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Sony Offers Bloatware Removal Service — For a Fee [Updated]
linuxwrangler writes "First Sony packed its laptops with Microsoft Works, Microsoft Office trial version, Corel Paint Shop Pro trial version, WinDVD and more. Now it is offering to remove the bloatware. Of course marketing changed the name from 'removing the crap we stuck you with' to 'Fresh Start' software optimization. And they want you to pay $149.99 to clean up their mess — $49.99 for 'Fresh Start' on top of the required $100.00 Vista Business upgrade. You can get about $25.00 of that cost back if you select all available 'no-software' options which are only available after selecting the $149.99 'upgrade'. Wonder what they would charge to remove Windows completely." Update 11:57 GMT by SM: It seems that massive outrage at Sony's "Fresh Start" program has encouraged them to drop the fee for scrubbing your laptop of bloatware before shipping it your way.
I was assuming that PC Decrapifyer cleaned the plethora of extraneous Sony-specific applications, the list does not list one Sony item: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/apps
Still, is it is a very FREE and very Useful tool for new PCs.
Another link OTFA:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/21/sony-hates-you-offers-50-fresh-start-option-to-build-your-la/
Why stop at removing "Works" when you could use Ubuntu? Wouldn't Sony then have to give you a rebate for the OS you did not use?
You would be better off even if you wasted $149 on XP and used your old software. This option does not rule out a nice free software partition. I can't believe anyone will use the "fresh start" service.
Almost seems easier to just buy the Windows OEM version and install from scratch. Can you get a rebate on a Vista license bundled with your laptop that you aren't using like you could on previous versions of Windows?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
From the charging-you-for-our-mistakes dept.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
I was a fish. And that we could buy computers without an OS if we chose to.
Consider that best buy, circuit city, and every small time PC repair shop on earth offers this exact same service. People already pay hand over fist to have someone else run some basic software, or in Sony's case... run that software once, update the image, and image that option onto your PC instead of the bloated one.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Instead of allowing them to charge you for removing Windows, simply don't accept the EULA and call Sony to get your money back. Research it online--there's been a lot of people who have been refunded the Microsoft tax for just a few hours of work.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Not really that big a deal... I guess for $150 VS a few clicks and reboots, I'd rather keep the cash. (I have a new Vaio and already did this) Yes, I know it is only $50 but I have no need for Vista Business either.
And if you are in a business buying a large volume of laptops (presumably the intended market?), wouldn't it still be more efficient to pay your IT guy to do the same?
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
Sony will NOT be charging a fee.
Sony Drops $50 Fee to Remove Useless Bloatware
Oops.
Next time, do your research to make sure you have the latest info, mmmkay?
i am a soviet space shuttle
The unfortunate thing is that the overwhelming majority of people who purchase a Sony PC will pay for this "service", because they know no better.
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
is in order.
Just keep pounding on these people until they submit and start acting responsible.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you have a large volume of identical PCs, it would be easier just to reimage the entire thing. Or create a script to do the same.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
This is one of the most refreshing things about a Mac- you don't have to reload the OS as soon as you buy the machine. I would NEVER use a preload version of XP or Vista. Never, ever, ever.
I haven't seen what Ubuntu preloads look like from the likes of Dell. Hopefully, it is nice and clean and about what I would do if I installed it myself and got all the drivers working.
Gizmodo is reporting that Sony have already stated that starting tomorrow the service will be free.
...this isn't about removing windows. It's about removing add-on software. Know how most PCs come with anti-virus, anti-spyware, google earth, google toolbar, etc. pre-installed? That's the type of thing it might remove (I don't know the exact list of what it does remove). It's got nothing to do with removing the O/S.
On top of that - why not go the easy route and get a machine that doesn't run Windows in the first place - either O/S-less or with a Linux or BSD distribution pre-installed instead?
I saw that Dell has a small business line of PC's that they claim to ship free of all that bloatware. I dont remember the name of that product line. But I liked the fact that you didnt have to select it as an option, it was a standard feature.
