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Bloatware Removal Threatens PC Industry Profits
Anti-Globalism sends along a piece on how a consumer-friendly service is not so good for PC manufacturers. "Before they ship PCs to retailers like Best Buy, computer makers load them up with lots of free software. For $30, Best Buy will get rid of it for you. That simple cleanup service is threatening the precarious economics of the personal computer industry. Software companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars to PC makers like Hewlett-Packard to install their photo tools, financial programs, and other products, usually with some tie-in to a paid service or upgrade. With margins growing thinner than most laptops, this critical revenue can make the difference between profit and loss for the computer makers, industry analysts say."
On the one hand, I think this is a sleazy practice and I'll be happy to see it go.
On the other hand, it's simple enough for someone who knows what they're doing to just reformat the computer with a fresh install of their OS of choice, so the discount you get on your PC for it is pretty nice.
I suspect that if this practice does die out, it'll mean the big guys are on slightly less uneven footing with the little mom & pop PC shops, so I guess that's always a good thing.
The phrase 'Adapt or die' applies to corporations, too. The fact that people will pay $30 to have this crap removed should be telling you something.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The bloatware construes more advertising & product placement (literally, oddly) than a constructive service. This sounds a lot like getting a TiVo or the like in order to scrub commercials out of your favorite shows.
Do that many people really sign up for the full versions of the software that comes on their computers?
Maybe the computers these days are too cheap. If you're not making enough money and this software is pissing people off, just remove the software and raise the price. It's not like most people are going to start building their own computers.
Remove the crappy software, raise the price, and sell the computer as a "premium" edition. People aren't going to stop buying computers.
Actually I know a fair number of people who won't fly particular airlines if there's any reasonable alternative available because of the bad service they've gotten from them. It's obviously not unlimited, for instance they might be willing to pay an extra 10% to avoid the undesirable airline but not an extra 30%, but they will pay a certain amount extra not to have to deal with something they've had problems with before.
Seat size, spacing, food quality, staff friendliness. There are lots of things on airlines that people gripe about, but will never pay more for.
The current policy is extortion on non-savvy users. It's like a car dealership filling your new car with trash and charging you to take it out again!
Drop the gimmicks, and get into selling PCs as a business. Get the markup right, make a profit, and compete. If people WANT to buy computers that are $30 cheaper and full of crap, that's their decision. Don't regulate it either way - do what the market can stand.
I suspect that if this practice does die out, it'll mean the big guys are on slightly less uneven footing with the little mom & pop PC shops, so I guess that's always a good thing.
I think we've also hit on one of the reasons Apple computers cost more than similar machines from Dell, HP, Lenovo, et al: Apple doesn't load down their Macs with a lot of third-party bloatware.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
It is abusive for a company to take advantage of their otherwise simple business relationships with their customers.
When a company uses a customer's business relationship to gain even more money by selling that customer's information, by loaded unwanted software (that invariably kills the machine's performance), by inserting ads, or even subscribing them to mailing lists of "their partners," it all amounts to abuse of the business relationship outside of the desired results expected by the customer.
Any time a company annoys a customer, they risk losing that customer. Just because "everyone does it" is no excuse for doing so. Even my preferred vendors do this and while I have learned to live with it by not even powering on the computer in its default configuration in most cases, instead installing the OS from scratch, it is a lot of work that should be needless.
To be clear, the current culture of using or leveraging customers to make additional profits is bad for core business.
If Linux was sold in retail channels and had marketshare like Windows, the same exact thing would happen. Quicken, Adobe XX, Roxio XX, Turbotax, etc. would all have Linux versions that would get preinstalled just the same (along with a host of 'update' programs from the manufacturer and those software vendors. It would be the same on OS X if they licensed it to 3rd party PC makers. It's just the marketshare and how Windows is sold that causes this, not Windows itself.
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Reasonable service is also a factor when buying ticket...
Flying is like sitting on a collective toilet for several hours. And considering all security measures etc. today you start to be willing to pay at least for some comfort in the chair. Maybe the security measures are promoted by the airline industry to make people more willing to pay for comfort?
As for bloatware - I always nuke the standard installation and make a clean installation of Windows whenever necessary. The security risks and performance issues with bloatware makes it worthwhile.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Offtopic? Not if you consider it an analogy. Doesn't Windows and lots of other bloatware treat you like a criminal? Getting poked and prodded and moved along the airport assembly line while getting told this is what you need instead of getting what you want isn't analogous to getting your new computer preloaded with annoyances? Taking the car instead is a freedom thing, like installing Linux on your computer. The freedom to chose your path with cars are why in so many parts of the country that mass transit has never taken off and though the areas with lots of wide open spaces also influences that, those of us in some of those spaces are there because of the increased feeling of freedom we have there and one could say that it's analogous to more free space on your hard drive from not having it pre-stuffed with bloatware.
Parent, like those willing to pay to have the bloatware removed is obviously willing to pay more in costs as well as time to have some freedom. People voting with their money in either case, computer manufacturers and airlines as well as the government should take note.
You're right in that I'm willing to sacrifice convenience for freedom, but I don't pay to have bloatware removed. I'm a Mac user.
What, you didn't get any bloatware installed on your Mac? I'm typing this on my Macbook Pro, and while I wouldn't exactly call all of them bloatware there are a number of programs installed I don't want. The first, which is bloatware, is MS Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive. Most of the iApps I don't use either, though I admit many others do. Aperture is there along with GarageBand. I might of tried Aperture, I'm a photographer, but I'm afraid it's trialware. But I don't work with music so GarageBand isn't something I need.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?