Friday, 19 March 2004

I take it back

RealNetworks did produce one useful piece of software: RealDownload.

OK, the user interface is non-standard and a bit crappy (at the time, Real insisted on a massive icon in the top-left, against the Windows standard, which forces drawing the whole of the normal 'chrome' itself). But, unlike most Real software, it works. It does do popup ads which come up whenever a new download starts, but you get used to closing them pretty quickly (and anyway, I normally use it for unattended downloads).

I was joking earlier this week that the only good thing ever to come out of RealNetworks was Andrei Alexandrescu.

I've not used RealDownload for quite a while, actually, but I pulled it out after the Windows XP SP2 Preview download failed at 131MB twice. Since moving to broadband, most downloads have been very reliable just using IE 6.0's built-in download tool.

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