MS Will Remove OEM 'Crapware' For $99

walterbyrd writes about a program from Microsoft to clean up bloated base installs, for a price. From the article: "Microsoft even offers up numbers to show how detrimental this OEM-installed crapware is to your system. Microsoft claims that Signature systems start up 39 percent faster, go into sleep mode 23 percent faster, and resume from sleep a whopping 51 percent faster compared to their crapware-ladened counterparts. (A 'Signature' system is one without crapware). But now, Microsoft will offer customers the opportunity to give their Windows 7 PC the Signature treatment by bringing it to a Microsoft Store and paying $99, according to the Wall Street Journal."

Comments

We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[vwpau227]

I'm sure we are not alone, along with other computer stores in the area, we do a "wipe and reload" of the OEM Windows (XP, Vista, or 7) for $65 plus the applicable taxes, and we'll even load the latest service pack for Windows on the computer. It can make the computer run faster, but frankly I don't think it is really necessary for most new computer systems. The Acer TravelMate and Acer Veriton (business class) systems that we sell comes with very little in terms of additional OEM bundled software.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[__aaltlg1547]

I did it to my Dell at home for free.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[vwpau227]

Sure, you can do it yourself, but my point is that I think their price is a little steep compared to the standard market price for this sort of work. Plus, many business-class computers like the Acer TravelMate and Acer Veriton computers don't have much bundled with the system in terms of OEM software in any case.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[jawtheshark]

Well, the "Full install CD" was 5€ or so. I don't remember exactly, but that's fully worth it if you want a non-crapified Windows. That said, I have to admit that I bought that Quad i7 laptop, installed 7 fresh and then I didn't touch it ever since. Bought it June last year or so.

My Linux nettop just seems to do all I ask from it. Coulda saved me the money of the new laptop, but it was such a steal at 525€. Oh, well, I'll surely find a use for it one of these days.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[erroneus]

Steep? Not so sure about that. We're talking about a process which takes a considerable amount of time. Of course, when I do it, I pay particular attention to verious details such as reloading the applications software as well as device drivers. I'm not saying it's "hard" but it is time consuming.

My first reaction was "Do they uninstall HP printer drivers?" I swear, I used to love HP printers. But lately I haven't seen a "driver only' install in place. It's always dozens of programs monitoring and reporting on printer things... paper, ink/toner and all that. Still not as bad as a Xerox program which consistently prevented a machine from shutting down normally, but it's kind of ridiculous.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[__aaltlg1547]

I could do that, but then it wouldn't be as compatible with some of the crapware I do want to run.

No, and I don't bother to reinstall Windows either. I just uninstall the Dell junk I don't want to use. There are also couple of items that are somewhat useful and already included in the (cheap) price I paid so I left those alone.

IMO, uninstalling Windows and installing Linux is just trading one set of headaches for another. Not worth the trouble in my case, though it is for some.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[__aaltlg1547]

Ah, but what they're selling is that it's done by "trusted" Microsoft people and what you get is a Certified Microsoft Windows Enter-Buzzword-Here. You always pay more for a name brand, even if you're getting the same thing. Or in this case, the same name brand.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Solandri]

For all the crap Sony does, they get some things right. When I bought a Sony laptop for a client, I had to make system restore DVDs (it had a SSD and the restore partition was eating up too much space). During the process, I noticed a "minimal" restore option in addition to the complete restore. I did some reading and found that it's just the OS and necessary drivers. None of the crapware that normally comes preinstalled.

So I wiped the drive, did the minimal restore, and it was exactly as advertised. Clean system, all drivers preinstalled, no crapware. Hats off to the Sony engineer or manager who insisted on that feature.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[KDR_11k]

I got the driver package labeled "IT professionals only", that didn't include the crapware and was 1/10th the size to download.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[DAldredge]

None of the systems I manage nor any of my systems at home exhibit the behavior you describe. Perhaps you are embellishing just a bit?

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's changed? I bought a Vaio laptop a decade ago and it was so loaded down with crapware that I could barely open up the task manager to kill the antivirus program that was using 99% of the processing time. And that was immediately upon booting the first time.

I've never bought a computer that was that heavily loaded down with crap in my entire life.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[vwpau227]

There are plenty of Microsoft Certified Professionals out there that work in a computer store (and I'm one of them, and I've been certified since 1993). I think you'll find that many of us work at local reputable stores that charge less than $99 for the same service.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[mister_playboy]

since your DRM'd computer is still going to ask you to prove that your copy of Windows is genuine every couple of weeks (with yet another newer version of its genuine validation tool every time).

You're doing it wrong. WGA is trivial to work around.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Re-installing Windows 7 without the crapware is still crapware in my opinion, since your DRM'd computer is still going to ask you to prove that your copy of Windows is genuine every couple of weeks (with yet another newer version of its genuine validation tool every time).

You're showing symptoms of Sensationalist Slashdot Headline poisoning. You should head out into the big blue room and see someone about that.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[NiceGeek]

Ah, hyperbole. "Every couple of weeks"? Since I installed Win 7 on my PC, I've been asked to authorize it exactly *once* and I've even swapped out the motherboard since the initial install.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[stephanruby]

None of the systems I manage nor any of my systems at home exhibit the behavior you describe. Perhaps you are embellishing just a bit?

Yes, I embellished a bit, but not much.

Apparently, some people had it worse than I had.

In my case, I can't ever say that my copy was ever found not to be genuine, or at least it never told me that's what it found, but it just seemed that every time I received a critical update, Microsoft seemed to have forgotten that my copy had previously passed the WGA validation test successfully.

And yes as someone else said already, there are ways to get around WGA, but as a paying customer, I wasn't about to get around WGA. The people that get around WGA are the ones that are using pirated copy of the software. And I wasn't about to replace a perfectly valid purchased copy of a software with an illegal copy of the same.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you check to see if it included the anti-copying rootkit for which Sony was sued twice?

If not, that was probably just an oversight.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

And youre still ripping people off.

65 bucks? You can download decrapifier free, in about 30 seconds it tells you everything you can uninstall, you check the boxes and it does everything for you. It takes no brains and no time. Not saying do it for free but 65 bucks? Fuck that.

Cant wait for tablets to take over so rip off stores will go out of business.

Thats as bad as bestbuy charging 300 bucks just to setup a ps3 in someones home and create a PSN id for them.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

For what it's worth, HP included a similar feature in the dv6t laptop I purchased last year.

Very nice to have this sort of thing automated and certainly far better that shelling out $99 for the privilege.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[mysidia]

There are plenty of Microsoft Certified Professionals out there that work in a computer store

Those certifications are skills accreditations based on passing a test. Just because the professionals doing the work carry a personal Microsoft certification, does not mean that Microsoft certifies or stands behind their work product or controls the results in any way whatsoever.

Just because the work is done by a MCP does not mean the actual work is certified by MS; the MCP is not employed by Microsoft, so Microsoft does not certify all their work, they only accredit their ability to pass certain tests.

Now presumably, they are certifying the work done by their stores in some way, like most businesses do.

There are plenty of professionals who have paper Microsoft creds that are not really qualified, and could not get (or keep) a job at a M$ store doing the work.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[mysidia]

Since your DRM'd computer is still going to ask you to prove that your copy of Windows is genuine every couple of weeks

OEM systems are often pre-activated with some BIOS code and a special OEM customization.

Legitimate installs of windows won't ask you to prove it's genuine every couple of weeks if you don't make changes to the hardware every couple of weeks.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Waccoon]

It's also worth noting that you can order Sony laptops that way, too. At least, a clean install was an option when I was looking at their web site a couple years ago.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

My HP TM2 TabletPC has the same option. It's called Minimized Image Recovery. Unfortunately, it's only available when the computer already has the normal or minimal image installed and booted into recovery mode. That means that, performing the recovery from the Recovery DVD always results in "full" recovery, that is, full bloat.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

....I swear, I used to love HP printers. But lately I haven't seen a "driver only' install in place. It's always dozens of programs monitoring and reporting on printer things... paper, ink/toner and all that. Still not as bad as a Xerox program which consistently prevented a machine from shutting down normally, but it's kind of ridiculous.

I've never had an issue just getting just the printer drivers. Even if it comes with the "install everything" disk, doesn't mean you have to.

Explore the CD, quite sure somewhere there is a folder called "drivers".

From the 2008R2 Print server at work for the MFP's there is a generic x86/x64 driver. Windows 7 seems to have most drivers installed as default. My Epson 6100 laser printer is an example of that.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[CAIMLAS]

Yeah, and you better hope you have the fine print clearly stated and made obvious to the customers before you do your boot & nuke, or you're going to have a lot of angry customers when they lose all their important data.

When I did this, it was a flat $150 which included a 'standard' backup, wipe and reinstall assuming they had the OEM disks. For a new system, the OEM disks will usually include crapware in the image, so you'd have to then run something like pcdecrapifier. It really is a mess, I can't understand why people put up with it and fully appreciate why someone might prefer a Mac over the gobs of bullshit on the average consumer PC.

I like the Acer laptops for the very reason you state.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[EdIII]

1/10th?

My jaw dropped when I saw Dell pushing a 700+ MB printer driver. You have to look for it but you can find a 6MB driver only install instead.

How on earth you need 700MB for a printer driver and software is beyond me..

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[epyT-R]

some people do change their hardware around.. your implication that this is not, or should not be a valid complaint is a bit condescending..

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[CriminalNerd]

If you read the GP's post, he clearly said that the system restore feature had a minimal restore option (which he used to wipe the garbage), not that the laptop didn't come with bloatware.

Maybe your laptop had something similar. Who knows, you're just an AC.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[zidium]

What's the secret?

I get that 'YOu may be running a counterfeit version" popup **constantly**!!

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

MCP is a joke cert anyways..... Book smart people that take a test REALLY don't have a clue on how-to troubleshoot... They just know how to read a book and pass a test.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[hairyfeet]

Hell most of the little mom & pop shops do the same thing, at my shop I do it for a flat $50 plus tax and I even offer a full software pack with all the programs you'd need to do most of the average tasks (Libre Office, their choice of Pale moon or Comodo Dragon browser with adblock, all the codecs and flash, etc) for an extra $5. of course i have most of this fully automated so it doesn't take much at all of my time but its a lot easier for most folks to just have me do it than waste the time to do it by hand.

So i really don't see what the selling point is for MSFT. hell at that price its more expensive than an OEM copy of Win 7 Home so it would be cheaper just to go buy the disc if you don't have it already. To me it sounds almost like somebody said "Well Apple has genius bars so we need those too" while ignoring the fact that frankly not a lot of places besides Apple stores work on Apple products so it makes sense for them to have them. But is there anybody who honestly thinks having stores that do a wipe and re-install on Windows is rare? Hell my town is only got a population of 15k and we have at least 3 that i know of, probably one or two more than I don't.

So I don't really know who this is supposed to appeal to, especially when their price is higher than any place i know, it just doesn't make sense. If they were offering data backup with that then yes it would be a good deal because the rest of us charge extra for that, but $100 plus tax just to do a wipe and re-install?

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Tanktalus]

Just a wild guess, but I'm thinking you're not their target market.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[hairyfeet]

Actually friend its really not, you just haven't had anyone show you the correct way to do so. before you do a wipe and reinstall you need to go to WSUS Offline and have it download any patches and service packs you need for later. In mine I have every patch and service pack from Win2K through Win 7 X64 so no problems there, just launch once a month to have it update the latest patches. If you use MS Office you can have the service packs and patches included with WSUS, same with MSE antivirus. At this point you can download the latest drivers if you wish, but I only go for the graphics and wireless usually as I've found some of the OEM drivers for sound and NICs to be more buggy than the Windows defaults.

Next once the OS is installed you run WSUS, depending on how far behind your OS disc is from current this could take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour but since its all automated who cares. My discs have the last service packs already so only the patches after the last release are needed, about 30 minutes or so depending on the system. after that has finished and you see all the drivers are checked out you simply go to Ninite and pick any of the third party stuff you need,browser, Libre office, codecs, flash, whatever. the only third party I use that I don't get from Ninite is either Pale moon (a Firefox fork compiled for newer CPUs) or Comodo Dragon (Chromium based with some nice security features) but since I have both of those on my network drive along with WSUS no time there. Once that is installed i go to Ninite and pick Klite, flash, Hulu TV (my customers enjoy having Internet TV) LO, Foxit, and PDF Creator. I usually give them Comodo Internet Security but if you use MSE or Avast you can just skip that step or grab Avast at Ninite.

Voila! You are talking about maybe an hour, hour and a half tops and since the majority of it is fully automated you only have to look in once in a while and see if you are ready for the next step. Since I usually have the systems on my KVM all I have to do is click over once in a while, couldn't be simpler friend. That is why I only charge $50 plus tax for the same service MSFT is wanting $100 for so I don't see why MSFT couldn't do it even quicker and cheaper than me.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[fast turtle]

And this is why I prefer to build it myself. I know exactly what's installed and have all the needed drivers and the only crapware that's installed is what I added. Otherwise my system is clean and setup exactly how I want it.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, didn't have it. Only had a way of restoring it the way that it was originally set up. At the time it was kind of nice though in that it let you have a second partition that it wouldn't overwrite.

As for being AC, would logging in really settle the matter of who I am? When I used to log in, I did it under a pseudonym anyways, and even knowing who I am it doesn't change the facts of the matter nor does it confirm or falsify them.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Pentium100]

One fun thing with HP driver I experienced is this:

I have a HP Professional Series Color 2500CM printer (quite old, but can print on A3 pages and the cartridges are very easy to refill, making the printing very cheap). The printer is old enough that Windows XP has a built-in driver for it, and it works quite well. Once I decided to download a driver from HP and try that out. It showed error messages saying that the ink cartridges and print heads have expired. As it turns out, HP has burned expiry dates to the printheads and cartridges, but the Windows XP driver does not check, which allows me to use the parts until they wear out (the yellow ink cartridge was supposed to expire in 2002 and I'm still using it).

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[philip.paradis]

Is that related to Shiny New Shit Syndrome? I hear many folks around here are afflicted with that illness.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[jones_supa]

How on earth you need 700MB for a printer driver and software is beyond me..

Well, let's try to crack this. Has anyone here dissected those monstrous driver packages and looked at what there takes so much space? Or, can make an insightful guess?

In that capacity you could create a complete operating system with all applications. Even I am not stupid enough to roll a driver package of that size. Let me just jump out of the window.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you give a free Xbox? People are cheated crap called software, first a product that calls itself an OS, now more crap to be removed from it

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Iamthecheese]

I looked into it once. Drivers for every nearly related printer in every language, an extra bloated install program to choose which the user probably needs, spyware, more spyware, drivers for related all-in-ones, extra bloated "user friendly" crap, useless programs supposed to be usable for things like screen capture, photo editing, scanning, photo archiving, thumbnails, and sample data.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Bert64]

The Linux drivers for most printers tend to ignore expiry dates and other user-hostile features in printers (like saying its out of ink and preventing further printing when theres some left, or preventing monochrome printing because one of the colours it out, or preventing scanning on a multifunction device because theres no ink!)..

Personally i just tend to go for postscript printers, they work with everything and no need to fuck around with drivers.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you need to download all the drivers ahead of time?

