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

Craplets?

[dsginter]

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.

Re:Craplets?

[BirdDoggy]

I give MS a couple more points to the good for adding a delightful new word to my vocabulary.

Re:Craplets?

[dr_strang]

"Craplets": Best new word this year so far. I respectfully submit this word for inclusion into Webster's Dictionary.

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:Craplets?

[KUHurdler]

I totally agree with MS on this one. Now if Microsoft would just stop all the background craplets themselves... we'd have a finely tuned machine.

Re:Craplets?

[Corporate Troll]

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

Re:Craplets?

[IAmTheDave]

Agreed on both points. First, just give me an OS, and stop bundling all your own shit with it. But to the GGGP post, it took me 45 minutes to uninstall all the crap that came on my new work Dell (Compuserve still lives??) - and the worst part is they don't even include a Windows install disc with the machine!! All you get is a "restore" disk which restores your computer to its initial crap-loaded state. I hate having 40 tray icons load when I boot - it shouldn't take my brand-spankin new dual core 2GB RAM machine longer to boot than my fresh Windows install on an old P4 512MB machine.

Can I see all the crap and bloat of OEM-installed apps (all for the Benjamins, of course) tainting a person's view of the OS (and even the "Dell"/other brand?) - abso-freikin-lootly.

Re:Craplets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe so, but if I was the word I would start worrying. Microsoft has embraced it and the next step is to extend it. I don't know how they will do that but once they do then the word will be on the road to extinction. Unless, of course, Microsoft have applied for a patent for it.

Application at the USPTO:
Application for patent by Microsoft Corporation.
Craplet: Microsoft Certified Module for the Windows Vista Operating System.

Re:Craplets?

[drinkypoo]

FWIW my HP Compaq nw9440 "mobile workstation" machine didn't come with a bunch of crap. It had the stuff to support the hardware, norton internet security, and that's it. I removed norton internet security of course, as it is a festering pile of flaming dragon shit, and everything has been pretty much fine since. The lower-grade machine you buy the more shit they put on it because they get money for giving you that pile of crap. On a higher-end machine they don't want to offend you.

Re:Craplets?

[gmajoe]

Not only that, but "OEM and the Craplets" may be the best band name I've heard in a while.

It IS Vista's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the operating system's fault if an installed program causes system instabilities.

Re:It IS Vista's fault

[Ingolfke]

MS isn't claiming that the OS will be unstable. They're saying poorly written apps will crash and the users will blame that on Vista, not the poorly written apps.

It's a legit concern... although I'd say that's part of rolling out any new piece of software that other software is dependent on, so they just need to deal with it.

Re:It IS Vista's fault

[timmarhy]

thats rubbish. i can write a program what would crash ANY OS if it was preloaded on there. i agree with the poster, MS does have it tough in these respects, that much of what oem's preload is bullshit that slows down the system.

Re:It IS Vista's fault

[giorgiofr]

fork bomb + autorun = bad experience on ANY platform

My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:My guess

[gutnor]

To ruin the user experience

Actually it takes only 1 application that you use frequently that sucks and your overall feeling of the OS is down. Just take an example, how often have you heard "linux sucks because I XXX does not work".

Same happen in Windows. Buy a new laptop and see it painfully load 35 icons in the systray, replace the default association of JPG file to another crapware that display a 30 seconds modal popup dialog that says the viewer you are using is shareware and open IE on the HowTo buy page. The feeling of the user will be: Vista sucks, and I paid 2000$ and my machine is slow like a dog because of Vista. Natural feeling.
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.

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:My guess

[Lumpy]

The feeling of the user will be: Vista sucks, and I paid 2000$ and my machine is slow like a dog because of Vista. Natural feeling.

Problem is that the customer is RIGHT in that statement. I am demoing Vista here at the office because the Boss wants us to test it as many of our customers are the "oooooh new shiney!" type.

I am running it in slow hardware... Pentium 4 3.2ghz 1gig ram and SATA drives.

and it is in fact SLOW AS A DOG compared to XP.... Yes, I only have a low end Nvidia 6600GT video card with 256 meg of ram, so that might be the problem as well.

But the honest truth is that Vista is very slow compared to XP. if I turn off all the crap it gets better but most people wont turn off the crap because the difference between vista and XP disappears.

And that is what customers want... Purdy shiney flashey! they do not give a rats ass about anything they cant see and feel.

Good!

[HugePedlar]

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.

good and evil

[jimstapleton]

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.

Understandable

[Saxmachine]

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.

Re:Understandable

[adnonsense]

Is there a good laptop manufacturer who will sell me a "blank slate" laptop?

Yes

Re:Understandable

[Speare]

I like the Apple hardware products and the OSX, but to say that Apple doesn't load their new laptops with crapware and sleazeware would be disingenuous. If I buy a $3K MacBook Pro, should I expect to get a popup asking if I want to upgrade my trial copy of QuickTime? I enjoy the iLife suite of software, but I didn't have much of a choice to buy the laptop without it. I don't think the trial edition of OpenBase or the inclusion of OmniOutliner or ComicChat can really be considered a "blank slate."

The only thing in Apple's favor here (and it's a big point in their favor) is that it's absolutely and amazingly trivial to wipe the slate clean myself: drag unwanted items to trashcan, Empty Trash. I am still annoyed that a preinstalled QuickTime on a flagship hardware image is nagware. Hello, the 70s called and want their nags back. If the alternatives like VLC and Mplayer would really integrate as a replacement for QuickTime, I'd probably use them instead.

Yes

[The MAZZTer]

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 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.

Those Craplets are the keys to Microsoft's success

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Observations

[RAMMS EIN]

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.

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.

They should ban startup apps from the registry

[HighOrbit]

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.

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?

Mod parent up!

[HangingChad]

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.

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.