I love support websites where you can see a link to drivers right on the front page. You don’t have to dig through links to find what you are looking for. Usually 2 clicks and you are downloading your file. That brings me to ESRI…

I had installed ArcGIS 9.2 Beta 2 on my laptop to give it a little test run on some projects we are working on and when finished I uninstalled it and went back to ArcGIS 9.1. Today I saw that ESRI released a patch for issues with Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 and when to download it (right on the front page of ESRI supports site). Anyway on running the patch I was informed that I didn’t have Service Pack 1 installed so I went to download it.

Downloads > Patches and Service Packs > ArcInfo Desktop > Scroll Down 10 files > Click on link to Service Pack 1

Maybe I’m being hypersensitive but that is way too many clicks and scrolls to get to what is probably a very important file for ArcGIS 9.1 (Desktop, Server, IMS, SDE, etc…). I won’t even go into having to choose between the link for ArcInfo Desktop and ArcView (You’d think there would be one for ArcGIS Desktop, no?) but the Service Pack 1 should be on the Downloads page or at least the Patches and Service Packs page. Heck it is even buried in the middle of all the ArcInfo Desktop patches and service packs.

I guess complaining about the ESRI Support website is what we ESRI users do, and I assume they are going to wait for 9.2 before updating the thing, but having some critical downloads prominently displayed would be a good thing to do today.