I do it with Internet Explorer?
<update>
Firefox 2 and 3 can in fact co-exist on the same machine, with a limitation: they cannot run simultaneously.
</update>
Well now we can. IE 3, 4, 5, 5.5, 6 and 7. Well, actually we could until last December:
A recent windows update broke the Multiple IE installation and unfortunately this means you'll have to reinstall Multiple IE to get it to work again. I haven't yet identified which update broke the installation.
It should be easier to isolate versions and environments. Will SoftGrid address this kind of isolation? Or should Windows get an intermediate virtualization tier?
Thank António Costa for the tip.
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