For my mothers computer (running Windows XP) I downloaded the latest ATI "Catalyst" drivers. These drivers come with the worst utilities I've seen yet.

ATI apparently doesn't care for actually supporting their users. They try to be fancy and so in tests maybe. But requiring users to have .NET installed is a bad thing to do. Because by default, people will not have it. And will likely not want to jump Microsofts' latest "thing".

I mean, there is nothing my mother could gain by having .NIET installed, apart from maybe some more security issues. And wasted diskspace.

But it's even worse: the drivers will just install - and not even tell you that they need .NET - they ask you to reboot, and after the next login they'll just slam some cryptic error number into your face. At each login (the error message of course doesn't say that you need .NET, and the only way to get rid of it was to edit the registry!)

But thats not all: ATI also introduces a new entry at the top of the desktop context menu (which probably is the most annoying place to add it), which, well, again doesn't work either. I mean, my mother is not going to switch her desktop resolution every hour, is she?

Fortunately, I was able to google for a shell command to get rid of it.

I guess the next computer I buy for my mother will not include an ATI graphics board, if they only care for "skinable" fancy drivers that won't even work out of the box, won't detect the most obvious error and require "expert work" (i.e. registry, command line) to make the system reasonable to use for WORK. Yes, there are people like my mother trying to work with Windows. Not only Linux users do work...

ATI, get some usability experts, please!

Oh, and please provide more documents for the brave people writing good opensource drivers for your products, because as you might guess I'll never ever install your Linux drivers. I mean, they have 3D working on most boards, why don't you just tell them what they need to modify to support the rest of your chips as well?

I'm currently having fun with the Debian Quiz:

Question 24: How often did run Branden Robinson for DPL?
1:2 times
2:3 times
3:4 times
4:5 times

Well, he is current DPL, so he ran at least once, and 4:5 (aka four fifths = 0.80) is the closest value to 1 available... ;-)