The first thing I do to every new computer I get (or my family) is to reformat and reinstall windows.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
This is why it's a good idea to avoid brand new hardware from unfriendly companies like Sony. If it won't work with PCLinuxOS, Mepis or one of the Ubuntu live CDs, you don't want it. XP won't work either, which leaves you with Vista and hunting for the dozens of programs needed to make Windows useful. You might as well give up. Hardware that's just a year or two older or that's "low power" will perform better under free software than new hardware under Vista and software that does not break XP is going to get harder and harder to find.
....but I'm holding out for the pay-to-throw-out option.
We can do better!
"If the answer involves giving money to Sony, you must have asked a really silly question."
For a while now gamers have been complaining that in-game ads don't offset the cost of the game
So I don't get it, ad's have offset sony PC prices, and we're complaining about it?
Perhaps they should still offer it for regular edition, then market the business edition upgrade as "Upgrade to Business Edition and get Fresh Start free, a fifty dollar value!"
Loose lips lose spit.
In some ways, Sony is at least being (partially) honest in that they explicitly price the removal. Other vendors hide the cost by wrapping bloatware free versions into specific models (for example, Dell's Vostos and Optiplex) don't have much bloatware, but are not exactly identical to an equivalent model.
Does anyone know how much the vendors actually get for installing various trial versions?
Also, there is some danger of one man's bloatware being another's convenience. For example is pre-installing Adobe Acrobat and Flash bloatware or value? How about Google toolbar? Firefox? And on down the line... iTunes?
And, Macs aren't exactly bloatware free. Quicktime is a trial version with a nag screen to upgrade. Macs come with trial versions of Office (how much does Microsoft pay for that) and Omni outliner.
Why pay Sony when you can get Crap Cleaner for free? Uninstall the junk you don't want via add/remove programs and then use Crap Cleaner to clean up anything that the uninstallers leave behind.
I have a Sony Vaio subnotebook with all kinds of crap installed on top of WinXP Pro. But here's the deal. You can make a CD version of their restore kit, though. And when you restore that way, they let you choose to ignore the little "restore partition" that wastes a lot of space so that's awesome.
But the best part is, the "crapware" doesn't go on until the OS is all restored. It's clean until you finally boot back up and it starts asking for CD's again. At least in the version I have, you can cancel the process there. You'll have to get your own drivers from the download site, which isn't hard, they have a nice streamline downloader that produces a report and everything.
So at least with my Vaio T-340P I had no troubles working around the (realistically minor compared to some machines) bloatware.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
When my shop sells any new system, my techs go over the machine before it leaves the building - the first thing I have them do is remove the crapware (including the Norton trial most come with), load Avast if they dont have their own AV, install Spybot, windows updates. The idea is that the user can take full advantage of the system from the moment it leaves the store.
Some local stores will bundle software on their white box PCs.
Fortunately it's usually something relatively useful, such as the free version of AVG AV or a DVD burner/media package.
The brand names use these loads of bloatware to reduce the price of their systems, in addition to their larger purchasing power, so they can compete with the local white box stores who otherwise would be cheaper in many cases.
After all the problems removing the bloatware - try uninstalling McAfee and having it hose your network connection for example - you're better off buying a white box from a local store without the crap. Plus instead of some "recovery partition" - which is useless when the hard drive crashes - you get a real OEM install CD that you can definitely recover XP with - if you don't lose it, which most people do unfortunately.
Of course, for laptops, you're still screwed. For laptops you kinda need to buy from a brand because they're the only companies big enough to buy large enough quantities to reduce the cost of developing and supporting a decent laptop. Even so, the more I see and work on laptops, the less I like them. Too proprietary, too fragile, too expensive, to hard to expand, to hard to work on. Companies who use laptops for corporate desktop replacements are shooting themselves in the foot. Their support costs will triple for laptops.
PCs are commodities. Buy them that way.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
If you want a large number of PC's Sony is NOT who you choose. Many of their laptops have drivers installed in the OEM setup disk that flat out aren't available any other way. Most shops that have large numbers of machines use some sort of imaging setup and that doesn't work with an OEM edition of Windows, only with volume licensed editions.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'm a bit shocked. Well, not shocked exactly... more like generally disappointed.
