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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?"
I've always like to call that extra bloat by the name of "Circusware". When I power up a shiny new Dell, I always feel like I'm at a circus where there are all of those different games where you can win a small stuffed animal for the equivalent of $20 or $30 in game tickets.
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It's the operating system's fault if an installed program causes system instabilities.
My guess: the era of pre-loading software and packing computers with shit as an "added bonus" is over. Most people know the things they like and they have internet access to download them. This was not true 10 years ago -- you wanted burning software with your cd burner, media player software for your camera, etc. But now these apps just mess everything up.
A company like apple, which monopolises the whole process to fit with their brand, is in a better position here. I mean, from a marketing perspective, all it takes is one lousy OEM company to install buggy shit on their computers and you can ruin the Vista brand.
What about the assorted crap Microsoft puts into a new install of Vista, wouldn't that affect users' opinions as well?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I'm sick of buying laptops, particularly for work, which come with bundles of shit preinstalled. It enrages me more when they won't even provide a proper Windows install CD so I can wipe and clean-install. Anything that spells the end of this policy is welcome.
Argh.
Good: Having seen the software that comes on new prebuilt systems, crapplets is an awfully nice term to call them. I wouldn't mind seeing them go the way of the dinosaur.
Evil: This is about as immune to abuse as a government controlled press.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Having gone through several prefab Windows boxes in my time (Gateway, Dell, Sony mostly), it seems to me that the volume of crap applications that come pre-loaded and all of which run at startup time has increased dramatically, to the point that the first thing I have to do with any new brand-name PC is either uninstall all the bloat one-by-one or else wipe the drive and start from scratch with a fresh OS install. For a desktop PC, I can understand everyone telling me "build your own, then it will only have what you want on it." Fair enough. But what about portables? Is there a good laptop manufacturer who will sell me a "blank slate" laptop? Ordinarily, I would expect this sort of performance-hindering bloat to reflect badly on the manufacturer. I think MS is right to be worried that the PC makers might jump at the chance to shift the blame onto the new OS, rightly or wrongly.
Simply put, OEM distributors should provide the software on CDs as optional installs. Every time someone I've known has bought a new PC, they have asked me to 'clean it up', because 90% of the shit which gets pre-loaded isn't wanted.
By providing the original installation media without installing it, Microsoft is happy that the software doesn't come pre-loaded, the end user is happy that they don't have to remove stuff once they buy their computer, and the OEM distributor should be happy because they will get more customers from it. Everyone is happy, so why is it so difficult?
My computer came with XP and a preinstalled keyboard shortcut program. This program had the nasty side effect of crashing ANY fullscreen app that tried to launch, with the single exception of Jedi Outcast.
At the time, none of these other games I had were designed with XP in mind, so I immediately assumed that XP's compatibility was abysmal and I was NOT happy. Fortunately I was able to correct the REAL problem soon enough.
I never thought it would come from Microsoft since they want their OEM customers to be happy, but it's about time somebody raised a stink about the BS that gets installed by the OEMs themselves. Toshiba & Sony I believe are the worst culprits. They install so much shit on the computer - at least 10 startup items and services - it's a complete joke. And then when you encounter something like what Toshiba does to the built-in power management functions of Windows - they won't let you get to it! "Please use the Toshiba power management applet..." BYTE ME! You'd think they would want the overall PC experience to reflect well on their brand too, so slowing down everyone's brand new PC with a load of junk isn't the way to go.
Do or do not. There is no try. --Yoda
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:
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.
A logical extension of Microsofts argument would be that NO outside software can be trusted, unless you pay the special fee to MSoft so that it's "certified", otherwise they'll refuse to take the blame for anything. That just reaffirms my belief in the parent posts argument, that it's the OSs fault.
..........FULL STOP.
I worked for one of the leading crippleware-pre-installed-on-Windows companies that pre-installed software on something north of 80% of windows OEM computer out there.
We payed the OEMs handsomely for the privilige of reducing the functionality of our software - both in discounts and in revenue-share kickbacks for upgrades.
I'm pretty certain the money the OEMs makes from this crippleware *MORE* than pays for the cost of Windows (especially the discounted OEM windows) - and is the #1 reason HP, Dell, etc like Windows over Linux.
Get rid of the paid-for-crippleware, and OEMs will jump to Linux very quickly.
Yes - that sums it up. Actually, the real issue as I see it is that many of the craplets that need to die are either "light" versions that you couldn't even buy if you wanted or 30 day trial versions or assorted other limited things trying to get you to buy something later. There is so much of it on machines these days that the steps many folks take after receiving a new machine are:
1) power on and see if hardware and drivers all work
2) copy drivers off
3) format the partition and install just windows and the apps you actually want
Since Internet Explorer isn't a trial version or a light version (and IE 7 is much better than IE 6 although my primary browser even in Vista is FF2 - almost exclusively because of adblock).
