Excellent analysis of the obnoxiousness of RealOne's defaults, which hijack the hell out of your Windows box and install shortcuts everywhere imaginable and grab anything remotely AV and try to play it back in Real and spam you with upsell offers and other creepiness. I like MPlayer and VLC for playing back Real, WMV, and MPEG files, as well as DivXes and the like.
If you choose the custom install, the process is a blend between an installer and a Pokemon-like game of gotta-uncheck-all-checkboxes.
Because, if you don't catch em all, Real Player assumes you want shortcuts to it on the desktop, in the Quick Launch bar next to the start-menu, in the top of the start-menu, another desktop shortcut to "free offers" from real.com, a third desktop shortcut to "Free Aol & unlimited internet", and last but not least, a special option in the windows search-menu called "Audio/video search". Note that Real Player does not just create a folder in the start-menu programs-folder, like most apps do, but claims a seat in the top of the start-menu, for quick and easy access. Besides all these short-cuts, Real Player also installs a shortcut in the programs-folder of the start-menu, and another folder, called "Real", in the programs-folder.
(via Electrolite)
