CM is being discontinued, so it's likely that page will be abandoned.

No popups for me...

I hope they wait till SDCentral gets all the bugs worked out before they do away with Componet Manager.

It's stardock, on the component manager page, (the link in the 1st post) I don't think it will show up in the wincustomize browser, or in the stardock central browser, and I am aware of the difference between wincustomize and stardock. Stardock should also be aware that paying customers use other browsers, such as internet explorer. I am not mad anymore, just slightly irritated, and disappointed. Allowing your paying customers to be spammed is unacceptable, and it cheapens everything about the company, which i have adored and idolized and supported with my money for years. Spamming potential customers is also unacceptable, and will hurt their sales, any investors should be concerned. When I first made this post I was MAD! Now that I have calmed down though, I still think this is a serious issue, and should be discussed publicly. Sure it's only banner ads, but what's next? Is that where it stops? Stardock (not wincustomize) has lost a great level of respect and trust from me. I will continue to be a paying customer, and will continue further support through skins and such, but I needed to publicly say that Stardock has lost much of my respect and trust.

whoops!

knatzz...I exclusively use IE6 as in XP...and again, no popups here on that link...no banners...no nothing.

There is only 'Object Desktop' take your OS to the next level'.....hardly earth-shattering...

Just make sure you haven't caught yourself a Spam-ware bug...

Made sure Jafo, my system is clean (triple-checked with adaware) and I am at that page, looking at a banner on the top directly across from the stardock logo, checking out an excellent ad for a lendingtree realtor! always needed one of those!

Here is one of the the ad banners he is talkin about (the banner changes). I can only see it when I take down my spystopper. Again, an ad banner and not a popup.


http://focusin.ads.targetnet.com/ads/banners/1907-1.gif

And here is the first one he was talkin about:


http://focusin.ads.targetnet.com/ads/banners/1868-4.gif

No, there are banner ads on some Stardock pages (not the main page, though). We're a lot like most companies and try to get a little cash to fund the site through banners. Of course, if you are an Object Desktop Subscriber, you have a license to WebBlinds. Why is that important? What is WebBlinds most compelling feature? Ad blocking. That's right! Just install WebBlinds and see no more banner ads at Stardock or anywhere. If we were pure evil (as people think we are) we would program it so that you would still see out banner ads We will *never* have pop-ups, though, because we all hate pop-ups.

BTW, you don't have to go to ObjectDesktop.net to get any sort of Download. You will want to install Stardock Central from: http://storage.stardock.com/files/stardockcentralrc1.exe All news you need on Object Desktop will be displayed in the "News" section of Stardock Central.

Also, we have no control over the ads that are served.

knatzz:"any investors should be concerned." What investors? Where? Am I missing something? Stardock is a privately owned self-funded company. Trust me, it's a lot harder doing business that way (with less funding) but we would not have the ability to quickly change with the times if we had to have a strict business plan that we had to stick to. (Most investors don't like a company changing products every 6 months) Maybe with that knowledge (no investors or outside funding) you will see why we have banner ads for extra site funding.

If Stardock doesn't have investors, I am sorry I implied that you did. I was positive that I have seen an investment page on your site before, that's what I was going on. Maybe I misread, or something, anyways, I am truly sorry about that. I don't want to sound hostile or rude, but print has a way of doing that to you, ya know? However I still strongly disagree with those tactics. If you you guys are hard up for cash, I'd be glad to pay more for your products, seriously, they are more than a bargain. I think that if I hadn't wrote before I cooled down I'd have been more careful, and probably not posted on this forum, but sent Stardock an email instead. But I did, so let me explain what turned a rational person like myself into the guy who started this thread. 1. I got home yesderday night and turned on my computer, and windowblinds was expired, there was a new version on Stardock Central, which downloaded in 2 seconds and did nothing, rebooted. 2. same situation as before, so I looked around for the newest link to SC and there is yet another one, so I download and updated SC, and there is a new version of WB, so I download that and it installs 1/2 way and then says it can't read a corrupt file. 3. I go to get component manager, and get spammed. 4. nothing on component manager after I installed it. That was what it took to snap me, and it worked. Before everyone says alpha or beta, lets also look at the fact that things like component manager, released software have been less than stable lately. If a program is going to time out, a replacement should be there and working. If Stardock wants to use banner ads, that's their perogative, but as a customer I strongly disagree with it. What happened to me was an extreme circumstance, and I wish to drop it. I don't want to come off as a jerk, and I hope I haven't. Looking back, this was not the place to post this. Behold, the power of SPAM....

And yes, I do use webblinds, and was running it yesterday.

hmmm... now it says We have hotels...


I think it is called advertising. the only fault I could give the site design is that it doesn't mark that area of the web page as 'advertising'

Done.

where's my coffee.