Dell finally realises that bloatware puts users off
Not on the new Vostro laptops
Friday, 3 April 2009, 10:17
TIN BENDER, DELL has realised that the cutting of bloatware from its laptop range has been successful and its new range of Vostro laptops will continue to be crap software free.
For ages Dell made a bob or two on the side from stuffing laptops with trial software. However in July 2007 the outfit decided to reverse the trend and offer laptops bloatfree.
The company has intoduced three new laptops which will be preloaded only with software that buyers actually want. µ
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So they’re not going to install any Microsoft Software or Windose !?
And of course nothing from Symantec...
It seems that this Millennium it's a race between Microsoft & Symantec to see who can code the worst peace of software on the planet.
At the moment it’s Microsoft with Vista commanding a huge lead, but Symantec would take back the lead again before long...
The only software from Symantec worth downloading is the Norton Removal Tool, which does a great job restoring peace and performance to any machine that has been infected by there own software.
well said bladder!
its a heinous crime that i'm sure the manufacturers profit from financially.
i think vista pips symantec to the post as worst bloat though, because the only way to remove it is a full pc lobotomy. at least symantec can be removed leavin the os relatively intact.
my ideal system would come with a blank hard drive so i can install stuff using 'custom install'. express installs are so devious at putting in search bars and startup-stallers.
I bought a Dell Vostro 400 desktop in early 2008 and was impressed that it came with no crapware pre-installed (didn't stop me wiping off the OS and putting a clean version on just in case).
What was also equally impressive is that the Vostro machines came with a full complement of install CDs and DVDs for *everything* (OS and apps) that was pre-installed on the desktop.
The only thing that let them down was that a 64-bit-capable quad core machine that you buy with 4GB RAM pre-installed came with a 32-bit OS (Vista Business). After weeks of chasing, I finally got them to send me a 64-bit Vista Business SP1 DVD, but only if I agreed that if I installed it, I'd "be on my own"!
It also didn't help that there was an early BIOS bug in the 400's (now fixed) that "swallowed" 768MB of your 4GB even after you put a 64-bit OS on it. After that fix, the only gripe I have left is that the Vostro 400 isn't silent, unlike every Dell desktop we've ever bought for work :-(
....as a PC repair guy I see allsorts of crap. But the worst offender in my opinion for bloat and just downright nasty software is...
HP
The number of folks PCs that I service that have installed a HP Printer and just run the default install. However, this entails the installation of about 9 different apps about 8 of which all have to access the internet and all jump into the startup list. Its malware pure and simple.
Whatever happend to the 200k printer driver that well...just prints?
Clean up your act HP!
Dell is the only to offer this to private customers:
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/ubuntu?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=anavml
this is not only Linux, but also free dos.
I really hate bloatware. So much so I prefer buying Vostro laptops for my business just for this reason. I bought a Lenovo T60 laptop a couple of years ago and was taken back how much pork was stuffed in that pig. :P
With a new machine is boot it with a linux cd to wipe out the crap os and apps that it came with.
Ubuntu's cd does a nice job of this.
The first thing I do when I get a new computer is a fresh install of the OS with a non branded version of the OS. Things work much faster after that.
... laptops is that you can still get them with XP pre-installed. Tried one with Vista, having trouble believing that it could really be as bad as reported. Wanted to see with mine own eyes. I did, it is. Went back to XP.
I got my HP delivered in Jan. Still trying to figure out what software I can uninstall and what is required to run this machine. Love the laptop, hate all the bloat.
Toshiba installs every single hotfix into the systray. Looks like a christmas tree. I hate it.
Dell is really onto something there!
Yes... definitely HP are worse than Dell. Look at their typical printer drives... 350Mb of utter crap! And don't forget it installs the "HP Customer Participation Program" (spyware) and "HP Essentials" (something to use up ink).
But worse than that are Sony. I set up a brand new Sony VGN <random craptop yesterday and it included no less than *TWENTY SIX* bits of vaio crapware. I had no idea which ones are essential to keep the machine slow and which ones are essential to Sony. I sure as hell know none of them are essential to the machine's owner!
So despite Dell being... well, Dell, good for them in taking the lead in reducing crapware on new machines.
Is to chop off few PenguinHeads each day I wake up.
When you chop off a PenguinHead off a Penguin you get streams of bytes pouring everywhere, so you better do it over the bitbucket labeled /dev/null.
I'd actually bought Dell PCs for myself and my family for the better part of a decade, but the bloatware situation had cost them my last two PC purchases (laptop in late 2007, high-end desktop in February 2009).
The last straw came when I bought a low end laptop from Dell for my parents to put in their holiday home. Out-of-box, the thing was taking more than 10 minutes to boot up into xp to a usable state, from the moment the power button was pushed. Formatting and reinstalling vanilla xp reduced this to less than 3 minutes, but talking the parents through that over the phone was not a pleasant experience.