Shouldn’t it ‘just work’ ?

So excited — just got my 1TB NAS (that means network storage) installed and I’m taking it for a spin!  Cleaned off every picture and music file from both my desktop and laptop and then I realized…  I can even redirect my folders, so that when I click on My Documents it will point to the network drive from any computer in my home.  Now that is slick!  No more worrying if I have this file on this or that computer…  it’s available on all of them.

And it worked!  Just like I planned it…  or so I thought…

I then wiped our laptop (which has been running slowly for a while now) and prepared to reinstall only those software items that we use regularly.  It worked for the first few, but the minute I hit some of the more powerful packages (MS Office; Adobe Reader) it tanked.  It absolutely does not like the fact that I’m pointing files at a network shared drive.

Seriously.  The drive is mapped, it’s visible normally in windows…  basically it should be foolproof.  But no — this software (even the most recent version of Adobe Reader) can’t handle something as straightforward as a network drive!  I could understand 5 years ago if this happened, but now?  This is increasingly common — the only reason I’m just jumping on the bandwagon is lack of funds.

I did a Google search (ok, several actually) to see what’s up and I’m coming across the same behavior from 2007!  How is it that this problem has existed for 4+ years and nobody has seen fit to improve on it?!  Perhaps I really am in the minority.  But even so…  this is not some pie-in-the-sky request.  Just install your software and let me manage my drives!

OK, enough of my rant.  Kind of a weird way to revive the blog, but I’ve been meaning to and this just had me fed up.

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