I Hate Popups v.1.10

Published by: Critical Data Integrity, LLC, go to the web site
Reviewed By: Jim Huddle CNE CNE5 CBS MCSE ES-RC, send e-mail
Requires: None listed, assuming Win95 and up
MSRP: US$19.99

Pop-ups are an annoying but ubiquitous part of using a web browser. Pop-ups can be especially irritating when closing them triggers any number of new pop-up windows. I've tried a couple of programs to control pop-ups and some work fairly well. Nothing I've tried has been as unobtrusive as I Hate Popups.

It's actually kind of difficult to say much about this product and perhaps that's the best thing about it. Once you install it, it just sits there in system tray and works, period.

You can down load a 5 day trial from the product web site. The program is only about 200K in size. It installs in a snap. I've tried it on both Windows 98 and Windows 2000 and it works fine.

From the user's point of view there is very little to do once it's installed. Configuring I Hate Popups is a two click job. The first choice is whether you want the program to launch when Windows starts. Hmmm, tough choice there. The other is the blocking delay. This allows you to speed up I Hate Popups' reaction to pop-ups when you have a very fast PC and the default setting is allowing some pop-ups to get started. I've been running I Hate Popups on a Pentium III/1GHz box and the Normal setting has prevented them all so far.

On the other hand, I Hate Popups can sometimes be a little too good at it's job. There are a couple of sites I go to where I click a button to generate statements or other information. Clicking the button in turn invokes a separate browser window (that's a pop-up). I Hate Popups clobbers them as well, but the reaction is easy enough to fix. All you have to do is double-click its system tray icon and I Hate Popups turns itself off. The icon also changes color to let you know it's not operating. Another double-click turns it back on.

I really appreciate software that does it's job without me having to be constantly futzing with it. I don't run into too many programs which qualify for that. I Hate Popups is one.

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