I have run into problem after problem with Sony computers, PDAs and just about everything except for their TVs and video cameras. When I took on my current employment, there were Sony laptops littered everywhere and they were all dying horrible deaths of one sort or another. (Most of them had a problem with the video panel flaking out) Meanwhile, the Dells and IBM/Lenovo units were running strong in spite of their age and the cause for pulling them out of action was because they were simply too old and slow.
I will never buy Sony when there is a choice. Never. They have crappy warranty service. They have crappy policies. The company is demonstrably anti-consumer. I simply will not trust Sony for far too many reasons. The very idea of trusting business functions to a Sony computer is simply frightening.
What a crock of bullshit.
Just don't fork out the extra bucks a Sony or IBM laptop costs, when you can get cheaper non-brand stuff with the same hardware that doesn't come bundled with horrible, horrible apps.
I just bought a CR31 (no not the pink one) and there it is selectable whether you want the Office trial and some other stuff or not. Also Vista home premium has this wonderful feature build in which allows you to shrink the Vista partition size so you can make space for Ubuntu. I wonder whether Microsoft had to get beaten up by someone to make this happen.
I have to say that I bought it in Europe maybe they do things different here. I find it interesting that Sony lets this kind of thing happen on its upscale laptops though (the TZs seem to be expensive).
Also I haven't used Vista since shrinking its partition so who knows what else lurks there.
Je me souviens.
Spaulding: What do you fellas get an hour?
Ravelli: For playing, we get-a ten dollars an hour.
Spaulding: I see. What do you get for not playing?
Ravelli: Twelve dollars an hour.
Spaulding: Well, clip me off a piece of that.
Ravelli: Now for rehearsing, we make special rate. That's-a fifteen dollars an hour...That's-a for rehearsing.
Spaulding: And what do you get for not rehearsing?
Ravelli: You couldn't afford it. You see, if we don't rehearse, we a-don't play, and if we don't play (he snaps his finger) - that runs into money.
Just replace playing and rehearsing with installing bloatware and installing Windows.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Either your "IT guys" aren't getting paid enough, or you can't do basic math. Or you have a very different definition of "a large volume" than most IT shops do.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
The fee is no longer in effect: http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/21/sony-is-giving-fresh-start-a-fresh-start-losing-the-50-fee/
"To uninstall a program, select it from the list and click "Uninstall""
Not really that big a deal...
That's a bit like saying "people who receive spam can just click Delete".
It doesn't work very well when there are loads of things to uninstall, and it doesn't address the fact that it shouldn't be necessary in the first place.
But isn't the Quicktime a full-feature reader (kinda like Acrobat - all the 'read' works while the 'create' doesn't)?
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
1) Sony's own load images are to blame for much of the pre-installed adware and unnecessary bloat, why should there even be a fee in the first place to NOT install software?
2) Often uninstall in Windows isn't as easy as clicking "uninstall" as you suggest. Because of the nifty Windows inventions such as the registry and protected system folders, uninstall is no longer what it used to be. Many times, programs leave traces in the registry which never come out and can still slow the computer, and even cause crashes down the road. If you never load undesired programs in the first place, you avoid this added risk altogether.
I know not all programs take a merciless rampage through the registry and some uninstallers may be programmed without error, but lets face it, if any one programmer on a project left one registry entry undocumented, one system folder modification unchecked, one startup program off the uninstaller, you have a risk...
now multiply that by the number of programmers on the projects...
now by the amount of bloat you have on your system before it's removed...
It may not be worth $50 to you or me even after all of that because we can easily reinstall, but to the average consumer it can be a lot more cumbersome.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
How much would you bet that the vendors of crapware pay Sony to add their trial software? Sony knows perfectly well that their customers hate this stuff but rather than forgo the revenue they wanted to try to pass the paying on to you, the customer.
Sony's offer to make this service "free, with upgrade to business version" still allows them to get paid. I suspect the spread between the OEM OS cost of the consumer edition vs. the business one is still less than they'll charge for the upgrade. In other words, this is a better way to hide the fact that they just want to get paid.