Sorry, that simply won't work. On many OEM laptops (many Sony, some Dell, some HP) you have components that simply won't work right with the default Windows drivers. The truth is that the OEMs actually do quite a bit of work digging up exact working versions of drivers; and debugging the dependances between them; and going back to the HW and SW vendors to resolve problems. I'd go so far as to say that you'd have a better chance of stock Ubuntu drivers working on your laptop than stock Windows drivers.
(yes, I know some of you will tell me you installed Win2K at work and it just worked - the business laptops without bleeding edge components seem to be more standardized - but try forcing a clean install on some multimedia laptop and I bet you go back to the OEM-reinstall-with-the-crap or you go to Ubuntu)
Dell, but they weren't excellent until I grabbed fresh drivers and the restore CD and did a clean install. I easily got a 10-15% performance boost on one of them, which I found kind of shocking. OEMs make money pre-loading some of this stuff, so I see their need/desire for it, but they really do need to be more selective. And how about just giving me the applications on a CD and letting me chose, would save me a lot of time.
It's funny that Microsoft is worried about distributors ruining their product, whereas Linux relies on distributors to make it into a usable product.
It's also funny that volunteer projects like Debian and Gentoo seem to have no problem making a great distribution out of widely scattered and disorganized software, whereas the commercial vendors who ship customized versions of Windows seem to be universally succeeding only in making Windows crappier to the point that you really don't want to use the customized version.
I guess that Microsoft middle road between providing just the bare bones like Linux and the FSF do on one hand, and providing a complete package, like Apple does, on the other hand, really isn't working well.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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.
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.
Linux Resources
This is Microsofts own fault. Back in the good old days, there were ads telling you to call 1-800-piracy (or whatever), if you bought a PC with Windows, and only got a restore CD, instead of a real Windows CD.
At some point they changed this policy,and now reward those manufacturer who sell systems with restore CDs. Of course the manufacturers jumped the chance, and included as many "craplets" as they could. And with most manufacturers shipping ONLY restore CDs and no install CDs, the only way to get a clean machine is to either buy a second copy of Windows, or replace your fully licensed OEM version with a pirated copy of whatever your friends are running (usually replacing XP Home with Pro, because that's what they have).
I call bullshit on this:
/dev/random > /dev/mem
cat
So, is linux buggy?
Something from userland? Here it is:
int main()
{
while(1) {
fork();
}
}
Beside the annoying trial crap that fills up diskspace, the worst stuff is the boot-time startup crap that cripples the machine and adds another 45 seconds to boot time. I'm not talking about system or server services here, but the third-party consumer applications like iTunes or Real-player. Msconfig is good for dianostics, but sometimes you have to hunt down offending start-up programs in the registry to permanantly turn them off at boot-time. MS should remove the "run" option from the registry for those sorts of things and require them to go into the old "start up" folder. That way, they will be easy to find, and a normal user can delete them without hosing the entire machine.
$ cat /dev/random > /dev/mem /dev/mem: Permission denied
bash:
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?
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Stop buying garbage, consumer-level hardware from the major OEMs if you don't want consumer-level garbage software shoved in your face.
Let's pick on Dell, since they're what I'm most familiar with in my professional dealings:
Part of the reason many of their machines, -especially- the Dell Inspiron laptops, are so cheap is because the cost of the machine is being heavily subsidised by 3rd-party product placements. They also outsource technical support for consumer-level hardware to second-rate call facilities in India that don't have the capability to escalate problems to technicians in the United States.
If you buy a Dell Precision laptop, you'll get the proper media and you won't be subject to piles of shovelware. Yes, it's somewhat more expensive, but you get treated much better. The build quality of the Precision line is miles better, to boot; it's more likely to last the rigours of four, five years of use.
Always remember: You get what you pay for.
That's the best description of those craptacular add-ons from OEM suppliers I've seen yet. Circusware, hehe. I remember the first time installing a retail copy of Windows on a home built PC. Startling in how clean it was. No trial anti-virus or AOL logos (okay, it was a while ago).
I thought it was interesting that Michael Dell asked how much people would pay to get a clean copy of the OS without all the bundled crapware. You can read it in this article: Zdnet blog
I would've asked how much it was worth to him to get me to stop building my own PC's and buy another Dell? The arrogance of the position that I would have to pay extra to get rid of crap I didn't want in the first place really chaps my undies. Screw you, Mikey. You can take your cheap ass hardware and OEM circusware, along with your call center techs who don't speak English as a native language, and stick it all right up your ass. Don't act like you have a right to my business. If you want my money, earn it you arrogant bitch.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It must suck to be a computer manufacturer.
*XP is released, Dell sells a billion computers*
Customers: Why the hell won't your computer allow me to edit my pictures, and why do I have a virus?
Tech Support: Well you need to install this third party software and...
Customers: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's too hard!!!!!!!!!!!! Do it for me!!!!!!!!!!!
System Builders: OK, it's all installed.
Customers: Why the hell is my computer so slow?
Tech Support: Well you said that you wanted us to install this software for you and...
Customers: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Make my computer faster!!!!!!!!!!!
System Builders: OK, it's a bare build again.
*Vista is released*
Customers: Why the hell won't your computer allow me to edit my pictures and why do I have a virus?
