The one thing that irks me to no end about Yahoo!Messenger is that you can't download directly the FULL installer from the website; you download only a small stub program, which will later download the full installer.

For broadband users, no sweat.

But for non-broadband users like me... it's a royal PITA to again and again and again having to wait > 1 hour to download the main installer.

And what really pisses me off is that the stub, as soon as the main installer starts, delete whatever the stub had downloaded. Necessitating yet another 1 hour to download the main installer in another PC.

I am now trying to circumvent the finicky stub from deleting by using the Undelete software. However, searching in Y!M's forums, I came across this, which leads me here. Now this looks promising...

What about you? How do you circumvent the stub? Anyone care to give me a tip?

I really want to be able to download only the main installer...

Download the stub installer and let it run. At one time, it would start downloading the real installer. When it finishes downloading, the full installer would start. Without doing anything go to Program Files\Yahoo!\Installs and copy the thing.

Actually the main installer, after installing, almost immediately deletes itself. Lucky I got me Undelete

Anyways, I also emailed Yahoo! support, and they kindly give me the download link (direct) to the full installer.

http://us.dl1.yimg.com/download.yahoo.com/...us/ymsgr8us.exe

That's the US version. My Undelete recovers the SG version. So now I have both

Does someone know why they make those nasty installers?
It's not only Y!, I came across other software too, but I can't think of a good reason for that stuff.

Because the stub can fetch updated versions of each of its components with out them all being bundled together, such as the yahoo toolbar. Stops the need to repackage. Also because you can select what to install before it actually downloads, it saves you from downloading a larger file combining everything

Thank you for your answer.
Repackaging can't be a problem so I don't see it as a reason.

Maybe I'm just annoyed because I had some bad experiences.
Not every software provided that way is internet software, but everyone needs internet to get it (unless you are able to bypass that stuff).
Another problem is that they often cheat with filesize, so you think that you get just a few MB but you need to download a whole bunch more.
And there's not always the possibility to choose between installing options, in those cases the sole reason seems to be the repackaging.

I'm sure the whole stuff could be done webbased too, which would be better imo.

But you don't have to let the main installer "start", you just need to copy the file. I did it myself.

@kwanbis: Well in my experience, after the main installer is downloaded, it immediately started, installed Y!M, exited, and committed suicide, without user intervention. I don't know if this is only the SG-version (Singapore version) or if it is my system or if I wasn't holding my mouth right.

@TREX6662k6: But in Y!M's case, the main installer actually only installs Y!M. The toolbar and Yahoo!Extra thing (whatever that is) are 2 separate installers. The stub's only function is to give you a choice of which installer to download. Then it proceeds to download the main installer.

Surely if the need is only for us to get the latest version, they can just put in the link (I posted above). Since the link is version-neutral, anyone downloading the main installer will get the latest version. (Or should get, depending if the Y!M maintainers are stoned or not).