In an act of incredible muppetry, Microsoft have managed to deploy a download system that only works on Windows 🙁
In Safari or Opera, if you go to the download page there is a simple hyperlink which will, if clicked, start a file transfer. However, the file transfer will be exactly 1Gb in size – and installation from this will start, but will fail.
If, however, you use IE and go to the download page, you get a “Download Now” button, which then demands the download of an ActiveX control which executes a Download Manager application to pull down the file, now (correctly) shown to be 1.4Gb in size.
None of this is helped by the fact that Microsoft’s servers seem to be rate-limited to only 55k/s, that they use self-signed certificates which IE is happy with but that Safari and Opera complain about (is a root-CA signed certificate really too much to ask?), or that Microsoft give CRC checksums for their files, but not MD5 sums. But what’s really got my goat is that I’m having to download this damned DVD for a third time, at about 6 hours a pop, just because Microsoft either can’t be bothered to check that their downloads work if from anything other than IE, or are still trying to lock people into their browser only.
Not the best of starts for an eager beta tester, guys…
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Mar 11 2007
Microsoft Muppetry… who’d’ve thought?
In an act of incredible muppetry, Microsoft have managed to deploy a download system that only works on Windows 🙁
In Safari or Opera, if you go to the download page there is a simple hyperlink which will, if clicked, start a file transfer. However, the file transfer will be exactly 1Gb in size – and installation from this will start, but will fail.
If, however, you use IE and go to the download page, you get a “Download Now” button, which then demands the download of an ActiveX control which executes a Download Manager application to pull down the file, now (correctly) shown to be 1.4Gb in size.
None of this is helped by the fact that Microsoft’s servers seem to be rate-limited to only 55k/s, that they use self-signed certificates which IE is happy with but that Safari and Opera complain about (is a root-CA signed certificate really too much to ask?), or that Microsoft give CRC checksums for their files, but not MD5 sums. But what’s really got my goat is that I’m having to download this damned DVD for a third time, at about 6 hours a pop, just because Microsoft either can’t be bothered to check that their downloads work if from anything other than IE, or are still trying to lock people into their browser only.
Not the best of starts for an eager beta tester, guys…
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By Stuart • Rants, Technology 0