Can Microsoft cure PC makers of the crapware habit?

[Dave76]

Summary: It’s easy for an OEM to screw up a new Windows PC. Just add enough trialware and throw in a few unnecessary programs, and the customer gets a miserable out-of-box experience. Microsoft is trying to fix that with its Signature PC initiative. Does it work? And can it scale?

Building a Windows PC is a cooperative process. PC makers design and build the hardware, Microsoft designs and builds the OS, and then third-party software developers join the party. If everything works together, the end result can be a joy to use. But if any part of the partnership breaks down, the poor PC buyer is the one who suffers.

Making PCs is a tough business, with low profit margins and cutthroat competition. To squeeze a few extra bucks out of every PC they sell, some OEMs cut deals to make extra money by preinstalling trial versions of software. If they can convince you to pay for an upgrade to the full version, they make a commission. But those upsell offers (also known as crapware) are annoying, and in the worst case they can slow a PC noticeably.

On top of that, some OEMs feel compelled to “add value” to their hardware by bundling software programs and utilities that duplicate functions already available in Windows. And they can get downright sloppy about the things that really do matter, like updates and drivers.

More...

 

[badger906]

maybe thats the cut throat idea needed "pay £20 more and we cut out the crap!!"

 

[legacy7955]

maybe thats the cut throat idea needed "pay £20 more and we cut out the crap!!"

If I do buy an OEM I would gladly pay 50$ more for a crapless OS.

Are you listening HP? Meg how about it?

Your products are pretty good overall. The bloat sours the basic goodness of your PCs.

 

[JMH]

Nice article.
Thanks Dave.

Must admit it has driven me bonkers having to get rid of the unwanted bloatware / stuff from the {seven} new HP laptops purchased over the last ten years.
Would be prepared to pay more for less anytime!

Having to do a Clean install on a brand new Lappy really sucks!

 

[ICIT2LOL]

maybe thats the cut throat idea needed "pay £20 more and we cut out the crap!!"

If I do buy an OEM I would gladly pay 50$ more for a crapless OS.

Are you listening HP? Meg how about it?

Your products are pretty good overall. The bloat sours the basic goodness of your PCs.

Well perhaps not $50 but something as the bloat on a friends new netbook I am setting up is driving me potty(er)

I though I saw a bloat killing app in here somewhere though I can't remember just where.

 

[Corazon]

This one?

Crappy PC No More! | The PC Decrapifier

 

[ICIT2LOL]

This one?

Crappy PC No More! | The PC Decrapifier

Thanks Corazon will give it a burl

 

[EvilOzzmess]

I just uninstall the bloatware... no big deal. If it means getting a bit of a discount on the system itself (as seems to be the case, especially with Acer systems - I got mine for a steal of $800, which anywhere else with the same or lesser hardware would have run into the $1,000+ range with inferior enclosure and the rest of it *CoughDellCough*), because installing that bloatware means the OEM getting a bit of kick-back profits from software companies out of it, therefore passing some savings onto the consumer, that's just fine by me. It's not like you can't ever get rid of it. It takes five minutes and a restart from within the Control Panel and really isn't such a PITA as with other things. I think sometimes we can be just a touch too picky and whiny about things like this.

Bottom line, if someone wants a completely bloatware free PC, then they should build their own and leave the rest of us out of it, who are willing to deal with the bloatware to save some money on the system itself.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Well yeah I did Evil but I still got the bloat with the OEM AND the Gigabyte board.

Unfortunately I am not that savvy to pick out what is bloat except for the Norton and really obvious stuff

 

[Dave76]

Nice article.
Thanks Dave.

Must admit it has driven me bonkers having to get rid of the unwanted bloatware / stuff from the {seven} new HP laptops purchased over the last ten years.
Would be prepared to pay more for less anytime!

Having to do a Clean install on a brand new Lappy really sucks!

You're welcome.

I use to just delete it, but then at some point decided to just clean installed.
All my OEMs are running clean installs now.

 

[pparks1]

PC's are cheaper because of the bloatware as these bloatware vendors have contracts with the mfgs to include this stuff.

If I were to buy a premade PC, I would simply uninstall the crap that I didn't want. Run Windows update. Then image the box. The image would be my restore point at any time in the future.

Personally, I usually just opt for building the system myself, buying a retail copy of Windows and just doing the install myself. I pay a little more...but like many of you have said, paying a bit more money is simply worth it to me.

 

[syost]

It takes about 20 minutes to do a minimum install of the OS and drivers on a new HP laptop. The Recovery Manager utility through which you do the reinstall is pretty much painless other than having to wait for it to finish. I guess that could be painful for some impatient types. You can then choose to install whatever you like. While I use Microsoft products by preference, it also pretty difficult to take them seriously on this subject since it is their licensing practices that has created the situation.

FWIW, I will personally take the lower price in favor of the 20 minutes. BTW, if you walk into a Best Buy, they will sell you an "optimized" system but the premium they charge is laughable. Granted, it is probably closer to what it actually costs if you remove all of the stuff subsidizing your lower price....

Stephen​

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Nice article.
Thanks Dave.