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[jtownatpunk.net]

You're undervaluing your service, friend. If I was going to pay someone to deliver a clean and/or custom build, I would pick you over whatever random pimply-faced kid is working at the Microsoft Store over summer break. If M$ can get away with charging $100 for this service (probably just running uninstalls rather than doing a clean install), someone who actually knows what the heck they're doing and is building a clean install from scratch with optimal driver selection should be able to charge more.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Bert64]

Because it's MS, and people will be willing to pay extra for a brand they've heard of rather than going to some small shop they haven't, and which will be seen as dodgy.
Also MS have a much larger marketing budget, so many customers will have no idea the smaller places exist.
If this strategy fails to capture the market, they could just undercut the smaller places until they all go out of business.

If price were the only factor, MS would have lost out to Linux years ago.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

Time consuming to reload ... don't think so ... grab nlite/vlite/OEM prep kit, DL the driver packs, DL updates, integrate everything in one big image, boot off PXE or similar, wait 30 min and you are done.
Total time investment for someone who knows what he is doing is about 3-4 hours. Then this can be reused safely for about 3-6 months without any issues. Later rebuilds of the image are a breeze after that.

Hell some years ago i was supporting net install of win2k3 on all sorts of crappy servers and thought the route we took was a little bit different than this one it was not so much of a pain to do.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like a kracked copy of Windows.

OEM activation isn't required, as the OEM version will detect what it needs from the BIOS.

Dell OEM windows installs on a Dell BIOS with no key input or activation.
HP OEM windows goes on HP BIOS the same.
Mix the two up however and you can't activate at all.

Only by installing a retail windows version will it require key input and activation, as you say only once.

A kracked copy of windows however will require mucking about with potentially after every reboot if not done properly, and generally after any updates are applied. Sounds just like his problem.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[_Shad0w_]

That's what I end up doing when a manufacturer doesn't supply the "driver only" download option. Unpack the massive installer and just look for the driver portion, which is almost always in a format you can just point Windows itself at and say "install driver from this directory".

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[rtb61]

Don't believe you, please provide details ;). You always think you go em all but it's always hard to tell without comparing to other attempts and of course adding in some bits like http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[dotancohen]

I got the driver package labeled "IT professionals only", that didn't include the crapware and was 1/10th the size to download.

And where does one get such a driver package?

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[_Shad0w_]

Because it lets you prepare all the updates you need before you start, so you can run them in straight away after you're done, without needing to connect it to a network. It's also useful if you're doing more than one machine, because you only download it all once.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[hairyfeet]

Thanks but since I have it down so pat honestly it takes VERY little of my actual time and the nice prices and professional work gets me a LOT of referrals and repeat customers. hell i don't even bother with cards or fliers anymore as I rarely have any free time as it is, I simply don't need more work right now. thanks for the compliment though, I do take pride in my work and when i set up a PC unless they go out of their way to screw it up it STAYS running and clean.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Pentium100]

I got that printer for free, though it needed some repair (which I did myself) and, as I said, it is quite cheap to print (newer inkjets are more difficult to refill and the ink costs more for less (the black ink cartridge in my printer is 69ml)).

The printer supports postscript, but for some reason it is extremely slow if I use PS, I managed once to make it print fast using postscript under Linux, but only once. Usually it is "processing job" for half an hour before printing. PCL works fine (printing starts almost immediately). Then again, the printer was made in 1999, it probably just is that slow.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[hairyfeet]

Funny you should say that as a lot of the work i got at the last shop I worked at before going out on my own was from those that went to a big name first and found THEM to be dodgy. after all I have never heard of a mom and pop shop ripping out RAM sticks, searching drives for porn and music, or swapping a good graphics card for a cheaper model but I HAVE heard many a horror story involving just that from places like Best Buy and Rent A Center.

As for Linux you are wrong, because if it were just advertising then little shops like mine would carry it as it helps our bottom line. The problem with Linux is twofold, 1.-Their in place upgrade system is a broken pile of shit and 2.- You can run Wintel programs easily. I have tried virtually every distro out there and I can tell you that in place upgrades just do not work. the drivers fail horribly and often, programs or subsystems (I'm looking at YOU pulse and Wifi!) will crap all over themselves, its a mess. Frankly the ONLY way you are gonna get Linux to work consistently is to re-install from scratch and with the insane release schedule it just isn't worth it. I've even tried LTS to LTS and LTS to regular, it just doesn't have any consistency.

The second problem is the reason I think Win 8 is gonna fail as nobody LIKES Windows, they want it because they like the third party programs they run on top of Windows which is why WOA is gonna bomb.I don't care who it is they ALL have windows programs they consider "must have" that they simply won't live without. Even my 72 year old mom who doesn't know squat about PCs and has me as a full time admin won't take Linux, because she has a collection of little cheap games she has bought over the years and they just don't work in Linux.

Frankly I don't care how much budget they have I predict like every other Apple ripoff they have attempted they'll fail. after all how many hundreds of millions did they spend on WinPhone ads? Or that stupid Mojave ad trying to make people believe Vista didn't suck ass? Didn't they take over the market since they spent the most money? Nope because like most of the things under Ballmer even their ads suck.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[AmiMoJo]

You are breaking the license agreement. If you read the small print MS says you can only re-install the original OS that came with the machine, crapware and all. I used to work at a computer shop too and we asked them about it directly. They also pointed out that second hand machines needed a new Windows license because the license is non-transferable.

We ignored them and got away with it, but technically MS are a bunch of asshats when it comes to licensing Windows.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the secret?

I get that 'YOu may be running a counterfeit version" popup **constantly**!!

I've had good results with this one. Google link since different torrent sites might be down for you. Enjoy :)

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you get the feeling that slashdot's marketing department creates these silly articles just to promote spyware infested links in fake posting?
"Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax. (Score:5, Informative)" and the first reply get a score of "Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax. (Score:3)"

Slashdot is so lame.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Restil]

Considering the apparent use for that cert is the professional re-installation of the operating system, perhaps that's enough.

-Restil

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[catmistake]

Just a wild guess, but I'm thinking you're not their target market.

Not quite. Microsoft isn't using surgical precision to target scattered customers hiding in the wilderness. If nothing else, Microsoft's flagship product —which is merely the latest rehash of the operating system developed by and unwittingly freely donated by Digital Equipment Corporation, i.e. NT— is a swiss army knife of desktop operating systems (and fully recognizing this is a tremendously generous characterization of it, boy do I wish that's all it were). Microsoft wants it to be everything to everyone. They want everyone to pay and repay for many many licenses of Windows.

Now... I must digress. I had an emotional reaction to this summary that is epitomized in either some Jackie Chan meme I can't quite articulate, or an as yet unknown Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. meme. I had a similar reaction when Defender was announced. I realize that many of us work with Windows intimately, and need the hostile environment Windows creates in the sense that the unacceptable state a Windows installation inevitably degrades to puts food on the table: Windows is our work, and if it were perfect, we wouldn't have jobs.

But it just seems anathema to me that instead of fixing the product before they sell it to us and our clients, i.e. adjusting Windows such that crapware becomes extinct, Microsoft instead turns around and recognizes that there is this new market here created by a deficit in their flawed product, and now that this market is being exploited by the enterprising individuals that support their flawed product, Microsoft can now step in and directly compete with them. If I didn't know better, and I certainly do, I'd say Microsoft's target market was moronic lemmings.

It just occurred to me that what you meant was GP couldn't be the target market for this "product," the un-OEMing cleansing, because GP no longer uses Windows. And so I apologize to you because ... you are seriously hilarious and I missed it because I am mildly emotional about the announcement of this new "product," and well, look again at those pictures I linked to and try to figure out just what meme belongs.

Car analogy time! Lets imagine that the vehicles coming off Ford's assembly line are immaculate, and pass any white glove test. But (allow me to invent hypothetical) evil Ford OEM distributors for some reason feel it's necessary to cover the cars in a fine dusting of filth that is quite tricky to completely get rid of... the yuk seems to multiply. Oddly, it slows the car down and kills its gas miliage while doing it. And now Ford customers have been complaining that by the time they get their new vehicle, its covered in filth and grime. Enterprising Ford dealers build car washes next to their dealerships to not only satisfy the customer as best they can, but also to make an extra buck. So... when is Ford going to start building signature car washes to compete with the Ford dealers and get into this newly recognized car washing market? While the GP is saying "screw cars! I can't take the filth they attract," I'm (please find the meme for me, I'm tired) saying "Dammit, Ford... you've been selling these filth magnets for ages... when are you going to fix your cars so they can't get dirty??!"

Well... although my metaphor seems to weaken my own argument, because we all know that in reality, cars really do attract dirt and there's nothing anyone can do about it, operating systems are not cars and absolutely can be engineered to not allow OEM CrapWare® (and to a large extent, can be engineered to be self-secure against malware, viruses and the like).

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Krneki]

No one is willing to pay a proper expert to install a windows client.

It takes up to 4 hours to set everything correctly. Including the complete removal off all the not needed application in the auto-start. the level of knowledge to set it up perfectly is the same as it takes to setup a proper linux or windows server.

Would you pay 200$ for a windows installation that does not include a windows license? For a server you would, but for a workstation?

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[PsychoSlashDot]

The only thing you should know (which you may already) is that toner cartridges have parts that will wear out. The seals tend to do so suddenly, and when they do the result is usually a very large leak inside the printer. Once that happens you need a very fine filter rated for toner in order to clean it up. I'm not discouraging toner refills, but you need to know that there's a limited number of rotations before they basically explode.

Quick related story. I had a customer who used a large scale laser printer for printing mail labels. Very, very low coverage per page and using very, very large cartridges. They were rated for something like 6,000 pages. Well, after 6,000 pages they'd still have a good 90% toner left. So they'd keep running it. And running it. Until it detonated inside the printer. They did this a few times then bought themselves a toner-rated vacuum because it was cheaper than tossing half-filled cartridges.

Just know there's a big mess in your future and you'll be fine.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[dbug78]

I pay particular attention to verious details

Yes, you're clearly very detail-oriented. ;)

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

As IT people it is not our time we get paid for... it is our knowledge.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Hal_Porter]

It can make the computer run faster, but frankly I don't think it is really necessary for most new computer systems.

I always used to do a wipe and reload. However with recent machines - mostly netbooks - I've found that just replacing Norton antivirus with Microsoft Security Essentials and stopping any irritating OEM stuff that runs on startup seems to be fine.

Then again if Microsoft gave me a copy of Windows I could do a clean install on like they used to, I'd have a choice. Of course the reason they don't do that is because the crapware vendors probably subsidize the price of the machine so heavily that Windows Starter is essentially free, so it's a bit of a sensitive issue for both Microsoft and their OEMs.

Microsoft are so cack handed these days that this initiative will probably irritate the crapware vendors enough for them to stop subsidizing Windows if it generates any money for them - after all there's a difference between the user doing this (or paying a third party to do it) and Microsoft doing it. Clearly at the very least it will irritate the OEMs but putting pressure on them to reduce the amount of crapware they install, but that is not necessarily in Microsoft's interests because it pushes down the market value OEMs will attach to Windows.

Very plausibly Dell paid $50 for Windows and got a significant percentage of that back in cash from the crapware vendors. If Dell is under pressure to install less crapware they will look to save that cash on the price of a Windows license.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[CronoCloud]

I have an HP LaserJet 1200 with Postscript support that is extremely slow under postscript and sometimes printing postscript will fail. The problem being the fact that it has minimum RAM. The pxlmono driver is the recommended one but it sucks as well. The one that works best is PCL6

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Hal_Porter]

Windows 7 seems to have most drivers installed as default. My Epson 6100 laser printer is an example of that.

My HP Officejet 6500 is like that You can get a huge "full featured" driver, or a simpler "basic scan and print" one.

I used to download the basic one on XP (the full featured one never seemed to be stable), but since Windows 7 if you add it as a network printer you get the built in driver which is fine. No scanning, but if you plug in a USB cable you get TWAIN drivers installed.

I actually tried the basic driver to get network scanning but it failed halfway through install. Doing a quick Google search it seems like that is quite common and yet there is no fix for it. In fact if you read through the 'fixes' people have suggested, most of them end up with "add the printer from the control panel", which really means "use the drivers built in to Windows".

So the built in drivers - which are perfectly stable, the only problem is I need to plug in a USB cable to scan - are the only ones worth using. And they're based on the venerable UNIDRV, a technology which has been around since Windows 3.1. Basically UNIDRV lets the you create a text file which defines the escape sequences for a printer. No wonder they don't support scanning! in fact one of the GPD files mentions

*CodePage: 1252 *% Windows 3.1 US (ANSI) code page.

So it seems like HP actually maintain a "Full" driver, a "Basic" driver and the config files for UNIDRV which end up baked into Windows. You have to wonder why they bother, particularly as the "Basic" and "Full" drivers seem to be such a nightmare to support and even get working.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[netik]

A considerable amount of time?

Yeah, because paying for someone to eat donuts and stare at the progress back is a good use of money.

This is yet another reason not to use Windows. It's broken by default.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[jep305]

How do you (windoze people) live with this shit???

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Phoghat]

I did it to my Dell at home for free.

Should hav chargd yourself $65 and saved $34

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

given that many printers under linux imply a .ppd file under 5kb, and given that the problem of interfacing to a printer was already solved by the time postscript driven lasers appeared with the McIntosh, and given that developing apps costs in terms of time to market, I think the only explanation is that bloated drivers are there to suck on older machines, so that getting a new printer means needing a new pc. I'm thankful that linux lets you break most of forced upgrade stuff if you shop for compatible hardware, but I understand that that's the exact reason why going the linux route will always be a little uphill, no matter its real market penetration.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[erroneus]

Not going to argue with you on that point. :)

I need to put a signature on here that says something like "Primary: Linux, mostly redhat variants. Supports: Linux, Windows and Mac OS. I am not a Microsoft/Google/Apple shill -- I just call them the way I see them. Reply with facts and thoughtful ideas and you could very well change my views."

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[erroneus]

Thanks. It was like 4am... should have been sleeping... brain does weird things when translating thoughts into keystrokes.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[marcello_dl]

> Windows is our work, and if it were perfect, we wouldn't have jobs.

Yo dawg, I herd you like the broken windows fallacy,
so I broke windows.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Dynedain]

operating systems are not cars and absolutely can be engineered to not allow OEM CrapWare®

Um, how exactly? Short of dial-home authentication that prevents the installation of anything not certified by MS, how could they possibly prevent OEMs from loading up crapware on the machines that the OEMs built.

You do realize MS only provides the actual distribution package of Windows right?

If you want consumers to be able to install software, then OEMs can too. It's that simple.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[rsmith-mac]

If you want consumers to be able to install software, then OEMs can too. It's that simple.

It's a bit more complex than that, but fundamentally you're right. The big problem right now is that the Windows 7 license agreement allows OEMs to get away with this. Windows 8 is going to significantly change that landscape by restricting what OEMs can do on both a technical and legal basis. But that won't stop them from installing some kinds of crapware, which ultimately as you note is impossible to block so long as the consumer can install software.

