I shall admit that I believe that any computer running Windows, any version, needs a serious cleanup once in a while. Sometimes they last two or three years, sometimes only six months. In any case, my newest laptop, an EEEPC has just been rebuilt completely. I had the presence of mind to take an image of the final installation, or at least mostly final. All of my critical apps, the things that feel like appendages, are installed, all useless and suspect apps removed. Most significantly this time, no Adobe products. Not even Reader. Frankly, like Microsoft, they’ve gotten big enough and popular enough to become a target for exploitation. Microsoft has done a fine job of locking down the OS itself so now viruses target third party applications. Things that feel a lot like OS level addons but aren’t. Adobe Reader is just such a target these days but Adobe hasn’t shown the same level of commitment to fixing errors as Microsoft. I know, you read that sentence and scoff. It’s really just my own opinion, but it’s an opinion based on the fact that a major vulnerability exists in their flagship product, exploitable on any Widnows machine that gets e-mail or reads the web with Acrobat Reader installed, but they don’t feel it’s important enough to fix as soon as possible… they’ll get to it in a couple of weeks.
I might install Flash Player eventually, so many sites like to use it, but for Acrobat Reader, plenty of other readers exist. I can recommend Foxit Reader.
