Wasting time with marginal software

In a nutshell: The Nero 7.0 Essentials is a timewaster that may or may not work (probably does, but be prepared to spend a long time working with it, especially if you have a lot of data (e.g., 6 GB+) that you want to offload onto DVD).

There are plenty of ways to waste time, and one that I'll cover here in this brief note is dealing with software / computer issues. I bought a new DVD burner because my tablet computer did not have a DVD drive and I needed to install some software. I wanted to also take advantage of the burner to offload some files. The burner comes with the piece-of-junk Nero 7.0 essentials software. I don't normally develop negative feelings toward software, but Nero is an exception, as I have wasted countless hours either attempting to get this software to do its job or to install some "feature" that was breaking the rest of the system in the not too distant past. My memory of this software is a combination of lockups and application crashes. Don't get me wrong ... the software often worked, but it wasn't reliable.

Today was no exception. I went to install the software and it took forever for some reason. It isn't just possible to install a simple burner. It installs all this junk that I don't want but it is what it is. Then it attempts to associate itself with every imaginable media file type -- NO, THANKS. However, the installation was basically a smooth process. It did require a reboot, but that wasn't too bad. After that, I wanted to burn my data to DVD. By default, the software chose a CD-ROM drive insead of the DVD burner ... not a huge issue until I tried to cancel to switch to the correct drive. The program of course locked up and had to be forced to end. After that it wasn't possible to start the Nero software again. I had to reboot my system to start the Nero software once again.

The second time around I was much more careful about setting the drive to use because I knew I would not get a second chance to correct this. I added the directory I wanted to burn and it went fairly smoothly. Then there is a message about "Please wait..." without any explanation of what the software is doing. Who knows if I will ever get that directory burned. With this software it's difficult to tell if its locked up or doing something. Keeping the user informed is apparently an occasional task that Nero may or may not perform. When it does give a message, be prepared for indications such as no progress with no improvement (are we locked up?) or 100% complete but "please wait" (so what exactly does 100% complete mean?). Well, I need to get back to studying. I'll let this software keep try to do its thing in the background.