Internal Revenue Service Tax Products CD-ROM
Software Installation Horror Story
I attempted to install the IRS Tax products cd-rom 2003
on my home computer.
I already have Adobe Reader 5.0, but apparently that
wasn't good enough, the installer wanted version 6.0.
But can it simply install 6.0? Apparently not until
it has "recomposed" it. So I wait for 5 minutes for
this to complete. Then it tells me Adobe 6.0 needs
Internet Explorer 5.1. But I only have 5.0 installed.
What difference could one tenth of a point make?
And what does Adobe reader have to do with Internet
Explorer anyway? So I have to abort the setup.
I go to Microsoft website and
hunt for 10 minutes to find Internet Explorer 5.1, but
apparently Microsoft isn't supporting it any longer,
so I have to download version 6.0. Thank god I have
broadband internet access. I wait 10 minutes for
IE to download and install. Then I have to restart
my computer and wait for 5 minutes to "update
system settings". Finally I try to reinstall the
Tax Forms software, and it has to go through the
entire "recomposing" of Adobe Reader all over again!
I wait another 5 minutes, it begins the installation
process and then stops and tells me that my operating
system version is unsupported. It wants Windows 98SE
and I have plain Windows 98.
So all this time was a complete waste of time.
45 minutes for absolutely nothing.
Why couldn't it have checked my operating system
version at the very beginning????