The only real technical solution is a walled garden (where the OEMs are serfs in the garden alongside the user) which is a bad idea for other innumerable reasons.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[catmistake]

If you want consumers to be able to install software, then OEMs can too. It's that simple.

It's a bit more complex than that, but fundamentally you're right. The big problem right now is that the Windows 7 license agreement allows OEMs to get away with this. Windows 8 is going to significantly change that landscape by restricting what OEMs can do on both a technical and legal basis. But that won't stop them from installing some kinds of crapware, which ultimately as you note is impossible to block so long as the consumer can install software.

The only real technical solution is a walled garden (where the OEMs are serfs in the garden alongside the user) which is a bad idea for other innumerable reasons.

I disagree. The issue is not a few app bundles sitting on the HD. The issue is with Wndows itself. There are plenty of developers for the platform that make well behaved applications. The problem is Windows allows any and all installers to install softwares that become part of the boot process, and/or sit in volitile memory all the time whether they are being used or not. Simply doing away with inits and system tray apps would go a long way towards preventing rot. Why must every app have crap installed all over the place? Why does every app need to have a system tray icon, and be available at the ready? Why can't we just LOAD an application when its needed, and why can't it be eliminated from volitile memory when it's not? Because Windows userland is broken, and Windows developers are assholes and exploit every bell and whistle simultaneosly if they can. It doesn't have to be this way.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Lonewolf666]

Not the drivers, the security patches. If you go online without installing them first, it may become a race between malware infections and Autoupdate. A firewall might help, but installing the patches before you connect to the internet is even better.

This said, reinstalling the drivers and applications is something that WSUS Offline Update will not do for you. Using a recovery DVD from the OEM might just put the crapware back. So I think that part is the time-consuming part that justifies the $65 plus tax.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Pentium100]

My printer is inkjet, so any leak (there were a few) can be remedied with paper towels and (in some cases) water. There is a HP 2500 laser printer, but mine is ink (for whatever eason HP assigned the same number to very different devices).

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Pentium100]

My printer has 76MB RAM, it probably is the maximum it can handle.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[isorox]

I did it to my Dell at home for free.

Windows is only free if your time is worthless.

Last time I attempted a clean up of such junk it took about 3 hours. At the time that's over $300.

Even if you do clean up your machine, you're still left with "drivers" which consist of various crapware programs.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[oyenamit]

Go to hp.com and navigate to the Support and Drivers section and then to Drivers and Software section. Search for your printer product number. You would be presented with a page that lists all the available downloads for your printer. Look for the section Driver. If you are lucky (like this page), the download under this section should be in 10-30 MB range. If so, it includes just the driver and nothing else (no installer etc). You will have to manually initiate installation of your printer and point to this package when prompted for the driver files.

In case you are not so lucky (like this page), there will be no option to download a driver only package. Instead, you will have to download the full software. Nevertheless, it should not be difficult to locate the actual driver in this package by searching for .INF files. After that, just manually initiate installation of the printer.

I don't know how much the concept of universal drivers has caught on, but HP provides drivers which can print to a variety of different physical printer devices. So, instead of downloading a different driver each for your different printers, you just install one HP Universal Printer Driver. This driver can print to all of your printers. It reduces maintenance effort since you need to update only 1 driver. Universal drivers are especially useful in office environments.

I am not sure where the drivers marked "IT professionals only" come from.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe this crap post was worth being up modded for completely missing the post and making an ad hominem argument.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...did you not read my GP post? It takes less than an hour on average and the ONLY thing that will be running on startup besides the standard Windows services is the graphics icon in the taskbar. I could of course kill that since it isn't STRICTLY needed but ATI for some damned reason doesn't put a control panel icon when you install so if you disable that many would have trouble finding where to call up the controls.

Hell if all they wanted was just the crapware tossed with no reinstall that is even quicker, just run PC Decrapifier which takes MAYBE 10 minutes. Now if you wanted to argue that I should be charging based on my years of experience then maybe, but that then gets into economics. i find that with the lower price i get much more customers and due to the tiny amount of my time it takes i can crank them out and make more money. It simply makes more sense to charge $50 if you can do a dozen in a day than it is to charge $100 and only get 2 through the door a day, its just simple math.

So I'm sorry friend but you are wrong, server is a completely different beast. With server you have to set up groups, password policies, permissions, it takes much longer and you have to know a lot about the org to do it right. With home users there really isn't anything to know, you set the password to blank so they can put in their own, you give them a bog standard clean system with the basic apps they will require (which thanks to Ninite all but two of the apps I give them is fully automated), there really isn't all that much to it honestly.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't we just LOAD an application when its needed, and why can't it be eliminated from volitile memory when it's not?

errr...you can, dumbass. You want to get that capability out of linux and osx too? Probably not because you're only trolling on windows.

Because Windows userland is broken, and Windows developers are assholes and exploit every bell and whistle simultaneosly if they can.

Poor poor little troll, I guess linux developers are all neckbeards? and apple developers are all homosexual?

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow..! I love it.. you just (in my case , since I did mobile service) go to the customer, push one button, and BS with the client for an hour or two until it's done?

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[redback]

Cheap printers without processing units to understand postscript or pcl or whatever.

They do their processing in the driver.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

As for the broken state of Windows putting food on the table, I find that a weak argument. When we eliminate wasted work, we can more onto more productive work - which not only usually pays more, but is usually more interesting as well. If you didn't have to fix Windows all the time, you could write some software, or help with testing, or participate in some new initiative at your company.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

For some reason, when I plug an HP printer into my Linux box, it finds and downloads a small driver automatically. Never any crapware.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[arcsimm]

We build our own machines?

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[ChrisMaple]

In Linux, the heavy lifting for postscript to raster is done by ghostscript. The actual driver is a few kB. (In the case of Samsung QL85, the Linux driver is written in C and compiles to 38 kB, including a lot of excess cruft. The source code is 755 lines, much of which is dead code, comments, and white space.)

Lots of fonts can take up much room.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[dotancohen]

Thanks. I suppose by "manually initiate installation of the printer" you mean to plug the printer into the USB port and to let the Windows wizard pop up, and from that wizard to select the .INF files? I use Ubuntu at home but on more than one occasion I have had to fight with neighbours' or family members' Windows computers.

On Ubuntu one can print just fine to an HP printer, but to use features such as a built-in scanner then the hpijs or hplip drivers are necessary. But they are available right from the stock Ubuntu repos and seem to be nothing more than just the driver.

  - saturn:~$ aptitude show hpijs
Uncompressed Size: 1,774 k
  - saturn:~$ aptitude show hplip
Uncompressed Size: 606 k

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[oyenamit]

Thanks. I suppose by "manually initiate installation of the printer" you mean to plug the printer into the USB port and to let the Windows wizard pop up, and from that wizard to select the .INF files?

That is correct.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[dotancohen]

Thanks. Have a great week!

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[coofercat]

Oh they can already do it cheaper, but they need a revenue stream. They'll discount the $99 once they've got a bit of 3rd party sponsorship and the clean up turns into "clean up your machine an get the benefits of a 30 day Antivirus subscriptions for free!".

They could just talk to all of their OEMs and tell 'em that they can use an "MS Approved Windows install" logo if they remove the crapware. That'd be too hard though, so making customers pay twice is the best option.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[coofercat]

How about...

Ford create cars so utterly terrible that they earn the nickname "Fix Or Repair Daily". Enterprising mechanics offer the cars pre-serviced, fixing up most obvious problems and adding a few "pimp" features like spoilers and shiny wheel hubs, but use parts that are so hideously over-engineered that they weigh far more, which means crappy mileage and poorer handling.

Years later, Ford sees this problem, and comes in with their own $99 service, which does much of the same thing as the mechanics, but uses the original parts (now that they've refactored the manufacturing process, so they're much more reliable and yet weigh the same or less than they used to).

Of course, all the while, Toyota was looking at this, and just decided to put better parts in the car from the outset. However, their cars are no good for hicks and farmers because none of their vehicles is, or can substitute for a pickup truck.

Many years later, Ford would go on to criticise Toyota for not having a "clean up service" option, because it meant that Toyota customers "weren't being given choices". In a similar vein, Honda owners would criticise Toyota for not making cars that everyone can use and enjoy. They'd go on to criticise Ford for being the numpties they are and not getting their manufacturing right in the first place.

Wow, this analogy thing is hard. I need a lie down ;-)

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[godefroi]

The same way you do. We don't install it in the first place. Windows is software, not hardware.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[T Murphy]

But it just seems anathema to me that instead of fixing the product before they sell it to us and our clients, i.e. adjusting Windows such that crapware becomes extinct, Microsoft instead turns around and recognizes that there is this new market here created by a deficit in their flawed product

Except they only charge for fixing a computer you bring in, you can buy OEM-branded computers with this "Signiture" service without the $99 extra. I believe the newspaper article I saw mentioned the service includes a year of tech support (they gave examples that you can use this support to be walked through how to install Chrome or iTunes, not just how to resolve computer problems). I think it's a better solution than somehow locking out crapware (the article also mentioned that some people prefer the OEM's software over the built-in Windows equivalent, so there isn't a blanket rule to judge what to block).

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[jep305]

I guess you didn't notice that my question was directed to Windows users. If you don't install Windows in the first place, then I guess you don't have to deal with it at all, and you don't fall under the category "windoze people", now do you?

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[hairyfeet]

Because we frankly have ZERO problems with our systems, unlike the Linux guys? When was the last time Linux crapped on one of your drivers? When was the last time the upgrade deathmarch didn't go well? We simply don't have to worry about such things in Windows friend. My shop PC has been running the same XP install for 8 years now, no bugs, no crashes, no hassles, no fuss, can YOU say the same? my home machine has been running Win 7 since Oct 09, no muss or fuss even though I have replaced just about every part in that machine but the case. When I changed out the board and CPU I had to reactivate which took less than 15 seconds and pushing a single button and that's it, smooth sailing.

So I don't see what you thinking we are supposed to be "going through" because anybody with half a brain can have Windows run perfectly. The reason I have people bring their PCs to me is they either bought some Dell special that is loaded with crapware or they frankly did something REALLY stupid, such as surf with an outdated IE or run around the net with some 30 day AV trial that expired 3 years ago and caught a bug. But if you have enough common sense to build your own desktop you have more than enough to run Windows flawlessly.

I don't ever have to Google for fixes, no going to forums to look for solutions, no pouring in the CLI garbage just to get my system to run. if that kind of crap is what you like to do, more power to you, but its more than a little ironic that you rail against Windows when it is frankly the easiest OS to run by far.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[jep305]

Wow, that's awesome: Someone who runs a PC repair shop and knows a lot about computers is able to run a consumer operating system without getting cracked or blown up, as long as he runs an eight-year-old version and doesn't follow the MS upgrade path. Congratulations!

I'm so happy to know that you're doing so well with XP. But what about the other 99.5% of Windows users who aren't computing experts like yourself?

Me, I have to run "yum update" a couple of times a month and keep my systems patched. Its so much bother! I wish there was an automatic way to keep my systems up2date. Oh, wait... never mind.

Anyway, its hardly "railing" against Windows when I ask how you people deal with this nonsense of having garbage crammed into your installations and all the trouble you have to go through to remove it, but do you seriously think Windows is the easiest OS to run? Have you ever even seen a Mac? I can understand why someone might not want to run Linux on a desktop. But I can't think of any good reason why anyone would prefer Windows over Mac OS unless he's a masochist.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

OEM Crap has nothing to do with Windows you fucking waste of space.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am confused by this whole discussion. I pirated my copy of windows 7 and haven't ever been asked to authenticate my install. You mean to say that M$ harasses their paying customers? How amusing.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[hairyfeet]

Well lets say...how many of my customers have had to bring their systems back because they caught a bug? that would be...ONE. That's it. And the ONLY reason that he caught a bug was he not only refused to listen to me but first tried to disable and then uninstalled his AV when it wouldn't let him install "The New Limewire" which of course was just a malware package labeled limewire. It doesn't take ANY knowledge to run Vista or 7 perfectly safe, since neither OS runs as admin which was the one big flaw. A free AV, leaving OS updates to automatic, using IE or Chrome, yeah that's so hard. BTW isn't it funny that it is the Linux guys that always can't seem to get Windows to run? What does it say about your "leet" skills?

And I'm sorry but I call bullshit. if you are using Linux and not talking out your ass you are using it on a dumpster dived Intel box because frankly on laptops or more modern systems it royally blows ass. I have tried more than 15 different distros on bog standard desktops and laptops and following the GUI instructions (As a NORMAL user would be expected to, or are you HONESTLY arguing that running a free AV is "too hard" but that Suzy the checkout girl is gonna learn bash?) as listed by the OS and watched as it royally crapped itself. Pulseaudio is a bad fucking joke and the wireless networking is absolute shit. With latter version of Windows one frankly rarely needs the driver for such things because WU already has them and will install automatically. tell me friend, where is the "find drivers" or "rollback drivers" buttons in Linux? Oh right, they just don't exist even though windows has had them for a fricking dozen years now. Some great OS you have there chief.

In the end Linux is DEAD on the desktop, the numbers lower than fucking Java cell phones, and its all because frankly to paraphrase the line from Full Metal Jacket you think that "Inside every Suzy the checkout girl is a bash programmer waiting to get out" and then you have the sheer mind numbing gall to complain that Windows is hard? Really? BTW next time why don't you do us both a favor and simply list which Linux trademarks you are gonna use to save us both some time. Honestly I can take any FOSSie rant such as yours and replace with nothing but the Linux TMs because the same tired old horseshit has been used over and over AND OVER, yet you gain NO share? Guess your "leet OS" isn't so great after all, huh?

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[jep305]

Actually, on my personal laptop, which is a pretty cheap (like $650) Dell Inspiron quad-core about six months old, I'm running Scientific Linux 6.1. I have no trouble with it. But then I've been using Linux for 17 years now, so the typical non-techie user will probably have a different experience. And yeah, I had to install the wireless driver by hand. But it runs really well, supports hardware virtualization, and I'm able to do all the fun KVM stuff with it without any issues.

The >100 servers that I manage all run fairly recent versions of one Redhat rebuild or another, and they're pretty solid. Here's an example:

# uptime
  18:30:09 up 606 days, 23:25, 2 users, load average: 0.52, 0.41, 0.37

Anyway, I'm not on here saying that everyone should use Linux on their desktops, even if it does work perfectly well for me. I know that there's a big difference between me and Suzy the checkout girl. What I *am* saying is that Suzy the checkout girl would be much better off with a Mac than with Windows, and so would pretty much anyone else who wants a computer for something other than dicking around trying to keep their OS patched and running and not getting hijacked.

Not really sure why you think I'm gonna get worked up over who has a larger share of the desktop market. If everyone started using Linux on the desktop, it really wouldn't be l334 any more, now would it? Having said that, I think there are some distros out there, like Ubuntu and Mint, that are easier to install and keep running safely than any version of Windows. But hey, its a (mostly) free world. Run what you want. Pay instead of learn -- no skin off my nose.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[hairyfeet]

Here is what royally pissed me off...your use case? TOTALLY makes sense. A well educated server admin using a rock solid business designed Linux like SciLi makes TOTAL sense....but...that does NOT in ANY way, shape, or form, describe the consumer market AT ALL!