Not really, have you ever tried installing Windows from a CD that wasn't OEM?
i have installed every major version of Windows from non-OEM disks (even floppy disks for win95 if you want to talk about suckage).
i have also installed metric fucktonnes of linux distros.
guess what? there is some variation with different advantages and problems - but linux, windows - pretty much equally easy or pain in the ass depending on your point of view.
To be honest, it's completely reasonable that Sony charge for the bloatware-removal service, given that it costs them money. It's quite possible that for the el-cheapo machines (if Sony has any), that the only way they make money is from the fees that they charge the vendors to put the trial versions on the hard disk.
You want a computer without ads? Then expect to personally replace the lost income. Just like you would with TV.
(Or you can do the work yourself. If your time is worth $50/hr, it's pretty much a wash.)
That may be true for geek crowd at /. But what about a older couple who purchased a computer to communicate with their kids/grandkids?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is a good article because now we have some idea about what all of that bloatware is worth to PC manufacturers. $150.
to remove their rootkit.
There are alternatives, but it's only quite recently that customers have begun to value the different possibilities.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Gee, if I didn't know any better this is one of those "Create the problem so I can save you from that that problem" thing. I forgot the psychological term for this but this is exactly what this is.
Create a bunch rootkits and other malware and then ask Sony to "solve" it. They have have the nerve to ask money for this.
I call this ransom ware, pay company to get the malware on your system and pay to get the same company to remove it.
Is this the result of collective wisdom of /. moderators?!!
I'm writing this from Leopard, and my other two machines run Ubuntu but I have installed Windows (98 - XP) on several hundred different configurations, same goes for various Linux distros but that ignorant comment of yours, both about the time it takes to install Windows and how you'll have to track down "every single last driver" is nothing but trolling.
I haven't installed Vista, so I won't comment on that.
The number one question..Why buy from $ony in the first place.A company with a known history of utter disregard for customers.and customer service that is a nightmare.
This sounds so much like them.What surprises me is that they decided to drop the charge.Pity the poor people that buy from them
"but then wouldn't my laptop cost more?"
It might cost exactly the same, but with the money paid
to the PC Mfgr going straight to it's "bottom line".
Heck, they might charge you more with the crud on there,
because the "value has been enhanced", right?
What happened to prices before and after the crudware
installs started?
emt 377 emt 4
Trust me it doesn't work.
I bought a Sony laptop 6 years ago and it was badly bloated. Immediately upon booting up the cheap pc-cillen virus protection would take up all of the available processing time and have to be killed.
Mind you that was on a factory install with no modifications of anysort. And if I needed to reinstall the OS, the program would be back on and locking things up.
Eventually I decided to upgrade to freebsd which solved that problem handily, but the only way of decrapifying the laptop was to either pay for a non-OEM copy of windows or pirate it.
A shame really, because the laptop was great in pretty much every other way. It does make me wonder how pathetic their QA department is if they ship a system that locks up immediately after having the OS clean installed though.
Just go into a Best Buy and say "yes" to having their technicians do a "setup".
Sorry but htere is no fee next time read the fine print.
Wonder what they would charge to remove Windows completely
and the correct answer is $1499
Yes that's a lot, but you must admit, getting rid of Windows is worth it!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
so now you have to pay for their uninstallers separately!?
I agree about Sony. I've not had good luck with their laptops when it comes to OS reinstallation.
Like a lot of people here I've installed numerous varieties of Windows on just about every make of laptop out there over the years. What really matters is whether or not the manufacturer makes drivers readily available for download, or insists that you use a customized "recovery disc", or worse, leaves you dependent upon a "recovery partition." That sucks bigtime when your hard drive fails or you blow the partition table.
So it goes both ways. I've installed Windows XP on a couple of Toshibas and I'll be damned if WindowsUpdate didn't have a driver for every device. Conversely, I tried to put XP Pro on a Vaio a couple years ago and found Sony's site was decidedly unfriendly in that regard. WindowsUpdate was no help either. Perhaps that situation has improved, but at this point I don't trust Sony to support their equipment properly. Recently I installed XP Pro on an older IBM ThinkPad R40 (pre-Lenovo) and IBM's site had every driver ever released for it there for the taking. Just the way it should be.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=404
to never buy a Sony product. I've had the misfortune of supporting vaio users many times over the years. Bloatware is hardly the platform's biggest issue.
