[ciscoswitch]

I know that some people may want something to be done one way and to someone else they'd want it completely different. As in such, some people may want to leave settings for an app they are removing on their computer in case they decide to install that program again. However, I feel that when someone removes a program, it's plain and simple that they do not want that program on their computer, and so everything should be removed. Now I know that some programs have problems, and people uninstall them, then reinstall them, this behavior could be avoided by just running a reinstall (the program should detect that it's already installed and ask if they want to reinstall the program). Though that's not typically what happens these days, since the said program doesn't remove everything during an uninstall, when they reinstall it still has potential to not work, thus comes the point that people reccomend uninstallers or to manually go in and delete all traces of said program.

Perhaps the best way to handle situations in creating a program is "OPTIONS" this is what gives you the power to satisfy everyone that has different opinions on how things should work. If someone wants something one way and someone else want's something different, well then just create an option to set it one way or the other. The same could be done with an uninstall routine to a program, it could ask if you want to remove everything, or save your settings and such, in case you want to reinstall later.

I admit most programs do not do this, and for the most part, I stay away from programs like this, but sometimes you need something and there isn't a whole lot of options.

"The biggest cause of windows performance and degradation is programs leaving entries in the registry when they are uninstalled". And many times you can even go to the directory that a program was installed and the folder and several files for that program are still there, not to mention common settings files and such are left all over the place. These essentially could and should be removed on an uninstall, but most often they are not.

And furthermore, programs that people pay money for (and sometimes quite a bit), are very messy, these companies should be liable to problems with people's computers, especially the ones that are intentionally leaving things on the system when the users wish is to have it removed. I've also witnessed software installing more than the user wanted to install (such as spyware and various other things that alter the behavior of the computer".

Now, on the other hand, programs that are offered for free, well that's a bonus, and you can't expect to get something that's perfect for free, however more often than not, I've found stuff that's free (or open sources) is generally better than something you'd buy commercially, mainly because of the fact that the open source community is huge and people voice their opinions and the people making the software react to accommodate that persons opinion.

So I'm grateful to have a program like calibre, but back to the open source comment, I'd like for someone to listen, and maybe address the concern, I feel that it's just as important as implementing some new feature. I too am a programmer, and I'm not perfect either, when I write something I test it over and over and over myself, and fix any issues I can see, when I deploy it, I listen to all comments and try to accommodate everyone that has an opinion on how it should work. Not that I have offered alot of the stuff I have written to the public, as alot of it are tools I use for personal stuff, and not necessarily something that the public would be interested in. However I always make sure to clear everything possible that the program would install, that's been my normal practice, ever since I've used Microsoft products. Previously I used Commodore Amiga's, the OS is quite different in the way it handles things, but typically you wouldn't have various files spread out over the whole drive, usually a program had everything it needed in the same folder as the program, with few exceptions, so it was easier to deal with.