Over the past few releases, and particularly in AutoCAD 2009 and 2010, I have noticed an increase in the number of information notices (bubbles, warnings, task dialogs, Communication Center notices, etc.) being displayed. Shaan Hurley has pointed out that 2010 Update 1 introduces a balloon notification that periodically makes you aware of how much time remains before your subscription expires. Is this a good thing?
There’s a poll on the right that asks a specific question about the default state of AutoCAD 2009 and 2010, but I’d also like to see some comments on this. What do you think of these messages? Are they useful? Do they get in the way? Do you take any notice of them? Are there too many? Do we need any others? Do you turn them off? Is it easy enough to control them?
I don’t like them. It is a pet-peeve of mine when software, Windows is notorious, keeps interrupting you while you work.
Why the heck would we need something that silly. I’d bet the vast majority of users don’t even have a need to know it. Heck in every company I’ve ever worked at the people using the software have nothing to do with the subscription.
Besides the reseller knows when your subscription runs out and you can be sure they’ll get a hold of you before it happens.
The only messages I need to see is when a referenced file (xref or Civil 3D dref) gets updated.
I have my traytimeout sysvar set to 2, that way the notices appear, then 2 seconds later they go away. I’ve gotten to a point where for the most part I just ignore the bubbles, and we used Owen’s lisp to remove the info center, so we dont need to worry about the subscription bubbles.
Exactly what Lance said… I could possibly see if you were a single user that you might want to be notified in this manner about an update for instance…
But any installation that originates from a deployment should have all of this stuff turned off by default. Our end users do not need to know about updates, subscription renewal, or anything else – all they should be doing is being productive…
The one that bugs me the most is the one that says the plot/publish job finished with no errors. I think the document coming out of the printer makes that obvious.
There are so many unimportant messages that people ignore them, which means they are also ignoring the ones that might actually be relevant.
They interrupt the work flow, IMO.