[OPLINTECH] coupon printer software

[Nathan Eady]

"R Young" <roger.young at oplin.org> writes:

> Our Reference (well, actually Access Services) department wants me
> to install a coupon printer applet from Coupons.com on all patron
> PCs.  
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions or help?
  
Just some advice: don't.  This applies in general to almost any
software that is specific to making one website work, but I also have
additional specific reservations about this one in particular.

If you do a quick Google search for coupons.com software, some of the
top results are explanations of the software's bad behavior and why it
shouldn't be used.  Among other things, it is accused of being
deliberately deceptive, making false promises, abusing system areas of
the Windows registry, being difficult to remove, and violating their
own privacy policy in a relatively egregious way.  These are serious
accusations, and I did not find any website asserting that these
claims are bogus alarmism.

However, if it were me, what I would probably tell the reference
department is that the software in question was obviously designed for
home users and is not suitable for deployment in a multi-user
public-PC environment.  (It's not necessarily a great idea to install
that sort of software for home use either, but what what people do at
home is not your problem.)
  
-- 
Nathan Eady
Galion Public Library