The first argument was that "windoze" was hard to use yet it is so fucking simple my 71 year old clueless dad installed Win 7 by himself with NO troubles, NO driver issues, hell he didn't even need the CD that came with the board. The only thing I had to do when I showed up to install the OS and found out he had got bored and decided to go DIY is to show him how to install Firefox and put his info into it so it would import his bookmarks..that's it. that's all.

Now surely even you will admit that what you went through to set up that wireless on Linux is frankly beyond the skillset of a good 85%+ of the users out there, yes? Or that SciLi is NOT designed for the home market but for those with years of exp with Linux systems and who has full working knowledge of the underpinnings, correct? So how does that in ANY way translate to the consumer market which is what we were talking about? Do you honestly think i sell the majority or even minority of systems to server admins? No of course not.

So my argument still stands, for the vast majority of consumers Linux DOES NOT WORK unless they 1.-Have a full time IT staffer to control the system or 2.-has a family member willing and able to be a full time IT staffer and admin the system. this is in a nutshell why Linux doesn't work, it assumes that everyone has a skillset that frankly fewer than 10% of the market has and those 10% frankly don't have any problems with adminning Windows either so there is no point. While Ubuntu and others claim to be "Linux for humans" in reality its just a sugar coating over the same old problems. The driver model sucks balls, the upgrade in place system is totally broken, at least on every version designed for consumers that I've ever tried, there is no simple GUI to find drivers or rollback drivers when something goes wrong (which it always does) and the answer to everything is "open up bash and type" this big mess that you will have to have the skills to debug because Linux is so damned picky you can't just download a generic driver, it has to be tweaked because if anything is even slightly different, say the rev of firmware, then it simply doesn't work. Compare this to Windows where a free AV and auto updates is all most will ever need as the system handles everything else for the life of the OS which is 10 years standard now .

so while I can totally understand why someone with a niche use case such as yours would be better off with Linux the vast majority of users would just end up with a useless broken system, so for them frankly any modern Windows is the MUCH better choice period.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[jep305]

I don't think you're actually reading beyond the first couple lines of my posts, but my point has never been that everyone needs to switch to Scientific Linux.

Anyway, I've put way more time into this thread than I ever intended, so I'm done now.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[godefroi]

Sorry, I should have been more clear. When I said "it" I meant the crapware, not Windows. I use Windows every day, at home and at work. I don't use (or install) crapware, though.

This is how "linux people" avoid crapware, they don't install it. The same way we (those of us capable of installing an operating system) avoid crapware, by not installing it.

Re:We do it at our store for $65 plus tax.

[Stuarticus]

Never heard of a Hilux? http://www.topgear.com/uk/toyota/hilux

PC Decrapifier: Free

[Sarusa]

http://pcdecrapifier.com/

I tell everyone who gets a pre-installed PC to run this.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is itself full of crap. The irony.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Zero__Kelvin]

I tell everyone to use a far better decrapifier. Those who have listened always thank me profusely every time the subject comes up. BTW - Where is the source code for the one you mentioned, so I can verify that it really does what is promised, and doesn't add malware in the process?

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

I tell everyone to simply install Ubuntu...

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Sarusa]

I guess I need to tediously make the point that the one I mention is usable for people who I don't want to play tech support for, don't care about free/oss, and have no interest in leaving Windows (and if they did would go to OS X).

It's the guy who went to CostCo (or gawd forbid Best Buy) and 'bought a new laptop' and can't tell me exactly which one. I tell him 'go here, run this', and he's happy.

Anyone who would wipe it and install Linux already knows what to do (as I did with my last server).

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Jafafa Hots]

I tell everyone "leave me alone, what do I look like, a tech support volunteer?"

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[bhcompy]

Not that it makes a difference. The people that have crapware can't read code.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet the vast majority of people I know who if asked to try Linux would....not be thanking about, and if they did anything, they'd beat you profusely for putting them through it.

I honestly wonder how many people with Linux-mania really understand how most people react.

It ain't positive.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[mozumder]

I looked through that site. Didn't see anything useful there, just a bunch of linux distributions.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Zero__Kelvin]

I openly concede to being completely anti-Microsoft, and proud of it, but even I wouldn't claim that people who buy computers loaded with additional crapware can't read and understand code.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Still want to play games. Prefer Fedora myself. Linux has not come out of the stable yet on games. When they do, it is game over for MS on an at home PC.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Zero__Kelvin]

Which part of "Those who have listened always thank me profusely every time the subject comes up." didn't you understand?

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Zero__Kelvin]

See. There's your problem. You need someone competent to do it.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is just what I expected you to do, try to qualify it by excluding those people who didn't listen to you.

If they had, well, then they'd be enlightened and thank you. If they don't, obviously it's their fault.

Typical. Anybody that doesn't swoon over it, they're the ones with the problem.

And yes, as the other person said below, your advocacy is your own worst enemy.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

They are thanking you profusely so you won't break their computer again when they complain about something Windows does.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Which is just what I expected you to do, try to qualify it by excluding those people who didn't listen to you."

You are assuming that the people who didn't try Linux didn't have a favorable experience with Linux. How did you jump to that conclusion?

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

When is the last time you verified that the source code of your OS of choice really does what it promises and doesn't add malware in the process?

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a different AC. My logic may be flawed but I would reason that you would actually have to try something first to have a favorable experience with it.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Zero__Kelvin]

That is such a stupid question, that I am going to answer it. I use the Linux kernel and user space tools. There are tens of thousands of qualified people looking at the code on a daily basis. Think crowdsourcing, except it is something called Open Source. You should look into it once you learn how to create an account on Slashdot.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Zero__Kelvin]

You are clearly a different AC, as you were able to figure that out.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I tell everyone to simply install Ubuntu...

Is that how you freed up your Saturday nights to catch various sci-fi marathons?

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Billly Gates]

I use it every time I rewipe my PC.

However, MCAffee will never be completely uninstalled with PC Decrapifier and will still scan and slow down your computer even if you no longer see it in the task bar. It is deceptful to say the least.

You need to go to McAfee's website and download a custom installer. This is just one example.

The registry though, keeps the old crapware settings so in essence it is not a bullet and an end all. I have to use CCleaner as well to manually delete registry items even after using PC Decrapifier. It is shit like this is why people buy Macs.

If you need a Windows PC go to a Microsoft store. You wont have to shell for an OEM disc and the signature editions have nice themes on them and are ready to go.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

I tell everyone, "Pay me $50.00 an hour and I will do it for you."

Make some very easy money that way.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Billly Gates]

Because these users can't find the blue E and think the internets are missing.

The same users who freak out if the start menu is not there. The same users who look at Unity and go WTF ... same as Metro I may add etc.

My exwife was one of these users and made me go back to Windows. Why? Because Ubuntu kind of closed too worked on this laptop. There was always an issue. Always a config file to try something out with a cool Compiz graphical effect. Meanwhile her slooow Vista laptop just worked when she turned it on. She viewed Windows as having supperior quality because of that.

You can get angry at me all you want but it is her opinion. She also uses macs at work and dislikes them but tolerates them. She likes Windows. These same people who stick with XP because WIndows 7 is so radically start menu wise hate change.

THey will freak out when they put a blu-ray disk in and it can't play, clicking on MP3s wont work, their Ipod can't sync etc. Sure you can use medibuntu repositories to add them to you and I. Does the user even know what a codec is or care that the DMCA forbids mp3 and h.264 support out of the box? No. THey will get angry and blame Ubuntu and you for installing such a piece of crap etc.

Not to mention people do not give a damn about computers but us. Its like an appliance for them. It is illogical to buy a fridge or LCD TV and replace the LED for fun or the compressor in the fridge for tinkering. Just leave it alone and use it as a tool etc.

If you hate MS convincing them to use a Mac is a better bet. They just work, have great fonts, aesthetically pleasing, and reliable. That is what a user wants right? Even geeks prefer Windows for desktop use. Not everyone wants an ubuntu upgrade to hose their X settings, because the Linux kernel lacks an ABI ... in 2012!!

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Billly Gates]

Yeah I filter comments out. I think I will read for entertainment :-)

Lets hope Andriod gets better for these users if you want them to leave Windows. I disliked MS for years too but Linux is more of a server OS and I lost hope in it. MacOSX I think is a better replacement for them but pricey.

Windows has got a lot better I do admit and it is certainly usable now compared to the BSOD days. ... at least until Windows 8 comes along.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't running Linux. They probably paid GeekSquad to reinstall Windows when their applications disappeared and got replaced with half-assed replacements with clever names. They aren't telling you this because you know how you get.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[LordLimecat]

Too bad thats not free for commercial use.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

What is your problem, asshole? Is your puny little sense of self so wrapped up in something so small as your choice of OS that you must defend it At All Costs(TM)? Go shoot yourself.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[rubycodez]

your friends are retarded corporate controlled sheeple; ours are not

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

I see. Shouldn't you be stocking shelves or something?

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

What?? Most people can't read code. Heck, half of native English speakers can't even read complex English very well.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats not a solution for people who have money invested in software that requires windows or mac.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Zero__Kelvin]

"THey will get angry and blame Ubuntu and you for installing such a piece of crap etc."

Well, they are right about that. Ubuntu is a piece of crap.

"If you hate MS convincing them to use a Mac is a better bet. They just work, have great fonts, aesthetically pleasing, and reliable. That is what a user wants right?"

I don't think you understand the difference between system configuration and use. I configure the system. They use it. The systems I set up do everything you said they would complain about just fine.

"Even geeks prefer Windows for desktop use."

I don't think you know what the word geek means.

"Not everyone wants an ubuntu upgrade to hose their X settings, because the Linux kernel lacks an ABI ... in 2012!!"

Again, we are talking about two different things. I am talking about a well configured quality Linux system, and you are talking about Ubuntu. I highly suspect that the whole goal of Ubuntu was to give Linux a bad name, and it has served it's purpose. I highly recommend you have someone who knows what they are doing set up a good Linux distribution properly for you, and then we will suddenly be in agreement.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

"Musta hit it pretty close to the mark to get her all riled up like that huh kid?"

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

MacOSX I think is a better replacement for them but pricey.

It's not just increased cost for identical-to-windowspc hardware, but hardware lock-in that is the real evil you must swallow with an Apple product. Until OSX will run on as wide a range of hardware as MS and *nix products you shouldn't even consider it as a candidate. I build my hardware, I expect my OS vendor to respect my freedom to select the hardware I choose (IE: no TPM module).

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

The people posting are primarily Anonymous Cowturds

Dude..... this is but one website among millions. This one primarily caters to geeks, nerds, and boxcar hobos with more cheese on their dick than a Pappa John's Pizza. Not you though. You're special! Got yourself a kewl name, Zero_Kelvin, droppin' Pro-Linux propaganda with the hopes other social rejects like yourself will rub a little butter on your virtual ass.

Back to reality: Linux FUCKING SUCKS and Jesus isn't the son of God. Yet, despite this, there is no shortage of fools who embrace their self-gratifying ignorance with glowing pride. In short, go fuck yourself, zealot. You will always LIE, always fucking LIE to spread your beliefs. Pathetic and weak is what you are.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Raenex]

I highly recommend you have someone who knows what they are doing set up a good Linux distribution properly for you, and then we will suddenly be in agreement.

Of course, you never say what distro you use, and what you do to configure it, or talk about compatibility problems with hardware drivers, or who is responsible for keeping it up to date or installing new software.

Personally, I suspect most people are just blowing smoke up your ass because they don't want to hurt your feelings. I use Debian myself, but I would never recommend Linux to a non-geek.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Defending an OS at all costs? You mean like spending a Saturday night defending your decision to recommend somebody install Linux to correct a vendor-created Windows problem?

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Even to geeks.

Many of us played with Gentoo and Debian back in 2004 when it was l33t and cool, but we have grown up and do not have time to tinker with things. I run Linux in a VM now and maybe will get a job where I can be blessed to run it on a server. I do not want to waste my weekends reinstalling operating systems anymore because I made a million changes to some .rc file in /etc or the latest flash starts crashing with videos on youtube for no apparent reason.

In that way Linux is far inferior as a desktop operating system. But great to learn as a server os.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Personally, I suspect most people are just blowing smoke up your ass because they don't want to hurt your feelings. I

So, you think that I never go to these people's houses to help them with difficulties that they are having with non-Linux related issues, then?

"Of course, you never say what distro you use, and what you do to configure it, or talk about compatibility problems with hardware drivers, or who is responsible for keeping it up to date or installing new software."

The first part is beyond the grasp of the people responding that it is difficult. I also don't try to help pigs sing. As far as installing new software, what new software - exactly - do people need when a system is set up with everything most people would ever need already. Give me an example of new software you think the average person is suddenly going to need. I don't talk about compatibility problems with hardware because hardware doesn't change. Are you suggesting that a properly configured system will suddenly morph one day and need a different driver?

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Raenex]

So, you think that I never go to these people's houses to help them with difficulties that they are having with non-Linux related issues, then?

I'm not sure what your point is. If you mean that they haven't re-installed Windows, that doesn't mean that are as happy as you make them out to be or aren't just being polite.

The first part is beyond the grasp of the people responding that it is difficult. I also don't try to help pigs sing.

That's a copout to avoid giving details that can be refuted. You specifically recommend Linux to people, then when confronted with Ubuntu horror stories say it has to be the right Linux and configured properly, but then refuse to provide those details so that others may follow them. I'm specifically asking you to provide details to bolster your claims.

As far as installing new software, what new software - exactly - do people need when a system is set up with everything most people would ever need already. Give me an example of new software you think the average person is suddenly going to need.

You've got to be kidding me. The software that people use most likely follows some kind of power law, with a long tail of applications that people find useful.

As an example, maybe they are into poker, and want some poker software installed that their poker buddies recommended. Or there's a game they want to play. Or there's some household organization app. The possibilities are endless. That you think the average person will never run across an occasion to install new software is ridiculous.

I don't talk about compatibility problems with hardware because hardware doesn't change. Are you suggesting that a properly configured system will suddenly morph one day and need a different driver?

First, to install the software the first time it needs to be compatibile with the hardware, and there are many cases like wireless or video drivers where the support tends to be spotty. Second, yes, people buy new hardware devices, replace broken hardware, or drivers that used to work will stop working on an update.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Zero__Kelvin]

"You've got to be kidding me."

Your right. I'm kidding you. The people who switched to Linux made the switch because they love the ease of use of Windows, and the fact that it never gave them any problems or changed the user interface across versions, and nothing ever broke as the result of an update. When they want a new software package they far prefer hunting around on the internet for some application that may or may not be malware to using tested code from signed repositories. They especially miss the experience of clicking on the link that is supposed to bring them to their goal, only to find that they have been tricked into going to a download page for some other product. The few who did move are constantly lamenting about the good ole' days when they had to ignore attachments in emails because opening them could infect their computer.

"Second, yes, people buy new hardware devices, replace broken hardware, or drivers that used to work will stop working on an update."

... at which point they do what every user should do. They consult a qualified professional before they buy the hardware and get quality devices that work immediately when installed with no need to reconfigure anything, or they get help re-configuring things in the very rare case that it is required.

