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Comment by qwrusz | Hacker News Reader

I was just thinking about this recently while installing something with radio buttoned install options:

Standard Install (Recommended)

Custom Install (Advanced Users)

Yet the custom/"advanced" option was just a couple checkboxes that let you exclude extra bloatware during installation.

I wonder how many users upon seeing both options tell themselves they are not "advanced" computer users and just go with option 1 without even looking at option 2. Had they bothered to look many of them would have understood to uncheck the bloatware they know they don't want. If that was too much there was a Back button. But the wording "Advanced Users" scares many ppl away from even looking into that option and so they end up with some Yahoo! search toolbar forever after...

Self-deprecating computer users is an issue. The extent some software companies are taking advantage it is another.

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I'm constantly annoyed by "Advanced user" installation options.

They're occasionally accurate - I can think of a few programs where the "advanced" option demanded that I go and read a bunch of documentation - but mostly it's either laziness or malice. I don't think they've been a reasonable choice since storage was so limited that 'advanced' meant screwing around with DirectX directories and partial installs.

In 90%+ of cases, basic/advanced could be better addressed with a handful of simple-English checkboxes for what to install. One is locked-active, for the core bundle. The others have one-line descriptions of what they do and possibly what other products make them redundant, maybe with a "more info" button.

And since evil bloatware isn't going anywhere, we could at least set a norm that real menus give you options, and anyone trying to prevent you from engaging your brain is pushing crapware.

After being burned by ATI and Nvidia driver installs gone bad I'm reluctant to use anything but the defaults. Software SDKs too seem especially brittle when installed apart from the recommended options.

So it's not only casual users who prefer the default.

I would probably make an exception for driver installs, which definitely get into that "actually broken" territory. I'm also ok with "detect my device settings automatically".

I was mostly thinking about the program installs where 'advanced' is a list of different things you might want to install. The worst case there is pretty much just "you didn't install the thing you wanted", versus the "good luck buddy" worst case of tools and drivers.

Seems to me that you're describing the exact sort of psychological tactic that software vendors favor to get people to install the bloatware in the first place.

Sometimes called "Dark Patterns" http://darkpatterns.org

Perhaps one should really call them what they are, scams.

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