Microsoft Worried OEM 'Craplets' Will Harm Vista

elsilver writes "An article at the CBC indicates that Microsoft is worried that the assorted crap most OEM companies load onto a new machine may affect users' opinion of Vista. An unnamed executive is concerned that the user will conclude the instability of the non-MS-certified applications is Vista's fault. Is this a serious concern, or is MS trying to bully OEMs into only including Vista-certified apps? As for the OEMs, one "removed older DVD-writing software they found was incompatible and replaced it with Vista's own software." — do they get points for realizing it was both buggy AND redundant?"

Comments

I for one agree

[jimicus]

My current employer has been going about 5-6 years. Virtually every PC in the place shipped with an XP license. Yet I find myself having to pay for another XP license for every PC through the volume licensing scheme.

Part of the reason for this is because I don't want to upgrade to Vista within 18 months, which I'll pretty much have to if I don't have an easy way to downgrade. However, even without Vista on the horizon I'd be doing this. The reason is that even buying PC's aimed squarely at businesses through business suppliers, I wind up with OEM builds which have all sorts of odd things on them. For instance:

• A few years ago, a major system builder included an "easy screen resolution changer" which has an awkward tendency to automatically bump the screen down to 800x600. Bit of a problem for the person with a 21" trinitron screen.
     
• Another major system builder's laptop build consists of 7 CDs. One for the operating system, goodness alone knows what takes up the space on the other 6. The rebuild process using those CDs takes about 3 hours with innumerable reboots, and after that I still need to get Office on there.
     
• Every laptop ships with some sort of "configuration" software which is obviously meant to make wireless configuration easier. Yet it makes configuration harder, as all of a sudden I need to either account for every possible piece of wireless config software in my "This is how you set up wireless" document or I need to publicly announce that you must use Windows' already perfectly good wireless config tools.
  

Because of Microsoft's leaning on these vendors, I can't get a straight, simple Windows install CD with these PCs. Instead, I get an automatic "system restore" CD which includes all this extra rubbish. And the product key on the PC only works with CDs supplied by the vendor.

So what I'm working on now is my own automatic-building CD which installs a plain, boring Windows setup, handles drivers and installs basic stuff like office. I've spent the last 3 days on this solid, and it's soul destroying. You wind up spending half the day watching Windows install, getting to the end and finding that you made some simple mistake and now it's back to fix that, recreate the CD and try again. Ghost isn't really an option, as I've got more different hardware configurations than I know what to do with and I don't have the budget to replace every single desktop and laptop in one go.

Re:Craplets?

[gmack]

I wish. Their listed example "MDG" has a history of preloading whatever they feel like it and then giving AOL your credit card number so they can bill you in three months whether you even use AOL or not. "We don't go into your account sir so we cannnot know if you used it or not"

I'm not sure whose side I'm on with this one.. on one hand I could see where OEMs would want to preload with useful utilities but on the other hand they often go far beyond that and install outright crap. Even with XP I've gotten a lot of business by showing up at people's houses or offices and uninstalling some strange DVD burning software that was barely tolerable with windows 98 but now it just crashes XP and doesn't work even half way as well as the cd burning wizard that is built into XP.

Re:Now that you mention it...

[gordo3000]

you should have read the article(well, at least in greater detail). One of the first points was that they would like to except now everyone will scream anti-trust against them. They aren't in any way able to enforce that(or, I bet, even openly put any kind of pressure on a computer company to do it). MS used to try to control the end user experience. They weren't looked on too favorably for that.

Use the Decrapifier !!!!

[mauriatm]

The simplest solution already used by hundreds of users of newly purchased laptops and desktops with Windows XP is the PC Decrapifier. Originally named the Dell De-Crapifier the name was soon changed to support other machines "with crap" (I'm sure Dell didn't like their name dragged through the crap).

Although this is only for XP, I'll bet a version for Vista will come along soon. Or at least one could hope.

Re:Craplets?

[Corporate Troll]

It's been in the Jagon File for ages..

Re:It isn't Vista's fault

[MartinG]

$ cat /dev/random > /dev/mem
bash: /dev/mem: Permission denied

As for the forkbomb, have a look at "ulimit -u"

I agree with you that it's not always the OS fault, but a _properly configured_ operating system should not become unstable when it is running crappy code.

How do you do "ulimit -u" on Windows btw?

Re:My guess

[dabadab]

"The same feeling that people in Europe that have been provided with the XP-E edition ( no media player ) think that XP is shit because it cannot read a stupid AVI file."

This is ignorant bullshit. The sans-WMP version was aimed at OEMs who would then install an other player (since, you know, that was the fucking point of it all) so the user would receive a computer that has a media player. The chances that an end user would end up buying an "Edition N" (since that's how it's called) are rather slim and most probably he would have to get out of his way to get one.
(Also, from what I have seen, in a default Win XP install WMP probably is not able to play DivX/Xvid encoded avis.)

Re:Understandable

[0100010001010011]

Quicktime point well taken.

However. How many of these apps automatically load on startup? I don't ever remember OmniOutliner or ComicChat starting up every single time I start up.

Want to remove iLife, OmniOutliner, etc? Drag them to the trash. Empty trash. Try removing Dell Media App, Dell Quick Sets, RealPlayer and AOL on XP and tell me how long it takes.

Oh... and Apple at least still bundles the Install DVD so you can go to a completely blank slate if you really want to.

In the meantime

[maxume]

Microsoft recently bought them out, but sysinternals usually has the answer to things like this:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/util ities/Autoruns.mspx

It enumerates pretty much everything set to launch at start up and gives you the option to turn it off.

Hang on a mo...

[GregWebb]

'... all the assorted crap OEMs load...'

Hmm.

* Windows Media Player
* Windows Movie Maker
* CD burning wizard
* Zip files wizard
* Outlook Express (you try explaining why it's needed on a server OS, or removing it...)
* MSN
* Windows Messenger

I'm sure I've missed something, please feel free to enlighten me.

Re:Craplets?

[beckerist]

Um, no. Do you really want a trial version of MusicMatch, trial version of Yahoo! Games, trial versions of Anti-Virus, AOL Online links, Earthlink Links, eGames links, a crappy productivity suite (well ok this might not count as it's generally a MS product....), basic trial imaging products from Corel, Quickbooks Demo, Roxio demo, Webroot SpySweeper demo...etc...

I'm not kidding either: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DYCWJS3&s=dhs