Microsoft slams OEM crapware

Most computer buyers don't come to web sits like ours and learn. If they did our membership would be in the millions. This tells me that most buyers don't even know what crapware is. As long as the market share of buyers are uninformed crapware will be there. I makes money. It might even keep the price down. IMHO most members here have probably removed the crapware or will soon because they have been informed. Most people who buy computers are not informed customers. Most people who buy new cars don't know it comes with ABS and don't care, it stops.

Tepid said:

jimbo45 said:

Tepid said:

The other problem is, not installing enough RAM.
what 99% of users do not realize is. Minimum requirements are to get a system to run stable, not well.
So yes, Vista will run with 512M of ram. But it won't run well. And these OEM's knew it, they just wanted to make a sale so they allowed it.
I also think that is why MS upped it to 1G for 7. Still that is not good enough.

It is the same with all PC games. The minimum is to make it run stable, the recommended is better, but you always want to try and have twice what the recommended is listed.
That is the sweet spot. But more is always best.

Hi there
Actually I disagree here -- Lack of RAM is NOT the main problem -- for what 90 - 95% of typical home users do on their computers (email, surf internet, some office type stuff, play music, watch dvd's etc) a modest machine (by todays standards) with 1GB of RAM is probably sufficient.

I agree more RAM is better if you want to run things like Virtual Machines and Photoshop --although you can use Photoshop on a 1GB RAM system without too much hassle if you aren't processing 100's of large photos-.

Even for gaming it's not normally shortage of RAM -- CPU processing power, decent graphic card / GPU and fast disks are usually more important.

Cheers
jimbo

We have seen it first hand. Take a Vista System that a student bought and trying to do what they need to do for school. Or a family that bought a system that start choking when they try accessing numerous apps, like web browsing and email and try to watch videos with anti virus and other background garbage apps like Itunes and there ISP's garbage speed boosters. Systems start to choke when they start getting used on a daily basis by people who try to do what they really want to do with them.

Now if you are talking about the very few out there that might check a site or 2 and do a little email, but don't try to use the system for what it is designed for, ok. But 99% of people don't do just those very minimal things.

My wife thinks she doesn't do that much, I put a low end system up for her and as soon as she tried doing scrapbooking software and printing and stuff, the system would choke. Oh yeah, Many web sites opened as well. So, there is a limit, and the largest majority of people will push a low end system past it's limit and be quite disappointed in the results not realizing they pushed past a certain limit that their system can't handle. Then they blame what? Windows.

You don't need 8G or 16G of ram, no. But you need at the minimum on any system of 2G.
And that all depends on the processor as well. Now days they have caught up, so a normal family system that gets used for more than one or 2 apps at a time does infact need minimum of 2 to 4G in todays systems. i would actually say Minimum should be 4G now.
This is the best spot for anyone who may wake up one day and decide they want to do more. Or they start seeing software they thing they might like and install it, then forget about while it sits in the background draining resources.

It's a balance of power that OEM's do not care about.

I don't sell systems with less than 2G, and try to talk people into minimum of 4G.
Even if they ask for the minimum, I would tell them no, go buy elsewhere. After explaining the reasons why.

1, IMHO -A good idea.

2. Nice to note some business ethics here....Well done.

ever seen what a dual xeon workstation with 96 GB of RAM can do with photoshop or premier pro?

I learned about ram minimums when I bought my first machine. I am a gamer and I had 128 megs of ram with a good ( by that days standard video card) 3dfx. Does that ring any bells? It would crash ocassionally when gaming or other stuff too but I never realized what was wrong until... I was doing our taxes with my wife and the system crashed while we were trying to send our file....EEEEKKK.. I ended up calling support and they suggest installing more ram. I maxed it out after a couple conversations with friends. It ran much better after that.
NOW I either build my own or buy from a smaller company that doesn't install all that crapware.
Life is much better now as I know how to uninstall and all that stuff mentioned earlier in this thread.

I enjoy all the posts, keep writing.

Jeff

This is a topic that needs to stay on the front burner for a long time. MS is on a good road, they just need to stay on it!

We have 4 computers in our home. An Hp Touchsmart that is a great computer, design wise, above par hardware, 64 bit, but it came with so much bloat that it literally strangled it. I did a clean install and now it is awesome.
My son's school provides there students with Lenovo's. This year they went the new Thinkpad T410 with the I-520 CPU and other decent hardware. It has more bloat on it than the HP had. However, 95% of it is Lenovo's programs themselves. Every single one of them is duplicated from what W7 Enterprise already can do! I promise it takes 3 minutes to start up I can't touch it for obvious reasons though. Then we have a Toshiba Netbook with W7 Starter. Again, alot of Toshiba and other 3rd party programs. Clean install of W7 Home Edition, another stick of 1GB and now it's good to go.

I have 2 Panasonic Toughbooks. They come with around 4 Panny programs but they are useful programs and are not resource hogs. An example is a program called Concealed Mode. I can touch a certain KB button and the entire machine will go into a stealth like mode. No lights anywhere are lit up, screen is off, etc, but the system and wireless is still running. I can adjust certain things to go off such has the wireless as well for covert type of work, but you get the point. I have to keep the Panny drivers for that installed. Each one came with 2 discs, XP Professional and Vista Business along with a disc with just drivers, and the programs for the Gobi Embedded WWAN.

So this just shows that the OEM's can and do decide what's best for the EU in mind and also some that just do not care at all. Now, I did have to pay more for the Toughbooks than most other laptops out there but the old saying holds true most of the time. You get what you pay for.

I like the post that states MS should tell the OEM's that if you install all this crap the OS is going to higher or somehow cripple them in some way. If there sales start taking a hit, they will make changes. It's all about the all mighty dollar these days.