Suspicious Update Messages

Firefox 1.5 now has an update to 1.5.0.1. I’m not sure what happened to the in-product indicator, but it seems to have been replaced by a new dialog (see below). Maybe the in-product icon was too subtle and hard to notice, but this new dialog looks a lot like those pop-up ads that proclaim “Your PC may be infected! Click now!”. On the positive side, the update does have a link to learn more about the update, compatibility warning for extensions that might not work, and the opportunity to update later. To be most effective and not appear to be…

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Why Reboot?

Today Jeremy pointed to an application called Why Reboot?, which, in the words of its author: … is a small (~60KB) Windows application that displays a list of pending file operations that will occur after rebooting your computer. We hope this helps you determine the extent of any post-reboot changes made by an installer. This looks to take the same approach as PendMoves from the Sysinternals folks. Because part of my team’s responsibility is our product installers, we’re always on the lookout for unnecessary system reboots. When folks in QA or other users report that our installer prompted for a…

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