My customer told me to enter a request in a web application that their organization hosts. I tried to launch the application. However it required a newer version of the Java runtime environment. The application navigated me to the Sun Microsystems download page. There were a lot of downloads listed there. I went through the list and found the one I needed. It happened to be the J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 16. Or in other words, I needed the latest Sun JRE.On the Sun web page, I chose my operating system. The only button I saw was one which started up a Sun downloaded application. So I clicked the button. It was strange that I only selected the latest JRE, but this downloader was trying to download more than that. On top of this, the downloader was aborting with an error. The status said that it could not create the file on my disk. This was disappointing. I had enough disk space. What was I to do?
I looked more carefully on Sun’s web page. There was actually a link for me to perform a normal download of the JRE without using Sun’s download application. It was then that I was able to download the JRE update. This whole process was a bit disturbing. Couldn’t the initial application from my customer just configure my system automatically? That would have been much easier for me. Sun is also partially to blame here. Why are these people trying to push their download application? I also strongly recommend they ensure the darn thing actually runs the first time I try it.
Hey. I am a developer. So you know I am going to eventually be able to figure out how to get the latest JRE downloaded and installed. I pity the poor average computer user who has to deal with this. Perhaps this is an opportunity for my company to get some more work with this client. It is time to turn these lemons into lemonade.
