Imagine my surprise when the WinZip installer displayed the dialog below.

I suppose I should be grateful that WinZip cares enough to offer to install some extra software to make sure that my system is secure.  However, I’m already using security software that I’m happy with.  When I’m installing software that I’ve paid for, like WinZip, I don’t see the need to install extra third-party software from “carefully selected partners.”

Seriously WinZip, if the license fees that I pay to you aren’t enough to cover a single license to WinZip then please raise my license fees so that I don’t have to deal with this crap.  Among many problems with this approach:  Your preferred partners may NOT be MINE.

This one isn’t a tool bar.  But it is still one of those annoying things that is in an installation program that doesn’t really need to be present.  WinSCP, a handy utility for SFTP transfers, decided that it was necessary to offer to install WeFi as part of the process.  What WeFi has to do with SFTP baffles me.  At least the default was “Do not install.”

The installation for the latest version of Java for my Windows XP system prompted me to install a demo of Carbonite Online Backup instead of free toolbars.

While this is a refreshing change from the usual free toolbar crap that lots of vendors think needs to be installed on my systems, this is still annoying.  The default, particularly since this is a product that requires recurring payment, should be “No, I don’t want to install any extra programs.”  It is a noble goal to want to help users protect their files.  I just think that it is out of place for a vendor like Sun to make the “offer” in the way the did with a Java update.