To hear you tell it needing new software and replacing hardware components is such a regular occurance that nobody could ever consult a qualified individual before doing it and enlist their help when necessary.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Raenex]

So to summarize, you still refuse to supply details about what you install or how you configure it, or who updates the software or keeps the system maintained.

As for Windows breaking on updates or changing their UI, XP had a very long and good run. While no update system is perfect, my experience between updating an XP system versus maintaining a Debian system is night and day. You say Ubuntu is no better, but refuse to offer concrete details of what is better.

They consult a qualified professional before they buy the hardware and get quality devices that work immediately when installed with no need to reconfigure anything, or they get help re-configuring things in the very rare case that it is required.

Umm, yeah, let's get real here. The average person with Windows buys a device and it works just fine out of the box because the device makers go out of their way to make sure that it does, and they don't need to "consult a qualified professional".

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Zero__Kelvin]

"So to summarize, you still refuse to supply details about what you install or how you configure it, or who updates the software or keeps the system maintained."

Yes, I refuse to write a book and try to post it on Slashdot. I'm also not going to teach you how to rebuild an engine today.

"The average person with Windows buys a device and it works just fine out of the box because the device makers go out of their way to make sure that it does, and they don't need to "consult a qualified professional".

I'd love to get real here. When do you plan on starting?

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Raenex]

Yes, I refuse to write a book and try to post it on Slashdot.

Nobody asked you for a book, just some basic details. That you refuse to provide them, while at the same time advocating Linux and decrying popular Linux distros, speaks volumes. What's the point of Linux advocacy if it requires help from some self-proclaimed expert that can't justify his methods?

I'd love to get real here. When do you plan on starting?

This coming from the guy asking why somebody would want to install new software, glossing over hardware problems, and refusing to provide basic details about what distro they use, configuration, or who is responsible for keeping the system up to date.

And do you really claim that the average device doesn't have Windows support out of the box, while Linux support frequently lags behind? That people don't need to "consult a professional" before buying a device?

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

I write a lot of code, sometimes I'm at it for days on end before my vision is so shot that I have to take a break to sleep. Have plenty of crapware installed despite knowing full well how to clean it out. If I did clean it out then every program I write would be designed for my computers specs, because I tend to forget about the constraints on poorly maintained computers. The bloat provides great motivation to write more efficient code.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[hardburlyboogerman]

Amen to that.So do I

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Billly Gates]

I know you were being sarcastic, but what you said is true as of Windows 7. Its updates are well tested, its reliable, its secure, and if you dont fuck with it it will keep humming along.

I do not think you ran Windows in a long time. If I were to guess it would be windowsME or early XP with IE 6 which is a decade obsolete. If you have the latest adobe flash which auto updates, no adobe pdf readers and use foxit or Sumatra, and a decent anti virus product that computer is secure. You can even use IE again and still be secure.

So would Joe Six pack need Linux? How can he know an update wont hose his drivers.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Billly Gates]

Windows and every other OS has an abi so an update wont hose anything. Windows updates are well tested too and is a strength of Windows. The days of dos based vxd drivers have been long gone for awhile.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Zero__Kelvin]

"I do not think you ran Windows in a long time."

I currently have the capability to boot into Windows 7, and do so from time to time. I concede that it is far batter than XP, Vista, or Windows 8 (will be). Unfortunately Microsoft still doesn't get it. I use a laptop. When I shut down it tells me to wait while it installs updates. It doesn't offer me the option to defer the process. I am aware that I can disable auto update, but this means I have to choose between security or having control over when I can actually shut my system down.

"So would Joe Six pack need Linux? How can he know an update wont hose his drivers."

Because it is Linux and it is almost certainly not going to do that, but in the rare case it does he simply selects the original kernel from the boot menu.

" If you have the latest adobe flash which auto updates, no adobe pdf readers and use foxit or Sumatra, and a decent anti virus product that computer is secure. "

So you are saying that if the person knows what they are doing they are fine, but if they are the typical clueless user administering his own computer ... not so much. Sounds familiar.

"You can even use IE again and still be secure."

I suppose if you run it under WINE on a Linux box that might even be true.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[exomondo]

Yes, I refuse to write a book and try to post it on Slashdot.

I just read through this comment thread and maybe you mentioned it but i missed it, what distro do you use?

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, he's too busy occupying something.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Go derp somewhere else asshole.

Re:PC Decrapifier: Free

[MacWiz]

Apple is not an OS vendor. They manufacture computers. The hardware contains some of the core code used by the OS. In the past, this was the code that made a Mac so different from everything else and provided the extra security Macs used to be so vehemently touted for. Don't know how much that has changed since OSX came into being and the UNIX code was adopted.

Some of us will pay the extra price, partly because we don't want to have to know how to build a computer from scratch in order to do the work we buy a computer for in the first place (we also do not want to know how to manufacture a car just so we can drive to work). And partly because we read threads like this one that so clearly outline the clusterfuck that owning a Windows machine seems to be.

Synonymous Saturday

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like something asymptotically approaching extortion.

$99 !!!!!!

[Pieroxy]

Oh my... Is this just like going to an MS store and buying an brand new Windows 7?

Looks like MS wants to double dip here. They force feed Windows licenses to constructors that don't know any better than to crappify it, and then you have to go to MS again to de-crappify it?

Thieves.

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[HornWumpus]

They get paid to crappify it (by the crapwear vendors, Norton, McAfee etc).

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[firex726]

MS does not force anything on OEMs.

OEMs are the ones making deals with other crapware supplies to put their SW on the computers for money.

Dell or whoever buys the bulk license from MS, Dell then goes and gets paid to put the crapware on their computers when they are sold. I fail to see how you can fault MS for any of that.

Don't want crapware, well MS sells a clean version of their OS, and now they are also offering a removal service.

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So $99 to remove the crapware and $80 to upgrade from Win7 Starter (so you can change your wallpaper). I'll stick to Linux. I'm not going to pay as much to get windows usable as I did for the machine in the first place!

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[Altrag]

More like refunding Microsoft (part of) the difference between an OEM version and a retail version. Of course some portion of that $99 will be going to the tech monkey who has to run the de-crapping software (possibly a large portion if they go to the trouble of backing up your data, installing fresh, and attempting to restore everything properly).

And you probably don't get the cleaned install discs, so there's the added bonus that if you ever need to restore your laptop you'll have to pay them again.

Or you could just go Apple as the article suggests, and pay the $500 brand name tax up front.

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair it's more like buying a new Windows 7 and then they install it for you for free and transfer all your files.

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[englishknnigits]

MS doesn't do the crappifying, the OEMs do. Microsoft is offering a service to remove the crap that OEMs install on OEM systems. If you want the service, pay for it. If you don't want it, don't pay for it. This isn't a good/evil issue, it is a "is it worth it" issue. If you want to be mad at anyone, be mad at the OEMs for not offering a crapware free option (that would cost more).

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

MS does not force anything on OEMs.

Bullshit. Microsoft forces OEM's to refrain from changing the interface - all OEMs must ship the Microsoft desktop, hence why you do not see a bunch of different interfaces. Maybe it's about time Microsoft forces the OEMs from shipping crapware.

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what is even easier????

- You take a VL DVD of Windows 7 and install like normal
- Download any missing drivers from company website
- Activate Windows 7 with the OEM license key plastered somewhere on your tower
- Call the 1-800 number to activate over phone (required when using OEM key with VL install)
- Activated and clean Windows 7 license!

There is nothing illegal about this either, as you already own the license (it's that sticker dummy!)

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[Undead Waffle]

Well, MS is somewhat to blame for providing the OEMs with keys that only let you activate copies of Windows installed by their crapware-loaded discs. At least this was the case last time I tried to use a normal disc on a new HP computer (admittedly it was Win XP).

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell or whoever buys the bulk license from MS, Dell then goes and gets paid to put the crapware on their computers when they are sold. I fail to see how you can fault MS for any of that.

Well, MS could be saying (to Dell or whoever): if you want to sell computers 'with Windows' you cannot sell them 'with Windows+crapware'. At most you're allowed to install drivers.

It's that simple.

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[jimicus]

I can actually see Microsoft doing precisely this if they find their desktop monopoly in serious danger. Can't be good for Windows' image, the crap that gets shovelled into OEM builds.

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

MS does not force anything on OEMs.

Really ? Than please report back when OEMs also got the right to replace (stuff like) IE with something decent ....

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[netik]

If their OS was designed correctly, Norton and McAfee's entire market wouldn't exist. Both of these AV vendors profit because of poor security controls in the operating system.

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[marcello_dl]

If I cared about an OS I sell, I'd make sure people no OEM crap ends up in system sold with my sticker on it. OEM must come to me for a license? then they better personalize their offering with clearly labeled and uninstallable add ons.

Since MS and the hardware makers form a system which wants you to buy new hardware/sw each year, antivirus, antispyware, registry cleaner, decrappifier, bloat and similar things happen.

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[marcello_dl]

complimenting myself for the most grammatically and semantically inaccurate post of the year.

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[rsmith-mac]

Thankfully they fixed that starting with Vista. The universal installer means that the distinction between versions and OEM/retail is gone, or in the case of Win7 can be after deleting ei.cfg

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[GuB-42]

Windows is not that badly designed, not anymore. And it already comes with an excellent free antivirus.
Norton and McAffee are just crapware that don't need a legitimate reason to exist. And AV are not the only type of crapware, there are also online stores, browser toolbars... Even Microsoft is at fault with their MSOffice trial.

Re:$99 !!!!!!

[catman]

You are assuming that Microsoft actually cares about Windows' image. MS' customers are the OEMs and the corporate buyers, not the end users. Actually, I don't think MS could care less about what the end users think, as long as they can keep a death grip on the OEM market. They have suffered lots of PR setbacks without batting an eyelid.

What a rip off

[mysqlbytes]

One simple solution to most crapware: msconfig Stop all the unnecessary from loading at startup! Teach a man to fish... doesn't stop him installing crap.

Re:What a rip off

[txsable]

As I used to write many times on SpywareInfo.com's forums...MSCONFIG is not a solution. it's a diagnosis tool. Once you diagnose the problem, either uninstall or disable the problem startup items correctly, then return msconfig to normal operations state. As a home service tech for three years I actually "fixed" at least a dozen PCs were the user had "stopped" their problem with MSCONFIG...except in the process they also disabled their audio drivers, or print utility, or some other vital system service. The most fun was that disabling things with MSCONFIG didn't even stop half the crapware/malware/virii; most of them just recreated their startup entries automatically the moment it was missing anyway.

Cleaning a PC, or tuning, requires looking at data (hijackthis log, CCleaner, whatever tool does the job best nowadays), identifying the problem items, and correctly removing or disabling them. Step 2 (identifying) is the most difficult, and I dare say most home users wouldn't have a clue about what the dozens of startup entries and services actually do. Personally I think the $99 price tag to optimize a PC is a bit high, but then we charged $65/hr to do it at someone's home or business ($45 if they brought it to us), and most malware cleanups took 12-15 hours although we stopped charging at 4 hours.

I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a CD labelled "Ubuntu"

Re:I do it for free...

[amiga3D]

I've notice that Ubuntu is beginning to see the crapware creep in also. Fortunately when I decided to move I found that Mepis worked better and without the bloat.

Re:I do it for free...

[binarylarry]

What 3rd party software did you find preinstalled?

I'm curious, I'm running 12.04 and haven't noticed anything like that.

Re:I do it for free...

[Em Adespoton]

Likely video drivers and other "non-free" stuff.

However, it can be argued that almost ALL Linux software is 3rd party.... as well as being first party. That's the whole point.

Re:I do it for free...

[SuricouRaven]

I used to. Pre-Unity. Now I use Xubuntu.

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-free, in this context, means it's not free software or open source but, rather, proprietary. This has nothing to do with price, and it's most certainly not crapware. These are drivers whose source isn't open, so Canonical made sure to let you know when your hardware requires non-free drivers to run it, rather than installing it automatically without telling you. One could argue that it should not be there in the first place, or that it should just be installed automatically and that's it, but no one who knows what these things are would call this crapware. These are just drivers.

You know what is crapware, though? The “drivers” that you install on Windows, where you download a 500 MB package just to get your printer working, and you suddenly have a whole new print dialogue, a bunch of printer-related utilities you don't need, a bunch of services running all the time, and even a new default image viewer. You don't see this with Ubuntu. I don't know how you could. It comes preinstalled in very few places. And, generally, when you plug in these printers with Ubuntu, they just work immediately.

Re:I do it for free...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I tried that, but it broke all my games.

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps I'm a Linux user who doesn't like the smug arrogance that I see often. Or perhaps I'm a Mac User who dislikes smug arrogance from anyone, or perhaps your comment is wrong. Your assumption is not a fact.

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

"...perhaps I'm a Mac User who dislikes smug arrogance from anyone..."

Haha. That's a good one.

Re:I do it for free...

[Cito]

PFFFT! I'm much more cooler than all of you windows/linux/mac fanbois!

I have no operating system on my computer! only idiots would install that bloated mess.. I have no bloat! I stare at my bios screen and it RAWKS!

black screen or bios screen... it's all ya need

Re:I do it for free...

[tftp]

He isn't talking about 3rd party software. He talks about unwanted software that is automatically installed for you. In Ubuntu it's Unity :-)

Re:I do it for free...

[Ponder Stibions]

I find the Ubuntu server CD doesn't install nearly as much excess crap. Who needs anything but a commandline anyhow?
Who, what me use Ubuntu? No, migrated over to Debian since Ubuntu added Unity. ;)

Re:I do it for free...

[dakohli]

I got an HP workstation, it seemed to take forever to get to a usable desktop, then it still persisted in going out to HP to see if there were any new drivers to download. In the end I wiped it, installed a full version of windows 7 and never looked back.

The article does mention that MS seems to install a lot of Windows Live applications, so, what's the point here? I would rather take the time to download and install just what I need/want rather than someone else dump a bunch of stuff on my computer for me.

This seems to me it is just a gimmick that MS is pushing. If you are going to remove the "bloat", then you should not replace it with other stuff of dubious value. Of course I do not do much with Windows Live, and perhaps other folks would welcome the installation.

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just thinking that if its going to remove crapware it would remove the OS as well.

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

PFFFT! I'm much more cooler than all of you windows/linux/mac fanbois!

I have no operating system on my computer! only idiots would install that bloated mess.. I have no bloat! I stare at my bios screen and it RAWKS!

black screen or bios screen... it's all ya need

Fuck man, you use a screen? What is your speaker broken? Once I hear those beeps, I know I'm running my machine..... lean and mean.

Re:I do it for free...

[couchslug]

Works for me. I keep Windows contained in a VM, but don't use it much.

It's really MORE convenient to run Windows in a VM. No malware problems and Snapshots anytime you want them.

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux "shills"? Are you fucking retarded?

Re:I do it for free...

[poopdeville]

dude, exclamation marks are totally unhip. ellipses, on the other hand...

Re:I do it for free...

[youngatheart]

Ha! Ha. ... no wait, that makes more sense than I expected.

