jaguarr
Be Your Own Hero
- Joined
- Nov 11, 2003
- Messages
- 43,566
- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 31
http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6636289.html
September 08, 2006, 10:04 AM PDT
My fight with Amazon Unbox
Posted by: Tom Merritt
I do not recommend you try Amazon Unbox, and here's why. Yesterday evening I decided to give the video download service a try, especially since it gives you a free $1.99 video. A nice touch, I thought. I chose a Star Trek episode called "The World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky," because it's one of my favorites.
After the normal Amazon checkout rigmarole, I was prompted to download a proprietary video player from Amazon. It's the only way to complete the download. I wasn't too happy about this. It does download a WMV to a folder, so I figured, what the heck. At least I knew where the file was if I wanted to play it in another player.
Even after it downloaded fully, it wouldn't play. I tried several times in both the Amazon player and the regular Windows Media Player, to no avail. After less than two minutes, though, I found that if I dragged the progress indicator in the Amazon player a little, it would start playing. Maybe a bug on my part, who knows? Video quality was fine, especially for an old TV show. I enjoyed it.
I left work after that and rebooted my laptop at home. That's when the real trouble began. I noticed that the Amazon player had launched itself. Annoying. I looked in the program for a preference to stop it from launching itself, and there was none. Typical. So I went to msconfig and unchecked Amazon Unbox so that it would definitely not launch itself at start-up. When I rebooted, it was no longer there. However, my firewall warned me that a Windows service (ADVWindowsClientService.exe) was trying to connect to the Net. I clicked More Info in the firewall alert and found it was Amazon Unbox. Downright offensive. It still was launching a Net-connection process that even msconfig apparently couldn't stop. Forget it. That's not the behavior of good software. I went to uninstall it.
After the Install Shield launched and I chose uninstall, I got a login screen for my Amazon account. I just wanted to uninstall it. I shouldn't have to log in to my account to do that. So I canceled the login, and the uninstall failed. I tried that three times, and it failed each time. Finally I gave up and logged in and the uninstall finished.
So, in summary, to be allowed the privilege of purchasing a video that I can't burn to DVD and can't watch on my iPod, I have to allow a program to hijack my start-up and force me to login to uninstall it? No way. Sorry, Amazon. I love a lot of what you do, but I will absolutely not recommend this service. Try again. For more details and a rating of Amazon Unbox, check back for James Kim's full review. Update: I received an email from Sheila at DV guru saying that she hadn't had to log in to Amazon to uninstall. On a hunch, I reinstalled Unbox and this time allowed ADVWindowsClientService.exe to access the Internet when prompted by my firewall. This time when I uninstalled, I was not prompted to login. So ADVWindowsClientService.exe is connecting to the Net without your knowledge, even when uninstalling.
Ouch! Sounds like Amazon screwed this up big time. This isn't the only scathing review of the service I've read, either. The concensus seems to be that this thing a a giant POS.
jag
September 08, 2006, 10:04 AM PDT
My fight with Amazon Unbox
Posted by: Tom Merritt
I do not recommend you try Amazon Unbox, and here's why. Yesterday evening I decided to give the video download service a try, especially since it gives you a free $1.99 video. A nice touch, I thought. I chose a Star Trek episode called "The World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky," because it's one of my favorites.
After the normal Amazon checkout rigmarole, I was prompted to download a proprietary video player from Amazon. It's the only way to complete the download. I wasn't too happy about this. It does download a WMV to a folder, so I figured, what the heck. At least I knew where the file was if I wanted to play it in another player.
Even after it downloaded fully, it wouldn't play. I tried several times in both the Amazon player and the regular Windows Media Player, to no avail. After less than two minutes, though, I found that if I dragged the progress indicator in the Amazon player a little, it would start playing. Maybe a bug on my part, who knows? Video quality was fine, especially for an old TV show. I enjoyed it.
I left work after that and rebooted my laptop at home. That's when the real trouble began. I noticed that the Amazon player had launched itself. Annoying. I looked in the program for a preference to stop it from launching itself, and there was none. Typical. So I went to msconfig and unchecked Amazon Unbox so that it would definitely not launch itself at start-up. When I rebooted, it was no longer there. However, my firewall warned me that a Windows service (ADVWindowsClientService.exe) was trying to connect to the Net. I clicked More Info in the firewall alert and found it was Amazon Unbox. Downright offensive. It still was launching a Net-connection process that even msconfig apparently couldn't stop. Forget it. That's not the behavior of good software. I went to uninstall it.
After the Install Shield launched and I chose uninstall, I got a login screen for my Amazon account. I just wanted to uninstall it. I shouldn't have to log in to my account to do that. So I canceled the login, and the uninstall failed. I tried that three times, and it failed each time. Finally I gave up and logged in and the uninstall finished.
So, in summary, to be allowed the privilege of purchasing a video that I can't burn to DVD and can't watch on my iPod, I have to allow a program to hijack my start-up and force me to login to uninstall it? No way. Sorry, Amazon. I love a lot of what you do, but I will absolutely not recommend this service. Try again. For more details and a rating of Amazon Unbox, check back for James Kim's full review. Update: I received an email from Sheila at DV guru saying that she hadn't had to log in to Amazon to uninstall. On a hunch, I reinstalled Unbox and this time allowed ADVWindowsClientService.exe to access the Internet when prompted by my firewall. This time when I uninstalled, I was not prompted to login. So ADVWindowsClientService.exe is connecting to the Net without your knowledge, even when uninstalling.
Ouch! Sounds like Amazon screwed this up big time. This isn't the only scathing review of the service I've read, either. The concensus seems to be that this thing a a giant POS.
jag
