I realise this topic has been beaten to death a bit, but it’s no less relevant for all that.
Lance de Witt and others: it’s a fact of life that the vast majority of users out there are either incapable of reading, or of ingesting, a large part of what is presented to them on a computer screen. and I really do mean vast majority. I work with users every day, from all walks of life, and from the youngest and brightest to the oldest and dimmest - and I do not mean to imply old=dim or young=clever - I see people missing important information that is plain as day.
Some even read me error messages over the phone and ask me what they mean. I tell them, in the same exact words they just read to me, and they understand. Don’t ask me to explain or justify it; I just observe it.
Now add to that the clearly, obviously designed-to-obfuscate screens (like the one you snapshotted above, Lance!!) and you have a recipe for installation of multiple instances of crapware. Some of my users have every “tool” bar I’ve ever seen - MyWebSearch, Babylon, Google, Bing, Yahoo, Speedbit and others… to the point where their browser window is too small to read anything useful in it.
Ok, granted, a lot of it can be put down to laziness. When installing software, most people just want to get through it - not read screens. But again, with the tiny print that a lot of these installers use, it is any wonder users don’t have the patience to go through them to find out what they are agreeing to accept?
And read it or not, stupid or not, again I say: many installers deliberately make their acceptance pages look and read like you are agreeing to the licence terms of the main software you are installing, not some ugly wart piggybacking on its ass. Again, the Babylon POS is a classic example - “By clicking you accept the licence agreement”. Oh yeah - what licence do you need to run a trojan? Ask a thousand people who have installed PDFCreator what that means and 999 will tell you the licence for PDFCreator.
Tell those same 999 people to clear the check boxes and click “decline” and they will all say "But won’t that stop the install from working?"
It’s dirty, underhanded, bandit marketing. I understand why PDF Forge and others do it, but I still don’t like it. And taking a superior attitude about not having a right to complain, or taking a computer class first, just shows you up for an arrogant nerd. Not everyone is blessed with your intellect, but that doesn’t give you the right to sneer.