Why do we need an OS that is installed? I've used Ubuntu, CentOS, Slax and other live CDs and been impressed with how well they do what I want. With Novell Suse Studio I could build my own Customized OS which isn't ever installed on the computer. I already store all my important data on a pair of external USB drives, but I'd rather have my main hard drive handle the job. If I didn't have to worry about installing the OS, I could boot every time to the same system until I wanted an update and just burn a new CD or update the usb stick I boot from.

I heard a Staples guy talk about how he was doing exactly that sort of thing and it bugs me. I've never been able to get an OS on a stick to meet my demands, but I should be able to. In the future, I'd love to see computers sold with "and here is your OS stick, it comes with Window 9, Ubuntu, PC-BSD and Mac Alleycat but you can update those or come back and get an updated version anytime you like for $99."

Re:I do it for free...

[Mister Transistor]

What, your hardware has a speaker?

Such Puffery.

I toggle in my programs via front panel switches and get my results from LED registers - the way GOD intended!

-- Sent from my PDP-8 --

Re:I do it for free...

[KingMotley]

Or perhaps I'm a Mac User who dislikes smug arrogance from anyone else[sic]

Fixed that for you

Re:I do it for free...

[couchslug]

AMI, Phoenix?

Let the BIOS fanboi wars begin!

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

pfft im much more cooler than all of you windows linux mac bios fanbois i dictate to a gay goth who enters text on a manual typewriter with a video camera catching the characters and posting them online only idiots would install that bloated mess i have no bloat i stare at my goth friend who also plays in a band with no myspace page and it rocks typewriter and goth friend and video camera its all ya need including punctuation and upper case letters

Re:I do it for free...

[jedidiah]

A free market can't work unless people are willing to turn their back on obvious trash, especially when it causes problems for them.

This "service" is a manifestation of what everyone knows: Windows is crap that nearly no one would put up with if not for monopoly vendor lock and network effects. The rise of tablets is a nice demostration of just how fed up consumers are.

They just need to get over their mental block regarding things like IE and msoffice. Tablets are just "different" enough to allow usual mental block to seem meaningless.

Re:I do it for free...

[jedidiah]

Chances are that you can't remove all of the crap simply any other way. It might be a clean copy of what you had before but an OS install is going to come in there somewhere.

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

The program PC De-crapifier is free too! It even cleaned up my sister's HP Laptop, with pernicious fingerprint recognition thingy.

http://pcdecrapifier.com/

Re:I do it for free...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Well then obviously Linux isn't for you, very wise of you to point out. Your reasonable argument can be applied because recommending any distro of Linux to fix this problem is extreme and not useful to many people.

FTFY.

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your reasonable argument can be applied because recommending any distro of Linux to fix this problem is extreme and not useful to many people.

Arguing with the strawmen in your head?

Re:I do it for free...

[spd_rcr]

I tried that too, it also broke all my games and all my productivity.

Linux is a great idea and has many powerful tools, but for everyone who's not a comp-sci major, the OS is just supposed to launch the programs you want, and preferably do it fast.

A $99 'lazy tax' for everyone who doesn't want to format their hd, perform a clean install, setup their drivers, and download a ton of patches, etc...
meh, sounds pretty fair to me.
Those same people could have avoided all that junk installed on their pc if they'd just bought a computer assembled by an enthusiast company or a local computer shop in the first place. Those low prices at Best Buy or many online retailers are subsidized by all the crap they pre-load the systems with. Complaining about the crapware on an HP is like complaining about the ads on a "Kindle with special offers".

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter what OS you choose, there is always going to be a trade-off. Are you really patting yourself on the back for pointing out the obvious? Your life must be very small and sad.

Re:I do it for free...

[IonOtter]

Yeah, I tried that too. I wanted to resurrect an old IBM box with a zippy install of Ubuntu, and it was nice! Until Unity came along. *BOGGGGGGGGG*choke-gasp-gag*

So I chipped in a few pennies for some extra memory, and it pepped up a bit. I ran a cable under my carpet to the living room and set it up as a media center on my screen projector, but the cable got pinched. So I bought a wireless dongle.

A Netgear WNA1100. I plug it into a WinXP machine, and *bink*! Instant connectivity. Done and dusted. I plug it into Precise Pangolin and...and...annnnd...?

Zip. Nada. I search the boards, I scour the help files, I fight and claw my way through page after page of ultra-mega-super geeks asking the newbs to post page after page of process listings. Three...fricking...DAYS of digging.

And THEN, when I finally got it to work, and did everything the tutorial that *I*, not the geeks, *I* put together, it died again after a reboot. And nothing I could do could bring it back again.

I'm no slouch when it comes to hardware. If there's info out there, and I can find it, then I can fix it. I fix my own car, I fix my own machines, I fix my own house, my own wiring, plumbing, appliances...you name it.

But Ubuntu gave me two rare birds. I think my Ubuntu install is endangered.

Re:I do it for free...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Would my life be less sad if I patted myself on the back for chirping "UBUNTU!!!" every time somebody has a Windows problem? Isn't this why we hate Mac users?

Re:I do it for free...

[colinrichardday]

You have LED registers? We dreamed about having LED registers!

Re:I do it for free...

[hendridm]

Why do people hate Unity so much? Perhaps it's just me coming from OS X, but it seems to work just fine.

Re:I do it for free...

[Nursie]

Yup, great piece of software that, found it after my last Sony purchase (a good few years back now) and it really made a difference.

Of course it came preloaded with Vista which was just horrible anyway.

Re:I do it for free...

[SuricouRaven]

Firstly, because it's different. Not better, just different... and different without better seems a lot like change for change's sake. There are already clear conventions for how desktop interfaces work, and unity defies them for no apparent benefit. Secondly, it feels awkward even once you are used to it. Searching takes time, and personally I find it awkward even just launching a terminal because of that second-or-two wait.

The old Gnome style worked. It worked well. Unity feels like just a gimmick.

Re:I do it for free...

[TheLink]

I find the other way round better. "Server" Linux in a VM and Windows as desktop and host. That way you can run all the Windows games/desktop stuff. I've NEVER had malware problems on my personal Windows machines[1].

IMO Desktop Linux is still crappier than Windows XP/7. "Server Linux" on the other hand is pretty good. Most of the good Linux stuff is server and not desktop. I have to say K3B is pretty darn good. Maybe someone can provide a longer list of Desktop Linux only apps that are better than Windows alternatives.

[1] But I'm the sort of person who uses noscript and runs different firefox profiles using different user accounts (using runas). That way even if the browser is pwned, the malware needs to do privilege escalation from a restricted user account to get more than what that particular browser instance can do. Most malware is not designed for that.

Re:I do it for free...

[aaaaaaargh!]

I don't claim you're wrong,obviously experiences can differ. However, you cannot generalize from them.

To give you a counterexample to your general statement, I don't have a CS degree and I'm using Ubuntu and since recently Xubuntu for more than 5 years for my daily work and in the evening for my hobbies. I never had any problems worth speaking of and certainly did not see any decrease in productivity (previously I was using Macs).

Perhaps it depends on the domain. My daytime job mostly involves reading and writing. If on the other hand you have to do with graphics or audio processing, I'd concur that Linux is not yet there -- open source replacements for applications like Photoshop or Protools are not yet at the same level of usability.

For everything else (notwithstanding games, of course) I'd say the platform doesn't matter any longer. The differences between OS X, Linux, and Windows are marginal. At least that's my experience.

Re:I do it for free...

[marsu_k]

I have to say K3B is pretty darn good. Maybe someone can provide a longer list of Desktop Linux only apps that are better than Windows alternatives.

This is coming from a KDE perspective, and IMHO, YMMV, etc, but - when it comes to pointy-clicky text editors Kate > Notepad++ by a wide margin. The built-in editors in Windows are not even worth mentioning. Kioslaves is teh awsum. Using something like WinSCP seem so archaic, when one can simply open a location via SFTP anywhere. Further, Dolphin > Explorer (the file manager). If you want more control, Konqueror still exists, but I haven't felt the need to use it in a few years, KDE 4 is maturing quite nicely (yes, the initial release was a major clusterfuck, but that was years ago). Windows still lacks a decent window manager. Or even basic window management. And virtual desktops. And the built-in shell in Windows is just laughable. Hell, even xterm is better. This is just from the top of my head, I'm sure someone else can continue the list further.

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have disk labeled "Debian 6.0.5". You should try it...

Re:I do it for free...

[marcello_dl]

What you said can be simply achieved by booting to the Forth interpreter powered openfirmware console present on macintoshes a couple of decades ago.
I'm afraid mac oldtimers are cooler than you according to your metric.

Re:I do it for free...

[daath93]

This trope of "Microsoft Monopoly" in this day of the Apple Coffee Shop mafia is patently absurd. I've seen homeless people with macbooks, ipads, galaxy tablets. Move on.

Re:I do it for free...

[sjames]

If my wife and my mom can use Linux, it must be user friendly enough. If you're looking for an OS that will just launch the programs you want and fast, why are you looking at Windows?

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

It should come without the crapware installed to begin with.

Re:I do it for free...

[amiga3D]

The biggest offender was all the Ubuntu cloud stuff. The software center that replaces synaptic but doesn't do a better job and is frankly not as straightforward nor as easy to use. There were a few other annoyances as well and I'm not even including Unity as that's an entirely different matter. The last iteration of Ubuntu before Unity was one of the nicest operating systems I've ever used....and then they destroyed it. A perfect example of fixing something until it's broken.

Re:I do it for free...

[msobkow]

Last week I did an XP re-install to do the last testing on some mouse/trackball issues I've been having (after the system got nuked by another problem, making it "safe" to do an XP reinstall -- I'd already lost the system.)

It took over 12 hours to install all the updates and service packs, core software, and I was nowhere near done with getting it ready to use.

Having diagnosed and corrected the hardware issue (an infected "smart" device that was using USB protocols to autoload an infection), I gave Ubuntu 12.04 another shot. (I'd previously written it off due to problems that were caused by the infected hardware.)

It took under 4 hours to install and configure everything I need except the database servers.

Now granted, XP is old and there were a lot of patches it had to install, but that's not really what caused the delays. What caused the delays was the endless cycle of reboots during the install process. WIth Ubuntu, I rebooted once -- when the kernel update was installed. I lost count of the XP reboots after 10.

I found Vista to be no better the last time I installed it.

The Windows 7 Ultimate install I did for a customer a few months ago also took a day and a half to go from raw system to fully functional.

Let's face it -- either Windows is horrendously designed and really requires all these reboots, or the third-party product vendors are hell bent on making people HATE windows just for giggles.

Personally, I can't imagine why anything other than a driver update or an anti-virus install should need a reboot. WTF can Adobe Reader POSSIBLY be doing to the system to require a reboot, for example? There is absolutely NO functionality for a PDF viewer that should require kernel-level integration.

By the way, beware the "restore" drive images on machines. As I've learned (the painful way), doing a restore with such an image also restores all the crapware you spent a day removing...

Re:I do it for free...

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, you haven't read the thread.

Re:I do it for free...

[L4t3r4lu5]

Sorry, I can't hear you over the clacking of the beads on my abacus.

Re:I do it for free...

[petermgreen]

Those same people could have avoided all that junk installed on their pc if they'd just bought a computer assembled by an enthusiast company or a local computer shop in the first place.

In my experiance the cheap whiteboxes from local vendors hit their pricepoint by using whatever components were cheapest that week regardless of quality.

Afaict if you are after a cheap but reasonable qulality desktop that isn't loaded with crapware and you don't want to DIY your best option is to go with a "buisness" machine from one of the big OEMs.

Re:I do it for free...

[Keith111]

If by lazy you mean willing to grab your computer and drop it into your car and drive it to a store through traffic letting things bump around and possibly damage your computer and then carry it into a mall or wherever a microsoft store might be, then yeah. Lazy tax.

Re:I do it for free...

[ogdenk]

We must have different definitions of "works". Yes, you can start programs. If that's your definition of "works" then so be it. Unity is NOTHING like the OSX UI. If you think it is, you're not using the OSX UI to it's full potential in any way, shape or form.

GNOME and KDE are tolerable but I'm with most of the Slashdot crowd when I say I've tried to like Unity and it plain sucks. It's about as useful as AtEase was on the old 68k Macs in computer labs. For your grandma that just needs a Firefox and Email button, it may suffice..... for people that use computers for a living it's an obnoxious hindrance that gets in the way and slows down REAL WORK.

try $30 no tax cash

[Anonymous Coward]

41.98078,-87.805257

Re:try $30 no tax cash

[DeeEff]

Gen-Ki Karate and Kung Fu Club?

They do computer repairs now?

Re:try $30 no tax cash

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess their new motto is "We kick the crap outta crapware!"

Re:try $30 no tax cash

[vwpau227]

There are a number of people on Craigslist and Kijiji around here that will do that sort of work for that sort of price, but I am unclear if most consumers are willing to give their computer to someone from an online advertisement. Obviously there isn't as much overhead as with a computer store for those who are doing this.

The company I work for has been in business since 1995. I figure we target much the same consumer as Microsoft in this case: a reputable place to send the computer for service for those who are unable to do the sort of work themselves, or really don't have the time or inclination to do so.

PC Decrapifier is free

[signingis]

http://pcdecrapifier.com/

Re:PC Decrapifier is free

[Culture20]

Technically "grass roots" is free. Astroturfing costs money because it's fake grass roots.

remove all the crapware?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Then you won't have a Windows OS. Is it worth $99 to have your OS removed? I dunno. But inquiring minds want to know!

Re:remove all the crapware?

[aklinux]

The last Dell laptop I got, by the time I removed all the crapware, it wouldn't boot. Kept complaining about "no operating system found" or some-such. I installed Linux, and all was well :)

Re:remove all the crapware?

[rrohbeck]

So how much would MS charge for installing Linux? $199? Inquiring minds want to know.

Re:remove all the crapware?

[fustakrakich]

It's a hell of a better deal than SCO's license

Re:remove all the crapware?

[Nimey]

PAY YOUR $699 LICENSE FEE, you cock-smoking teabaggers!

Re:remove all the crapware?

[im_thatoneguy]

I bought a linux device (android phone) and it came chock full of crapware: telenav, T-Mobile TV etc...

Re:remove all the crapware?

[aklinux]

I have a similar situation, only from AT&T. Not quite as straight forward to remove. The real pain there is that a couple of those are not just on the phone, they're running in the background taking resources I could use for something useful to me. AT&T Universe & AccuWeather for instance. AT&T Universe service is not available in my area and AccuWeather doesn't live up to it's name. They're both running on my phone and can't be removed Not without rooting, which has it's own security implications.

Re:remove all the crapware?

[MightyYar]

I have that! What a pile of crap! And it's worse than Windows - you can't just go to add/remove programs. You actually have to root the device (Zerg Rush) and then one-at-a-time backup the phone, remove something, and then test to make sure you didn't hose the phone.

Re:remove all the crapware?

[leromarinvit]

It seems quite logical. After all, a computer without Windows is more useful and therefore more valuable.

Re:remove all the crapware?

[Anonymous Coward]

a windows computer fully loaded with crapware may be a collectors item in the future. i say shrink wrap it and store it away. think "action comics #1", only completely boring.