Must admit it has driven me bonkers having to get rid of the unwanted bloatware / stuff from the {seven} new HP laptops purchased over the last ten years.
Would be prepared to pay more for less anytime!

Having to do a Clean install on a brand new Lappy really sucks!

You're welcome.

I use to just delete it, but then at some point decided to just clean installed.
All my OEMs are running clean installs now.

Now you probably think I am a bit dumb Dave but a clean install off an OEM? Surely the bloat is still there from manufacture or am I missing something here. There is also the bloat on the boards too I have had - two Gigabyte boards to date and both have Norton and other unreasonable and in my book unnecessary bloat and I just cannot tell what is bloat - I just wish there was a "bloat chart" for us dummies to check off against.

The decrapifier I did try but it only came up with apps I need and have put on myself.

 

[lehnerus2000]

How much is your time and effort worth?

It depends on how much value you assign to your own time and effort.

My friend just bought an ACER laptop for his job (the boss is going to reimburse him).
He needs a Windows PC for some programming software (turns out it won't run on Windows 7 or on an XP VM).
He uses Arch Linux.
I helped him so he wouldn't "blow a gasket" battling with W7 (and he helps me with my Ubuntu problems, even though he hates Ubuntu).

We spent several hours trying to remove the crapware and security hazards (Adobe).
The worst part was trying to figure out what each program did and if removing it would "brick" the machine.

Even after removing stacks of garbage, his machine still has 85 processes running at start up!
My desktop has 35 + 5 for stuff I want running (VirtuaWin, Virtual CloneDrive & Process Explorer).

I'm not sure what he gets paid, but if we assume a combined cost of $80 per hour (for both of us) we probably wasted about $500 worth of our time, "fixing" the machine (imaging, deleting, installing, etc.).

If it had come with a W7 disc, we could have had the entire job done (imaging, installing & tweaking) in 2 hours.

 

[Dave76]

Nice article.
Thanks Dave.

Must admit it has driven me bonkers having to get rid of the unwanted bloatware / stuff from the {seven} new HP laptops purchased over the last ten years.
Would be prepared to pay more for less anytime!

Having to do a Clean install on a brand new Lappy really sucks!

You're welcome.

I use to just delete it, but then at some point decided to just clean installed.
All my OEMs are running clean installs now.

Now you probably think I am a bit dumb Dave but a clean install off an OEM? Surely the bloat is still there from manufacture or am I missing something here. There is also the bloat on the boards too I have had - two Gigabyte boards to date and both have Norton and other unreasonable and in my book unnecessary bloat and I just cannot tell what is bloat - I just wish there was a "bloat chart" for us dummies to check off against.

The decrapifier I did try but it only came up with apps I need and have put on myself.

Some OEM re-installation disks don't have any added crapware.
When I installed the 64bit OS from a Dell DVD, on my Dell laptop, it was completely clean.
They very considerately have a separate DVD with the crapware, just in case you want it

On a custom rig, just don't use the CD that comes with the motherboard, the drivers are usually old anyway, I always D/L the drivers from their website before the first bootup.

 

[dustywoodworker]

Nice article.
Thanks Dave.

Must admit it has driven me bonkers having to get rid of the unwanted bloatware / stuff from the {seven} new HP laptops purchased over the last ten years.
Would be prepared to pay more for less anytime!

Having to do a Clean install on a brand new Lappy really sucks!

You're welcome.

I use to just delete it, but then at some point decided to just clean installed.
All my OEMs are running clean installs now.

Am I to understand that there is NO BLOATWARE resident on a Microsoft Windows 7 CD.

If so, then I have been somehow infiltrated through the back door.

 

[Corazon]

There are those who might consider Windows itself bloatware...

...but no, there's no actual crapware in a cleanly installed Windows 7 system.

What do you mean you've been infiltrated through the backdoor...by what?

 

[Heyyou]

I have built and bought 4 Dell pc's online and the only thing they force on you is what ever AV they are pushing at the time. That is easily fixed just after I register the pc and set it up, by immediately uninstalling the AV. Other than that there is no real crap installed unless you bought it when you were ordering the pc.

 

[dustywoodworker]

There are those who might consider Windows itself bloatware...

...but no, there's no actual crapware in a cleanly installed Windows 7 system.

What do you mean you've been infiltrated through the backdoor...by what?

After installing Windows 7 I had applications on my computer that I do not believe were there before. I have since removed it all. Some of it would not uninstall so I had to resort to regedit to get rid of it. Using regedit was scarey for me as I am not really computer literate but it seemed to work and it is now months later and I have no perceived problems.

I'm sorry that I can not answer your question as to what. I did not take good notes as to what I was removing. I had a lot of trouble with my computer during the install and I might have brought in "stuff" while downloading software that was suppose to be helpful - like HDD and memory test applications, etc.

I have cleaned most of that "stuff" out too and what I found helpful I have put on a flash drive.

 

[smarteyeball]

There are those who might consider Windows itself bloatware...

And they're usually the same people who think it's 'witty' to regurgitate tired and largely un-original statements.

The only thing worse than cleaning crapware from a new PC is cleaning crapware from an old installation that's had so much stuff installed/un-installed over time to the point even the owner doesn't know what's what, yet won't allow you to reformat and start from scratch 'because'....