Topic: Impulse = spyware?

[scottws]

What the heck?  I just put Impulse back on my PC after several months of not having it and it has all these stupid tooltips that keep popping up that are basically advertisements for products featured on Impulse.

Stardock is really burning through their reputation credits with me really, really fast.

[Pugnate]

Who the heck are you?

[idolminds]

Theres two programs that make up Impulse: "Impulse Now" and the regular "Impulse" client. What loads in the tray and at Windows startup is Impulse Now which is pretty much just a tray icon that will check for program updates and such, and recently they've been allowing it to alert you to specials running on the store.

Just click the tray icon and choose Settings. You can disable the notifications for whatever, or disable the program entirely. Its not required to use the main Impulse client which you can just make a desktop icon for or launch from the start menu.

[scottws]

Duly noted, but this is a pretty shitty default behavior.

[Pugnate]

http://forums.stardock.com/362734

[Quemaqua]

Steam does ads every time you sign on by default, and turning them off didn't work for over a year.  I still got them every time.  I'm not a fan of this behavior in Impulse either, but at least you can turn it off (and it's still less intrusive than a giant full-screen ad with graphics like you get with Steam).

Weird link, Pug.  I'm not sure why you're posting that?  It's kind of a funny read.  Dude complains about his system getting messed up due to trying to uninstall Impulse, but he used a 3rd party uninstaller (why the fuck would you do that?) which is likely what caused the problem, and then he creates multiple accounts on the forums in order to make other posts agreeing with his.  I got a good chuckle out of it.

[Pugnate]

let me make a note:

Do not create multiple accounts in order post.  They will all be deleted and IP banned.

[gpw11]

What the heck?  I just put Impulse back on my PC after several months of not having it and it has all these stupid tooltips that keep popping up that are basically advertisements for products featured on Impulse.

Stardock is really burning through their reputation credits with me really, really fast.

To be honest that sounds worse than Steam.  Steam opens a default ad page when you load it up, but if you have that off or close it, nothing ever happens again.  Are these like popups?

[idolminds]

You know those little talk balloons that pop up from tray icons? It does that.

[Quemaqua]

I've only noticed 2 or 3 in like... a couple of months.  They really aren't that big of a deal.  And I haven't seen any ads for "featured products", only ads noting that there's an upcoming sale.  Which isn't so bad.  It would enable me to get off their email list for that kind of thing and would end up being less intrusive to me as long as it wasn't extended to anything else.

*shrug*

[scottws]

I got three in a day.  It was far more annoying than Steam that, yes, pops up ads when you open it but once you close it they are done until you open it again.

I went ahead and turned the notifications off and am much happier now.  Stardock should really reconsider this though, it is by far some of the worst behavior I have seen by a program that isn't 100% spyware.