I completely get why this happens, but installing just an IM client (I opted out of all the other apps the installer listed *) shouldn’t require me to shut down 3/4 of the programs running on my machine. I hope future versions of Windows come up with a better solution to this annoyance.

It was different when installing apps was a single-tasking activity and installers threw up full-screen ugly blue backgrounds to give you something to gripe at while swapping floppies. These days, I’m usually doing a number of other things on the computer while an app is installing.

* Microsoft has taken a page from the Apple and Google playbooks and now pre-selects a bunch of add-ons for you. I opted to upgrade the IM client, I don’t want 5 other programs selected by default, TYVM.