I don't need
I recently decided to buy a laptop. I decided almost immediately that I wasn't even going to look at anything from Sony. Given their CD rootkit trick, and most especially their arrogant reaction to the discovery thereof, I thought "No!". I would prefer to avoid doing business with a company which has displayed such disregard and disrespect for their customers - especially for an expensive purchase like a laptop.
In light of the news about Sony providing such a valuable and reasonable service - charging me to remove all the crap that they put on there in the first place - I'm thinking maybe I need to give them a second chance.
Yeah right.
Sure I read that they are going to STOP charging for the service. But for everyone who has already paid...
Fuck you Sony!
The bit that REALLY pissed me off was some screensaver that would kick in because it was evident that it downloading new stuff as well. It took me a while to find that one.
:-).
Some stuff is OK, but maybe I got simply used to zap the rubbish from the moment I get the thing - Windows Vista, Symantec AntiVirus and trial versions of MS software go first (to be replaced by Windows XP, Kaspersky and OpenOffice on the Windows partition, and some Linux distro on the more used side, although I have found the latest Ubuntu not very happy on it). And Windows drivers can be a *bastard* to install because there's a specific sequence to it.
What I like about Sony is the quality of the screens, and the SZ models I use also travel quite well. Only a new battery is insanely expensive, but I found a better source for that
Insert
Me, I'd rather keep telling the stupid computer that I want to reboot later. That way I only have to do it once and get rid of all that cruft at the same time. Of course, if you really like watching it reboot, you can do it your way. Whatever floats your boat.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Because Sony subsidizes the cost of the computer this way.
I know that on Slashdot, and really amoungst all IT literate people, its long been the trend to hate the software that PC manfacturers package in. But the reality is that it isn't malice or greed that puts its there, its consumer demand; not for the software itself, but for PC manufacturers to do anything to make computers cheaper. People like my mom don't care that the machine runs slower, or that her son spends long time removing this crap, she does care that the unit cost $100 less than it would have otherwise.
(disclaimer: I used to work for Dell, and before that I worked indirectly for HP; while this was never part of my job for either company, I did at times get information on how much specific companies paid to be slapped in every system, and from everything I've heard $100 is a very conservative estimate of how much units are being subsidized)
"To uninstall a program, select it from the list and click "Uninstall""
I wish I had mod points to mod you troll. Take a fresh laptop. Uninstall everything other than the OS. Count the size of the data on the drive. Format the drive. Install the OS. If the number from the first part is larger than the second, then there is a difference between a "fresh" install and an install that had crapware put on it then removed. I've done this exercise. The sizes don't match. Crapware does not uninstall completely and cleanly in all cases. Anyone that has ever used Windows extensively (like supporting it in an IT environment) knows that to be the case.
And if you are in a business buying a large volume of laptops (presumably the intended market?), wouldn't it still be more efficient to pay your IT guy to do the same?
Ah, you obviously have no experience with a large corporate environment. You buy lots of computers. You wipe one when it comes in and put the OS and whatever programs you want for the standard corporate load on it. You take that image and put it on all the other computers. If you have bored IT people sitting around all day and computers rolling through on a daily basis, you won't be messing with uninstalling any of these programs.
Learn to love Alaska
$150 * n (where n = the number of laptops)
$30 an hour * 5 hours = $150
= WAY longer than this operation should take but then he's underpaid, right? maybe not up to the task at that salary level?
So then, lets reverse that: $50 an hour * 3 hours = $150.
Now then, we see that you are clearly being ripped off. If the guy that earns $50 an hour takes three hours to uninstall a few programs... well, that's ridiculous.
To recap:
Underpaid guy does the task in four hours or less = you save money.
Overpaid (for this sort of thing) guy does the task in less than three hours = you save money.
This is infinitely scalable. In fact, I would bet, since it really is just a few clicks (and waiting), you could easily do ten at a time. If n=10, "my" $50 an hour IT guy cost me $100 in labor, and I saved $1400 on my laptops. I'm pretty sure even Google does not pass out more than 10 laptops at any one office at a time. But even if it was 100, nothing I've said changes
Is my basic math OK?
