This is bloatware gone mad and it's not only me that thinks so. Ricky Cadden proclaimed today that 'Nokia sucks at desktop apps'. This would be a bit strong if he'd said this six months ago, when PC Suite was a svelte-ish 25MB, but the inclusion of a 'pretty' front end and a motley assortment of other apps, along with the aforementioned Microsoft bloat-monster, has meant a download size of 350MB and the performance of a constipated slug.
And another prominent blogger has weighed in this afternoon. IntoMobile's Stefan says 'Kill it with fire and fly the ashes to the moon', pointing out that, in addition to the bloat problems, PC Suite really isn't much of a 'suite' at all and that Nokia has a lot to learn from Apple and even (gulp) Microsoft in this department.
Whoever chose .NET to base the new PC Suite on should be taken out and chucked into the nearest lake. Not everyone has dual core multimedia monster desktops, guys.
Here's hoping that this Nseries desktop bundle is a temporary aberration and that the much heralded Ovi 'door' will be based on a single web portal and (maybe) an iTunes-like desktop client, natively coded and with decent performance. Otherwise, we're simply all going to die of old age waiting for Nokia's .NET artwork to load.
Steve Litchfield, 15 Sep 2007
[Updated 17 Sep]