Canon Software Policy Blows Chunks

So, I’m trying to off-load a bunch of shots from my Canon EOS 30D, but all I have with me is my laptop, and it doesn’t have the Canon software installed, so I can’t transfer RAW format images. “Well,” I figure, “I’ll just go to Canon’s site and download the software.” But in their infinite wisdom, Canon has decided to only make the updaters available for download, not the actual drivers etc. Why I don’t know — I would love for someone from Canon to email me with a scenario where someone who didn’t already own a Canon camera (and therefore, by default, a diskful of these applications) would be misusing a free download of the software. I mean, the program I’m after only works to move RAW images from a Canon digital camera to a PC — why wouldn’t you make that freely available?

But thankfully, only the lawyers at Canon seem to work overtime, because the software engineers who created the updaters really couldn’t be bothered to put much effort into protecting the installers. And thx to the migthy Google it took me exactly 20 minutes to find the solution here, and here. Hack the registry, run the updater — get the full package installed. Pain in the neck — and I never like hacking my Windows registry, but in this case it worked flawlessly.

Big props to those of you who posted those two how-to’s, and a major raspberry blown at the jerks at Canon for their stupid user-unfriendliness.