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
1.I've done this on my new Vaio. There are certainly most likely a few registry keys or whatever left over, but I certainly don't notice them. How the hell does that make me a troll?
2.Hate to break it to you, but you are the kind of mod that everyone here bitches about. DISAGREE != TROLL.
Please get over yourself.
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
sort of like how the Posche 911 GT-3 RS and the Lamborgini Gallardo Superleggerra are both less car than the car its based on yet they cost thousands more...
not that i'm comparing a sony oem machine to a porsche or a lamborgini...
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I call FUD. I have installed Windows (95, 98, 2000, XP, XP x64, and Vista Business x64) many, many times from non-OEM CDs, and I assure that you that all of those are certainly no worse than, and usually better than, my experiences with Debian, Gentoo, or pretty much any Linux distribution.
Drivers? The last time I had to look for drivers to get normal hardware working was with Windows 98. Sure, I had to supply a third-party driver for software RAID on my machine, but normal users don't have to deal with that sort of thing.
Finally, Vista actually does improve on the install process by letting you provide third-party drivers on USB (before you could only provide them on floppies). Of course, I don't deal with any install issues anymore, as I've made a custom slip-streamed CD for my own machine :-)
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
... it wasn't a very good joke, anyway.
IRC == Internet Relay Chat. Apparently, pretending to misunderstand you in an attempt at humor.
Code or be coded.
Okay, I take it back: you can do basic math.
But even leaving aside questions of whether there are better ways to get slimmed-down Windows installs deployed to a large number of machines with minimal manual intervention (there are) your assumptions are still questionable. For one thing, there's a pretty good likelihood that any corporate IT department deploying Windows laptops in the first place will want the features of the business edition. So let's remove that from the cost of this "upgrade". Now we're down to $50. According to TFS, you can recoup another $25 of the cost with a few configuration options, so now we're down to as little as $25. (For an option that should be, and now is, free — but we'll leave that aside for the sake of discussion.) Using your math and your assumptions about parallelization, for n=10, you've saved about $150.
But what you're really failing to take into consideration, here, is the opportunity cost for this excercise in tedium. Presumably your highly-skilled IT staff are paid $50/hr to do something more useful and productive than mashing buttons — but for the last couple of hours, they haven't been doing it. That means you've effectively lost most of the salary you paid them for those hours, mitigated at best slightly by the benefit you gain from crapware-free laptops. At the end of the day, you've maybe broken even on this undertaking, and your IT guy has wasted hours of his life uninstalling Windows software. Under this scenario, are you sure you weren't better off just paying Sony their extortion fee?
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
It'd be nice if the more reputable benchmarking/PC review sites started to apply pressure on manufacturers to clean up their act. They could run all benchmarks only on the systems as they ship out of the box, without optimizing by uninstalling any of the craplets. It's gotten to the point, where I recall reading a review where the reviewer said that it felt like the computer was broken and virus infested on taking it out of the box, and it wasn't until he uninstalled all the extras that it started to perform up to its impressive specs. Surely that would have a big effect on the benchmarks.
It's true this isn't vista. Also, it's older. But I guess I forgot to make my point. This thing I described only works with a specific method of recovery. If I recovered via the boot partition I never get a chance to cancel the process. Basically, it asks for a cd to get started with the bloatware install and I'm forcefully crashing the little startup app that does it, then removing it from startup.
:)
I suppose that was a vital point I forgot to make
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
It's not just Sony that installs crapware, and they are not the worst. At least in my experience.
I do find it ironic that they are charging for a service when it is more accurately the LACK of a service. After all the difference is just between which disk image to put on the HD. That represents a very small cost.
The worst that I ever ran into was a HP laptop. It had Vongo pre-installed which MELTED the operating system the moment it started up for the first time. It could not be repaired, removed, etc. The only thing I could do was to completely wipe the whole system and install everything from scratch. I could not even use the recovery CD, since that put Vongo right back on it.
Crapware is not even accurate either, at least not totally. It's adware. It's the manufacturer in collusion with a bunch of "crappy" software vendors installing trial software, or software with monthly fees. Sony and HP are getting kickbacks on that, I know it.