I think you're missing the point. The crapware was subsidizing your purchase. If he doesn't include it, he either loses the money, or he passes the difference along to the customer.
Think of all the people who talk about how they'd be willing to pay for tv shows without commercials (regardless of whether they'd actually shell out or not). Do you make the same argument in that case?
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The ulimit is a property of each process which is passed on to any children that it spawns. This works for any program, not just a shell. There is no reason why you can't ulimit your window manager: then, every program it launches will also be subject to the same resource limits.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
So, if Microsoft starts to block theese Craplets, does that mean the OEM people will be getting Turdburgled ?
I just want to make sure I have my terminology right for when the shit hits the fan.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
The solution then is for Microsoft to tell OEMs (who have to do what MS says if they want the great pricing) that they cannot ship:
A.Any product considered Spyware (the definition microsoft uses when they generate the MS anti-spyware lists would be a good place to start)
B.Anything that is time limited,feature limited etc and requires extra purchases to unlock functionality that would be available if you bought the program from a store. (so WOW is ok because the subscription money has to be paid even for a store bought copy)
or C.Anything that is a "demo", "lite", "trial" etc version or is otherwise limited compared to what you would get if you bought the same software in the shops.
That would stop the OEMs from installing most of the nasty crapware whilst still allowing them to install software like Firefox or other benificial software. They can even install full versions of anything they like.
Simple. Instead of bundling/trying to force bundling, Microsoft should force UNBUNDLING.
"We won't sell Windows to you unless you offer your users the option of a clean install with all the apps you want to bundle on seperate media."
I don't think the DoJ would have any problem with Microsoft forcing vendors to let the user decide what they want.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Microsoft recently bought them out, but sysinternals usually has the answer to things like this:
l ities/Autoruns.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/uti
It enumerates pretty much everything set to launch at start up and gives you the option to turn it off.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The best advice on a new machine is to re-install the OS. Unfortunately with some very low-end PCs, there isn't a re-install disk.
For corporate environments, Dell, HP (etc.) will pre-load a specified image with the corporate setup. Alternative is to use ghost or similar to build your machines.
The manufacturers get a couple of dollars for each crapware loaded (does any one know the real amount?) On Dells, the Optiplex (business line) has less crap than the Dimension (consumer), but they've started putting crapware on the Otiplexes. A recent machine came with Google desktop & search pre-installed, a search URL redirector (which was a pain to remove) and various manufacturer's links.
Just reformat the thing, then you know you have a clean install. (It takes about 20 minutes to install XP, and then about 140 MB of downloads & countless reboots to bring it up to date.
Equally annoying, why do the pre-load a 6 month old version of the OS>
I've had to work out my own solution to the "crap". When I get a new computer, I wipe the drive and install the OS from scratch. Yes it's a hassle, and it takes too much time and I shouldn't have to do it, but the alternative is dealing with a bunch of junk that's incompatible and buggy.
The bigger problem comes with the computers I bought that only had those "Recovery" disks instead of actual Windows installation disks. The last time I dealt with one of those I actually went out and bought a copy of Windows (on top of the one that came with the system) and installed from the copy I purchased. I complained of course (it was Dell) but they didn't seem to care and wouldn't consider sending me Windows disks even though I'd paid for a Windows license. That was the last Dell I bought.
That was just one of the reasons that I know only buy computers from companies that include full versions of Windows. Or better, no OS at all.
Since Microsoft has all the power in this equation, I blame them for not putting more pressure on their "partners" to do the right thing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
1. Buy box.
2. Reformat drive.
3. Install OS clean from media without all the crap, or use an existing corporate image.
But the idea of blaming third-party products for Vista's perception problems is the clumsiest FUD to come out of Microsoft's spin-doctor department in years. They have bugs that log to system files in WinXP that haven't been fixed for THREE YEARS or longer, so I don't buy the "it's the driver" excuses any more.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
'... 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.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
I think that the key word there was "workstation". Computers sold to the business side of the market have far less of a problem with this sort of thing. Take note when buying your next computer.
If Microsoft OS designers took the Operating Systems Design 101 classes many universities provided over the years, they wouldn't be in this situation. Think about it. Why do Windows users think that when an application crashes or has problems, it is the operating system causing the problem. And if THAT is still the case for their latest OS release, they deserve getting blamed for the failures.
Device drivers are another story but still, tech support should be able to troubleshoot the problem instead of telling most people to reinstall the OS.
Forcing developers to get MS certification is just another way to control the development market and allow Microsofts own developers advantages when they feel they want the market. It is interesting how Microsoft is already concerned about who will get blamed for poor user experiences with their NEW operating system. I guess businesses must be having a grand time with it already.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Actually, it is directly the fault of Microsoft. Why they would design an OS that requires/allows third party developers to insert/replace files/directorys in the operating system itself is beyond me. Application files should be separated from operating system files. I should be able to remove an app completely by deleting the directory it is in. I should not have to worry about a buttload of orphaned or modified DLLs being left behind in my fricking system folder.
Then there is that fucking disaster they call the registry.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"