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Dell Ships Gaming Systems Sans Bloat
An anonymous reader writes "Dell has followed up and put their money where their mouth is after HardOCP panned them last year for selling 'gaming systems' that you could not even install some popular 3D games on due to the bloatware on the system. You can now get clean installs on some XPS Dell systems. Dell is running a 'You Spoke, We Listened,' header on their site." From the article: "It seems that Dell has taken our criticism (and our readers as well) to heart and has made the much sought after move to offer select XPS systems with "limited" pre-installed software. We phoned a Dell sales representative late Monday, and he confirmed that the installation is completely clean, except for the included anti-virus program. As explained to us by Dell, There is no AOL installation, no "media jukebox", and no ISP offers to weigh the supplied operating system down."
At my office we get a set of 15-20 Dell laptops twice a year (we're a school). I open one box, uninstall all of the crapware, install all of the software the students will need, including putting our own anti-virus on them. Run sysprep, and then image that laptop. The rest of the laptops are then hooked up to a dedicated switch and the image multicasted out to them. Each laptop is then powered up, given a unique name and put in the domain.
One thing to look into if you are pushing that many systems through, Dell offers a service where they will load a custom image on new systems for you. They will only do it if your volume is high enough, and your's probably is. You simply setup an image, send it to them and all new systems come pre-loaded to your configuration.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.