I thought I'd comment -- I'd been eying one of those ultra-lightweight, tiny Vaio laptops for a while now, but I have the same reservations about Sony hardware that you do. That said, Fujitsu often offers comparable systems, and I've had good luck installing "vanilla" XP Pro and divers flavors of Linux on my Lifebook P5010. Fujitsu has long since stopped supporting it now, but I've never had any trouble installing more recent chipset drivers, etc., that I downloaded direct from the manufacturers. This is not a knock on Lenovo or Toshiba; I just find that Fujitsu is often overlooked, when they offer some sweet little ultralights.
By comparison, I've recently been dismayed to discover that I cannot install Mac OS X on my Sony Vaio desktop, apparently because my SATA chipset is not in AHCI mode. Unfortunately, Sony seems to have crippled the BIOS so there is no way to switch to that mode.
Breakfast served all day!
Presumably Sony is flashing all these laptops from a master hard disk image, so here's a question. When one orders a machine without the crap, are they simply using an image of a clean install ... or are they running some kind of script that actually removes the preinstalled software? If it's the latter, you'd be better of reinstalling a fresh copy of Windows yourself.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You're just wrong on every premise.
50 units of laptop per day, day after day is a practical deployment schedule for a middling organization.
Google isn't a middling organization. It's Google. I doubt if they deployed that many each day their deployment would ever finish before the next deployment cycle began. Same with IBM and most other Fortune 50's.
People who deploy on that scale use imaging. They would consider the idea of uninstalling anything during the deployment a failure of the process.
Nobody in their right mind in the deployments field would consider starting with the OEM's standard shipping image. They use a standard enterprise licensed version, add only the windows options they must have and they install their licensed apps with updates and lock down the services, firewall, user accounts and local machine policy settings among other preparation steps.
The OEMs will put your own image on for a small fee if you're buying thousands of units.
Some of them then have their equipment shipped to a third party team for last minute hardware corrections, burn in testing, BIOS and physical security adjusment and other processing.
There is a lot more to it than this but you get the picture. Large scale deployments is a complicated task with process management, milestones, schedules and a lot of other stuff. It's not even remotely like your one guy taking three hours to uninstall apps on one PC you envisioned.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
A company that would install malware or rootkits on your computer would think nothing of installing bloatware. I hate the "blame the victim" mentality (and I'm not condoning such thinking either) -- however, it's unfortunate that people aren't more discerning about whom they give their hard earned dollars to.
I've said this before on slashdot and I'll just say it again, forgoing all accusations of dispensing flamebait, with the assertion that "I do not buy Sony products anymore". Besides there are plenty of alternatives in the marketplace so it's not like I'm really restricting my options.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Rape Rape Rape
This should read... Sony Offers Bloatware Removal Service For Free
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Might as well try Gentoo.
The car analogy: a Gentoo system is to a Windows system as the Ultima GTR is to the Posche 911 GT-3 RS. You have to buy the parts yourself and put them together, but price wise it is practically free and performance wise it totally blows everything away (if you ever get it compiled/assembled enough to test it, if you do it right, ymmv).
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Why do any of you care? I certainly don't. Sony won't get another penny of my money that I can prevent. After the rootkit fiasco, why the hell would you willing spend money with Sony?
is it free?
no, then who actually owns the hardware?
why would i pay for garbage, and pay more not to have garbage?
just buy a non crapware infested pc.
if not, you cna sue the company for tampering with your system, hacking your data, phoning home, etc for commercial gain. last i checked, these were crimes in most countries. a few massive lawsuits, with INSISTED jailtime by the plaintiffs in criminal court, adn some massive publicity so they judges cant be bought, or silently favor corporate interests (it happens more than you think).
What happened to Sony? I seem to remember some point in the past where they didn't completely suck. Nowadays it seems like they're purposely looking to piss off as many people as possible with every decision they make.
They realized crapware pisses off customers. So instead of not putting it on, they're going to charge them even more to take it off? It hurts my brain to think that they actually thought that was a good solution.
There's at least one application on this HP notebook for which the "uninstall" button has been grayed out. Additionally, there are other applications that don't even appear on the list. We're talking about shit that's designed to be difficult to remove.