Re:remove all the crapware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you won't have a Windows OS.

Windows 7 isn't so bad. --OS X and Ubuntu user

Is it worth $99 to have your OS removed?

No.

I wonder..

[Duncan J Murray]

I wonder if this will be a problem for linux, if linux on the desktop really takes off. Looking at android, I guess so.

Re:I wonder..

[Altrag]

It already is a problem with Linux in a sense. How many users do you think really go through the entire package list and ensure they only install the things they need?

At least Linux gives you the option, and most of the stuff wouldn't be classified as "crapware" in the same sense as those bloody 30 day Norton Virus trials, but it amounts to the same thing in the end for non-power users, which is the vast majority of all desktop users.

Re:I wonder..

[Deep Esophagus]

That's why I will never install Ubuntu or Fedora or any of the preconfigured distros. Arch Linux installs just the bare minimum needed to have a working (non-gui) OS, and then I can pick and choose just the packages I actually want to use. The package manager takes care of any dependencies, but it also doesn't install irrelevant crap.

That said, I could never expect my technophobic friends and family to do any of that. They get confused finding the command prompt (or knowing why they would ever want to use it) on a new Windows install. I used to be one of those annoyingly strident Linux fanboys smugly saying "To fix your computer, just install Linux" but that was before 10 years of playing tech support to the two or three who listened to me. Now I still preach the wonders of Linux, but with a lengthy disclaimer making it clear what it will NOT do that they expect it to do just like Windows.

Re:I wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

It already is a problem with Linux in a sense. How many users do you think really go through the entire package list and ensure they only install the things they need?

Most of the unused packages in an average Linux installation simply sit there, consuming no resources other than disk space (which is cheap). Do I use GIMP? No. Does it bother me that GIMP is installed on my computer? No. Would I see any tangible benefit if I were to uninstall it? No.

This is not remotely comparable to Windows OEM crapware, which launches at startup, runs constantly in the background, bombards the user with splash screens and pop-up demands that they purchase a full version, clutters context menus, and generally messes things up and destabilizes the whole system.

Re:I wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

if linux on the desktop really takes off

Yes, this is likely to happen after decades of no traction and a market that doesn't care about desktop PCs anymore. Keep dreaming the dream.

Re:I wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the old days of Ubuntu, you would want to uninstall OpenOffice and it would uninstall half the packages list. Then you would install the vanilla OpenOffice packages and end up with less bloat. That is what you should not do. Have packages tied to others so that you have to remove half the system if you uninstall something.

Re:I wonder..

[drinkypoo]

It won't be a problem because you will download the ISO from the distributor and then you will install it because it will support your hardware. This is only a problem (to which one might apply money) for Windows users because Windows is neither free nor Free.

Re:I wonder..

[Agent0013]

It already is a problem with Linux in a sense. How many users do you think really go through the entire package list and ensure they only install the things they need?

The only difference I see is that installing programs in Linux does not slow it down as bad as installing things on Windows does. I have installed and uninstalled dozens of things in Ubuntu to try them out or have them if I ever want them. So far I have not seen the typical slow down I am used to with Windows. I made it a standard practice to do a fresh re-install of my Windows systems every 12-18 months. It would clean out all the cruft and junk that gets left in the registry from the things you used your computer for.

Re:I wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux has had more than enough time to take off already, don't you think?

Latest from your local dealer!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring your brand-new car back to the dealer, and for only $1000 we'll put air in your tires so you can accelerate to highway speeds!

Re:Latest from your local dealer!

[LordLimecat]

Microsoft isnt the dealer, theyre the parts manufacturer.

Re:Latest from your local dealer!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, fine.

Latest improvement in Microsoft tire technology! Amazing tires that make your car run faster and more efficiently! Will add air for only an extra $99.

Re:Latest from your local dealer!

[bloodhawk]

Sorry that still fails. They supplied the tires, the OEM took the air out of them and replaced it with something liquid and smelly. MS are charging to put back the original air. Really the price seems about right, not so low that it is undercutting all the small stores that offer a similar service and not so high as to make it unaffordable for those that don't want to find the more affordable options to save 30-40 bucks. Shops locally here provide the same service for Macs and for Linux too, my sister recently paid to have her Macbook reinstalled as it was getting to the point of unusuable, seems all systems suffer from crapware rott nowadays.

What comes around ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the crapware.

You see, will all that crapware I can say that Windows is slower than shit compared to Linux or Mac. And when people say, "Oh, that's not Windows that all the other software on it.

I say, "it came with my new system. My Windows system. A system that requires that software to be on there for it to be sold. Can I buy it without that software? No. Therefore, it is a Windows problem."

Then I smugly walkaway after my completely brilliant asinine argument.

Re:What comes around ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have dents in your head from people slapping you as you walk away, then.

Re:What comes around ...

[AK Marc]

I have the same issue with Firefox. I don't like Firefox. But so many others swear at it, I mean by it. I like Opera better. Opera was first with tabbed browsing, first with mouse gestures, and other such features. Opera is also fast, with a relatively small memory footprint. Back a while ago, I'd point out such things to Firefox nutters. "Firefox is smaller and faster" for discussions on performance. "Firefox has that feature, if you load an add-on" But when you use it with the necessary add ons, it was slower and more bloated. But the fanboys would always compare performance without mods and features with. Is it really so hard for there to be a little consistency?

Android

[Anonymous Coward]

Wish you could do this with Android smartphones. Most of the time, their crapware isn't even user-removable.

Wow

[gman003]

And I thought it was a rip-off when an OEM offered to not install crapware for $15.

Re:Wow

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

What would you charge if any ol' Joe Schmoe cam in with some random machine and said: "De-crapify this, please."...?

Re:Wow

[gman003]

Dunno - are Ubuntu CDs still free?

Re:Wow

[englishknnigits]

I dunno, is your time worthless?

Re:Wow

[gman003]

It takes approximately 10s to hand someone a CD and say "install this". Given my current salary, that comes out to roughly a nickel.

Yeah, I'm OK with that.

Re:Wow

[CAIMLAS]

Probably, "ok, that'll be $150. Sign here, and be sure to read the clause about no liability for damages, yadda yadda".

Re:Wow

[Osgeld]

I wont dare hand someone random a linux disk, it may take only 10 seconds to hand them a disk, but who are they going to call when their printer doesnt work, or the software that came with their GPS doesnt function, or when open/libre office fucks up every single table in a 100 page report they need in the morning

Re:Wow

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Ah... I see what you're saying. He comes back in a week, asks why his game doesn't work, you get WINE going, then charge him. A week or two later, he comes back cos he cannot figure out how to edit a CONF file, so you charge him again. Rinse, repeat.

Fiscally what you're suggesting is muuuch wiser. Very smooth!

Re:Wow

[toddestan]

Yeah, you're right. Better off downloading Debian.

Re:Wow

[Patch86]

Considering how quick an Ubuntu install is these days, and considering what I'm paid, I think the time/cost is near enough a rounding error.

YMMV if you happen to be the anonymised internet manifestation of Bob Diamond.

Or better yet...

[Anonymous Coward]

...pick up a lappy without a WinOEM license and avoid the Windows Tax entirely.

to me

[zerodl]

Reformatting is Free

I thought they were going to charge this way:

[ibic00]

Windows 7 Home Premium: $99.99
Windows 7 Professional: $149.99
Windows 7 Ultimate: $199.99

Re:I thought they were going to charge this way:

[Sperbels]

Seriously. This would save everyone a whole lot of trouble. Whenever my parents's computer inevitably gets a malware infection, I tell them I'm done rooting through their registry cleaning the crap out. I'm just going to format and reinstall Windows. Copy the shit you want to keep somewhere safe and I'll move it back when I'm done. It's instantly fixed and much faster.

Re:I thought they were going to charge this way:

[Anonymous Coward]

Which really begs the question as to when precisely MS is going to properly set up the user accounts to allow that to be done easily. Putting user data on the same partition as the system drive is a no no. But, then again, MS also loves mixing application settings and such into the OS and random folders as well.

Why they can't do something like /home, and allow that to contain all of the user settings is beyond me.

Re:I thought they were going to charge this way:

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed Lubuntu (same as my distro, to keep it simple) on my Mum's desktop, which is a blazing machine that I built for £330 plus monitor. I showed her how to accept the update box, installed Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and VLC and a few other utilities. Occasionally I update the OS version and that is basically the only fixing that needs doing. Ever.

Not that bad...

[atari2600a]

I mean, I charge $50 for that service-- $100 if it's bad enough to consider in a repair (= reinstall), & considering how much microsoft overcharges the general population ($120 for home premium!? Frys has OEM copies for $90!) it's actually not THAT bad...

Most likely, people pay. They do research.

[h00manist]

I would assume they did lots of research and concluded that people will pay that value for that service.

Discussed on Windows Weekly

[Amadablam]

Paul Thurrott discussed this on Thursday on Windows Weekly:
http://twit.tv/show/windows-weekly/261 (jump to 21:20 and watch for about 5 minutes)
Paul thinks there was some pretty shoddy journalism with this story.

Oh, so you want the meal without piss in it?

[Eightbitgnosis]

That's gonna cost extra, sir

Re:Oh, so you want the meal without piss in it?

[englishknnigits]

Well, if there was some guy who wanted to piss in your meal and offered to pay $10 of your meal if he could piss in it...you might opt to just pay for the meal yourself.

If you can't fix it feature it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't fix it feature it.

Wouldn't it be easier

[Dcnjoe60]

Wouldn't it be easier to just eliminate all crapware including Windows?

Re:Wouldn't it be easier

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's easier to not include it in the first place. What people don't realize is that the PC builders like Dell get kickbacks from the crapware vendors for installing their junk on your PC. Eliminate that source of revenue and expect to pay more for your PC. That's the reality and I think people are too cheap to pay the extra few dollars to eliminate the headaches.

When I buy Dell machines, I usually get them from the Business division which has little or no crapware. Sure it's a few more dollars but its cheap in the long run when I don't have to waste my time cleaning it up.

Re:Wouldn't it be easier

[Anonymous Coward]

When I buy Dell machines

Is it still the case that Dell provides recovery media with new machines that has no crapware? I recall reinstalling XP from the recovery media first thing on a laptop because that yielded a machine with no extra software.

Re:Wouldn't it be easier

[Half-pint HAL]

What people don't realize is that the PC builders like Dell get kickbacks from the crapware vendors for installing their junk on your PC. Eliminate that source of revenue and expect to pay more for your PC.

I find it hard to believe that the crapware installed on my PC was worth more than a fiver to the OEM in advertising fees. When you're buying a computer, a fiver is a mere rounding error. I'd happily pay it.

50% cpu gain on one system just by disabling one a

[Anonymous Coward]

I had one low end system that just by disabling one piece of OEM crapware that was installed on the system just to make they system more friendly for home usage and intended for use in multimedia systems I doubled it's performance. Thjis was from a top tier mfg.

I suspect the app was originally developed on more powerful systems and nobody thought of the load when they decided it would be perfect on such a low end systems.

Do it yourself for free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Load Linux, repartition your primary HDD, install Linux. Crapware (including MS WinCrap) GONE for good! No cost. Yay!

Sit back, smile. Be Free. Linux.

In related news

[wbr1]

GM announced that all new cars would be sold with holes in the tires and a low fuel mileage ECM program until you purchase GM select service.

Just do a fresh install

[SirBitBucket]

First off, I build my own machines. So they are crap free. But all you gotta do is get a real windows install disc, not the one from the OEM which usually just reinstalls all the crapware, and reinstall windows from scratch. Sure you may need a few drivers, but Windows 7 usually handles that mainly automatically. It should take our windows key from the bottom of the machine... That and never runs 32 bit OS...

Re:Just do a fresh install

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sad to say that most people can't reinstall their operating system. Even just inserting the CD, turning on the computer and pressing Next is too taxing for a lot of people, and often you have to make decisions (like format the drive? add partitions? what is your network setup?) that seem simple to us but are impenetrable to most people.
Looking at it from that angle, and taking in mind that from what I've seen (mostly laptops) the crapware consumes 30% CPU when the machine is idle, a hundred is pretty good value for money. It's only slightly more expensive than the hobbyist-run shops, and probably more thorough and you have better recourse when you aren't satisfied.

Re:Just do a fresh install

[Billly Gates]

You are talking over $99 anyway. Losing battle as many places wont sell you the OEM and only the expensive $299 one which is half the cost of an OEM machine.

If you build your own you spend hundreds more without a bulk discount that the OEM can get you. Many people struggling to pay the bills wont go this route if they need something to write documents and browse the web on. My Asus desktop also has custom software for lower fan speeds and a quiter experience with several EPU chips on the board. This wont work with a default disk and only the one from Asus has it ... complete with the BestBuy installer nagware app.

Re:Just do a fresh install

[SirBitBucket]

That custom software from Asus is most likely available as a free download. Obviously, tech savvy us the limiting factor, as it is with so many things. Knowledge is power. 99 dollars seems high, given the cost of computers these days. Perhaps this is could be a selling point for the oems to offer clean machines. I, for one, will not tolerate crapware and anti virus bs. A fresh install fixes that, but I have clean windows overall disks laying around from my own builds...

Re:Just do a fresh install

[Billly Gates]

Agreed. While $99 seems like a rip off the signature edition of win 7 is sweet and beautiful and only available at the Microsoft Store. Most places charge $65 + $129 for an OEM edition of Windows. MS can just not charge for Windows and just service because they own it.

I would buy them from the Microsoft store. You can order one from www.microsoft.com too if you do not have one in your area. Or get a Mac. The only crapware installed is the bing tool bar but you can disable it easily and it comes with Security Essentials.

I blame the retailers who arm twist to lower prices or we wont carry your product etc. PC Decrapifier does a decent job with my machine but software like McAfee can not be completely uninstalled without a custom uninstaller by them. What a fucking pain!

Many mac users prefer them over PCs for reasons such as these. Just plug it in and after creating a username and password your good to go and are ready. Of course in 2012 I would say its essential to include an anti virus product for the mac as well. Plugs like flash and javascript exploits are a problem in Safari.

Re:Just do a fresh install

[pla]

You are talking over $99 anyway. Losing battle as many places wont sell you the OEM and only the expensive $299 one which is half the cost of an OEM machine.

You realize your OEM key will work with any "real" media - Whether home or pro or ultimate? That has held true since the days of Win95, and simple economics (only needing to produce one "official" disc) mean it will continue to hold true for the foreseeable future.

So you don't need to go out and buy your own $99 or $199 or $299 or whatever copy of Windows to do a reinstall. Hunt down any ol' install media (including pirated, makes no difference), and use your OEM key. Voila, perfectly legit reinstall.

Re:Just do a fresh install

[Billly Gates]

I thought the OEM key sticker on my box was a VAR for that maker only. The key wont work unless you use the supplied disks by the company? The OEM is a different version with keys. Isn't it?

Re:Just do a fresh install

[Anonymous Coward]

Many mac users prefer them over PCs for reasons such as these. Just plug it in and after creating a username and password your good to go and are ready.

MAC MYTH #4: You just plug them in and start using them.

