Desktop Icons

Stop putting your icons on my desktop.

This means you. Stop doing it.

What's the point of putting your icons on my desktop? Either I'm a clean-desktop-nazi, in which case your icons are going to piss me off, or you are just dumping your icons onto a probably already ridiculously overcrowded desktop where they will just add to the clutter and never be findable when the user wants them, at which point the user will go looking through the Start menu to find them.

Personally I'm the former. My desktop has two icons on it: the Recycle Bin, and a graphical diff utility. Everything important is pinned to the Windows 7 task bar, and everything else is in the Start menu.

I know that you are inordinately proud of your little software project and feel it should be front and center in the user's computer experience. But really, have a little humility.

If you MUST put your icon on my desktop, make it an install-time selectable option.

IF you MUST make that icon-on-the-desktop option an opt-out install-time option, please stick a note away in the registry somewhere that I've decided NOT to put the icon on the desktop. There's nothing more frustrating than doing an upgrade and discovering that this installer has dropped its stupid icons (or worse, a family of icons) on the desktop AGAIN, and it is up to me to clean up after it.

Adobe, I'm looking at you. Stop putting your Adobe Reader icon on my desktop every six weeks when I'm patching the vulnerability-du-jour.

If I want to use your product, trust me, I'll find it.

Love, Me.