They don't call it "nagware" for nothing.
I believe companies are paid to install trial versions on new computers, so from Sony's point of view the charge made sense...in a twisted sort of way. They're not making money from the installs so pass the cost directly on to the consumer.
My main, and should have been only point, was that I would gladly uninstall a few programs to save $150.
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
Sony is utter rubbish. You don't even get support here in NL, even for hardware problems, if you upgrade your laptop from Vista to XP.
-- Cheers!
Okay - now that they've "quickly" come to the light - it would be wise for all those sites that slammed them to reverse course and praise Sony for doing it right and responding quickly.
You don't deserve to own one. And you're propably one of the machines in the army of half a dozen huge botnets that are sending out 90% of the spam.
So return it to it's box, NOW, and stfu.
The amount of work involved depends on the OEM and what they're installing this week.
Right now HP aren't too bad. But I've seen some Dells which have so much crap installed it's not 30 minutes - it's more like 2 hours.
...if I really, really wanted a Sony (unlikely), if I could just have the hardware? No discs, no manuals, hell I don't even want the warranty. I'll put Debian on it and be done. Thank you. Just the software I want the way I want it. This way those bean counters at Sony will have saved themselves an entire 3 Dollars on a Vista sticker & license.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I've installed Windows XP on a couple of Toshibas and I'll be damned if WindowsUpdate didn't have a driver for every device.
You first need to be able to connect to Windows Update though.
Conversely, I tried to put XP Pro on a Vaio a couple years ago and found Sony's site was decidedly unfriendly in that regard. WindowsUpdate was no help either. Perhaps that situation has improved, but at this point I don't trust Sony to support their equipment properly. Recently I installed XP Pro on an older IBM ThinkPad R40 (pre-Lenovo) and IBM's site had every driver ever released for it there for the taking. Just the way it should be.
You need to know which drivers apply to the hardware you have. Dell can be a little odd in that they will tend to offer all the drivers for that model, even if given the service tag for a specific machine.
Yes. Before a couple years ago, QuickTime Player was so crippled that it couldn't play movies in full-screen mode, but they've finally fixed that. Perhaps because when iTunes added video support, it was able to play QuickTime movies in full-screen mode just fine, and Apple realized that making their music player more functional than their video player when playing videos was kind of stupid.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
You first need to be able to connect to Windows Update though.
Sure, but it's relatively rare that XP doesn't have a useable driver for laptop's network interface. If that fails, you can try a PC-Card or even a USB-Ethernet converter (which has saved me a couple of times.) I was just impressed that Toshiba had kept WindowsUpdate so completely up-to-date.
You need to know which drivers apply to the hardware you have.
Well, if you must explain the obvious. My point was that Sony didn't even offer the requisite drivers on their site. It was either use the OEM disc or nothing, and since the individual I was helping out had lost that CD it was a pain in the neck.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Sony offers to sell the computers without the nagware (and associated discounts) and gets slammed. I think this is a good move, and I'm glad to have the option. Maybe they would have been better off just quietly raising the price of all their machines $50 and getting rid of all the nagware by default. Of course, without saying why they did it, it would have been viewed as nothing but a price increase. Sigh.
DISAGREE != TROLL
But "wrong opinion presented as fact = troll." If you aren't a troll, qualify your statements. "The sky is red" is a troll. The sky is generally blue. If it happens to be a sunset with a red sky, that is unusual, not seen by anyone else at the time, and going to generate responses quite different from "the sky is blue" or "the sky is red because of the sunset." Someone posting inaccurate information, sunk in an opinion, presented as fact is a troll.
Learn to love Alaska
Who would have thought Sony would look to the Marx brothers for marketing guidance?
Put another way, Sony now acknowledges that MS software has negative value. LITERALLY!
Up until this was posted on Slashdot, Sony way charging the fee to remove bloatware. Only after it was posted and the attention was brought to it did they decide that packing crap into a purchased copy of Windows and then charging extra to fix it wasn't a good move PR wise. Sure, they have backed off now, but the poster deserves a lot of the credit, not criticism.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
does this come with a rootkit?
Cause thats the biggest bloat ware of all....