I cracked the seal and setup a 15" macbook today. Before seeing anything like a desktop interface I was commanded to provide the computer with enough personal information to commit identity fraud (name, address, date of birth, email address) and strongly encouraged to provide a photo of myself and then create an "Apple id" so all of that information could be sent home to Apple for what? Safe-keeping?

But the client wanted iCloud, so in the information goes to Apple. Now, finally at a desktop I check for updates and find 1.2GB of updates to download & install (reboot required) and then (no surprise) another round of updates for iTunes, Quicktime, & Safari after that. Total setup time was 3 hours, if we'd been on dial-up fuggedabouit..

There is no computer that you simply take out of the box and "it just works". //Thanks for coming out.

Re:Just do a fresh install

[pla]

I thought the OEM key sticker on my box was a VAR for that maker only. The key wont work unless you use the supplied disks by the company? The OEM is a different version with keys. Isn't it?

The key goes with a VAR, yes; at least through Vista (I haven't tried it with 7, but have read that the same still works), however, you can use any install media (for that major OS version) with any key and get whatever type of install that key corresponds to... And that works for later releases as well... Have a two-year old system in need of a reinstall anyway, and MS just released SP5? You can install off clean SP5 media with your crappy old original-release key just fine n' dandy.

It also used to work with server versions (the same media would install XP or 2003), though I have less confidence that still holds true (but have not heard or seen otherwise, so it may well still work).

Re:Just do a fresh install

[phantomfive]

How do you get the OEM, cheap version of Windows? Or do you pay full price?

Re:Just do a fresh install

[SirBitBucket]

I generally used a disc from another install, but the windows key that came with the machine... Legal copy of windows, just installed from a clean install disc. I suppose if you or your friends do not have these discs laying around it may be a bit harder ;)

Re:Just do a fresh install

[phantomfive]

Good to know

Re:Just do a fresh install

[SurfsUp]

There is no computer that you simply take out of the box and "it just works". //Thanks for coming out.

Wow, interesting claim because it directly conflicts with my recent experience buying a quietized LInux box from people who actually bothered to turn it on and make sure everything works. Basically never fiddled with it at all. Also never fiddled with it when plugging in new wifi devices, video cards, disks.... just plug in and turn on.

Sorry if you don't get that seamless experience on Apple, maybe it's because Apple just doesn't get the lovin from 10,000's of skilled geeks who actually care about more than their next quarterly calibration.

Re:Just do a fresh install

[Killjoy_NL]

My Atari 2600 did, but that one is a bit old by now :)
Completely agree with you though.

Re:Just do a fresh install

[NewWorldDan]

The problem is that most consumers don't have a proper Windows install disc. Microsoft long ago quit mandating that manufactures include a generic Windows disc in their packaging. Some manufacturers let you do a plain reinstall as part of the recovery process, some reload all the crapware. So for them to get a clean Windows install, either they have to pay someone (such as the Microsoft Store) or bother a friend/acquaintance such as you or me to do it for them. Frankly, I'm tired of doing that. Usually, I just tell people to run "msconfig.exe" and uncheck everything under the startup tab. Hell, I do that at the office just due to the crap that we load on to PCs that thinks it needs to autostart.

Surreal

[dmbasso]

[I know I'm gonna be modded troll, but whatever...]

People pay for a computer with an OS, then pay again to remove all the crap that come bundled. Yet it will still interrupt them in the middle of their presentations with annoying antivirus/upgrade/whatever messages, or keep them from using their computer for more than ten minutes when they had to restart, and the system becomes non-interactive updating itself*.

Then these same people come and ask me: why do you use a free OS? It must be crap! [insert facepalm image here]

[*true story, happened to my teacher during class. I guess it was deserved, for he had installed Windows in his MacBook.]

Re:Surreal

[andydread]

Seems to me you are displaying just as much intelligence if not a bit less. Just sayin'

Re:Surreal

[Surt]

No kidding. Though I am left wondering what the five letter swear word that starts with 'f' is.

Re:Surreal

[Anonymous Coward]

Next year, we'll watch your teacher restart a Linux computer and watch the system become non-interactive for 10 minutes when they have to restart, and the system becomes non-interactive running FSCK.

Re:Surreal

[Duncan J Murray]

True story that many have seen.

I saw a world-expert who was invited to a plenary lecture at an international conference giving his talk (which was meant to be the highlight of the conference) - when he was rudely interrupted by a pop-up which caused the fullscreen presentation to lose focus. The pop-up was indicating that it was about to shut down to complete the updates, and had a timer from 15s. An embarrassed projectionist quickly clicked on the 'delay' 15min button in a panic. He would have had to have selected another option from the dropdown menu to have chosen a longer time. But of course 15min later, the same thing happened again. This time the projectionist was prepared and quickly selected an option to bother it an hour later.

What a f***ing joke piece of s*** software!

Re:Surreal

[Anonymous Coward]

fatty? funky?

Re:Surreal

[Bieeanda]

My bitcoin's on 'frell'. The kind of self-styled nerd who isn't familiar with the use of wildcards and chooses to self-censor with them is often the same sort that thinks swearing like they do in shows like Battlestar Galactica or Farscape is clever.

Frimping kiddies.

Re:Surreal

[Billly Gates]

The ones MS installs are the signature edition versions only at the MS store.
'
They include Security Essentials that wont nag. The only thing annoying with them is that they include the bing bar in IE and I assume the bing desktop now which just came out. The ones from the Ms store are clean and it has none of that OEM crapware.

Sounds like your teacher is a dufus. If you need Windows why buy a mac? Also it sounds like he used Norton or some other crap with pop ups.

Re:Surreal

[Missing.Matter]

I see your anecdote and raise you my own, very similar one. Just came back from a conference today, the largest international conference in my field, robotics. Obviously, given the field, most people used Ubuntu or some other Linux distribution on their personal computers, which they used to project slides during their talks. It was pretty abysmal the number of machines that had trouble connecting to the projector, which ate considerably into the speaker's time. There were two instances where the speakers computer actually stopped responding as they switched back and forth between presentation and video. On one particular Ubuntu particular machine the presentation software wouldn't maximize fully, so the unity bar was there the whole time. On another, the resolution would adjust to the projectors, so the presentation didn't fill the screen.

So I say to you: what a fucking joke piece of shit software!

Re:Surreal

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop fucking lying you piece of shit. I was at the exact same conference and none of what you are saying happened.

What a joke piece of shit liar you are.

Re:Surreal

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, way to be behind the times, retard. Practically every modern Linux distro ships with ext4 as the default file system which takes about 10 seconds to check the file system. Time to update your rhetoric, troll.

Re:Surreal

[rubycodez]

you must be one of those 'tards runnnig ext3

Re:Surreal

[Anonymous Coward]

People blame Windows for having lots of crapware, and then they'll cry out for antitrust violatiuons if MS would ever tell OEMs what to install.

These are the same people who come and tell me how great it is that Linux is great because it doesn't have crapware. [insert facepalm image here]

Re:Surreal

[dmbasso]

To be fair, I've seen that happening with several OS'... last time it was in a workshop about math in neurosciences. The presenter had a MacBook, and her slides had lots of formulas and plots, but she couldn't show everything at once, being forced to keep scrolling all the time.
But it is true that Ubuntu and other distros are particularly prone to that problem when dealing with projectors.

Re:Surreal

[Richard_at_work]

And that "issue" can be "fixed" with a tiny amount of knowledge. How about people learn the basics of their system?

Re:Surreal

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have an example of projector problems happening with a win7 computer? I ask because for me, the reliable screen switching is the biggest selling point of win7 over ubuntu, for me.

I use ubuntu all the time on my netbook, typing in xrandr commands to get my external monitor working at native resolution, but whenever I need to give a presentation, I use windows. If windows would not work flawlessly with any projector, I could not use xrandr or other tools to fix the problem, like I can in linux. But these problems just never occur in windows 7.

Re:Surreal

[fa2k]

Though I am left wondering what the five letter swear word that starts with 'f' is.

The askterisk matches any number of chars, so the last three asterisks are redundant, and this could be anything from 'fine' to 'fucktastic'

Re:Surreal

[colinrichardday]

Wouldn't f**** be the same as f*?

Re:Surreal

[Surt]

Somehow I doubt the poster had enough intelligence to know what a regular expression is, much less how they work.

Re:Surreal

[Anonymous Coward]

It was pretty abysmal the number of machines that had trouble connecting to the projector, which ate considerably into the speaker's time. There were two instances where the speakers computer actually stopped responding as they switched back and forth between presentation and video. On one particular Ubuntu particular machine the presentation software wouldn't maximize fully, so the unity bar was there the whole time. On another, the resolution would adjust to the projectors, so the presentation didn't fill the screen.

So I say to you: what a fucking joke piece of shit software!

As a long time Linux user, I can tell you to mistakes were made there. The first, was using Ubuntu. If you want stability, you gotta step away from the shit they pile on the foundation. My suggestion would be a clean Debian stable, or a well configured Slackware, both with something that's not KDE or GNOME, just for good measure. Anything that's not Fedora or Ubuntu will do though, especially if you're running ALSA straight. Like I said though, anything not Fedora or Ubuntu shouldn't have issues, since less stable software shouldn't present. The second mistake, was not configuring the projector as a second monitor, and probably a separate screen if they were that far out of phase, in Xorg.conf. Unless your Xorg.conf has been sodomized by your distribution, the necessicary changes should take a few seconds if you've used that projector before, and a few minutes with the manual (Horizontal Sync range, and Vertical Sync range) or a probing application. (Nvidia settings does a nice job figuring from DPMS what the flip you just plugged into your computer.) Restart your Xserver, and you're done...

Re:Surreal

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Install the updates before the presentation and this won't happen.

2) You can disable this kind of behavior and/or increase the time between asking. I set mine to only ask once every 24h.

3) Windows 8 doesn't do this at all anymore. So the problem is finally fixed. Windows 8 only warns you about updates on the lock screen, and it starts warning you about them DAYS ahead of time.

Re:Surreal

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

Who the frack do you think you are ????? :)

The thing I like most about Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

When you use it, you get exactly what you deserve.

Task manager, registry, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

For a user that doesn't know anything about Windows, I guess paying might be worth it. I just go through and check my processes to find out what they are. Anything that isn't needed, find it and kill it. Sometimes you might think it's crapware but it's not. Example: laptop daemon that checks for shocks and retracts the head of your hard drive. I would hate to have some dumb "remove it if it's not OEM" procedure uninstall that.

If you're comfortable with regedit, it's worth it to take the time yourself. You usually have to run through and change settings anyway because of stupid MS defaults (hide extensions is the most annoying, are they still doing that?).

Re:Task manager, registry, etc.

[Bert64]

Your advocating manually hacking around with regedit to get a usable windows install, and they say linux is difficult because you might have to edit commented text files in a text editor?

Order without crapware

[Animats]

The last time I ordered a desktop PC, it was from Central Computers, a computer chain with a clue. I ordered it without crapware, and the invoice actually said "no crapware". Very nice.

Central Computers, though, is a local SF bay area chain, based in Silicon Valley. They do mail order, but they assume you know what you want. The order menu starts with "select AMD or Intel", and the operating system menu has "No operating system" as an option, which reduces the price by $109.95,

Where have I seen this business model before....

[HapSlappy_2222]

I should do this with crack. First rock is $99, and I'll remove the rat poison for another $49. Your call.

Do it for free, legally

[Anonymous Coward]

This method works a treat

http://www.mydigitallife.info/how-to-backup-and-restore-windows-7-and-server-2008-r2-activation-status-activate-offline-on-reinstall/

Preaching To The Choir

[westlake]

I tell everyone to use a far better decrapifier. Those who have listened always thank me profusely every time the subject comes up.

The probability that a geek will post a oh-so-cleverly disguised link to a Linux distribution as the all-purpose solution to any problem with Windows approaches 100% on any online forum ---

but the trend line for Linux adoption remains as flat as the Kansas prairies.

Top 5 Operating Systems From Apr 2011 to Apr 2012
OS Platform Stats 2003-2012

The good folks who post to Ars Technica have grown rather weary of the business --- and quite sharp with those who continue to waste their time.

Re:Preaching To The Choir

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gives a fuck if Linux adoption is "flat"? Linux doesn't live inside of the marketshare or die bubble that your precious Windows and OSX does, tard. MS and Apple have to convince people to keep buying their shit to survive and the day people don't then that's it, no more windows or osx. Compare with Linux. As long as one person cares, Linux continues because that one person has the source and can keep it going. So fuck off, stupid ass and maybe get a sense of perspective.

Re:Preaching To The Choir

[couchslug]

Windows is still free and free Windows competes with Free Linux.

It's easier to install Windows 7 with a loader and OEM serial than it is to activate conventionally.

I don't bother because I dislike Windows.

Re:Preaching To The Choir

[HyperQuantum]

but the trend line for Linux adoption remains as flat as the Kansas prairies.

Well duh, most of us can't use Linux at work. So all that web traffic from work would count as Windows usage. Now compare the amount of web traffic (HTTP! not bittorrent) caused by working with the amount of web traffic from home. Which one would dominate? See?

Re:Preaching To The Choir

[Anonymous Coward]

To the contrary! The stats you link to show a doubling of linux use. Why, if this trend continues (puts on MBA hat), linux will have majority market share by 2042!

As a linux user since the mid-90s, I can't wait for 2042, the year of the linux desktop.

Muck Jumpers

[gstrickler]

Reminds me of the old SNL skits on the muck jumpers.

f*** y** s**** d**

[Anonymous Coward]

Always about shitting on MS - leave it alone, go run linux and stop with the anti-MS stuff.

Re:f*** y** s**** d**

[Surt]

It's hard to imagine how this article could be worded much more neutrally.

We pay the city to pick up the garbage

[fustakrakich]

So, like, what the hell..

The Double-Dip is Real Here

[Anonymous Coward]

True, MS doesn't install crapware on new PCs, but their OEM vendors do; practical upshot is: when you bought that vended Dell, Dell had a deal with MS to ensure that Windows would be on it.

What this means is, your Dell came with a discounted Windows. That was a part of the price you paid.

Now pay the difference between the full price and the discounted price by paying Microsoft to remove the code that Dell added.

Yeah, I call "bullshit."

pcdecrapifier

[bhenson]

Why not do it for free by using http://pcdecrapifier.com/. sworn by it for years now. disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the project just a happy user.

arms dealer

[Surt]

The best way to make money is to sell to both sides. MS sells info on how to make your crapware difficult to remove to the crapware authors, then sells removal service. Next up will be selling removal exemptions to the crapware authors.

Re:arms dealer

[slimjim8094]

MS sells info on how to make your crapware difficult to remove to the crapware authors

[citation needed]

Re:arms dealer

[tftp]

[citation needed]

MSDN, I guess...

Re:arms dealer

[Anonymous Coward]

MSDN is free to access.

Re:arms dealer

[tftp]

MSDN is free to access.

MSDN is far more than msdn.microsoft.com. A book is also free to read in a library. But if you want more then you have to part with some big bucks.

One of companies that I worked for had a subscription, and MS sent to us tons of CDs with everything under the Sun. Don't you want to test your software, at least once, on a Hungarian or Korean build of Windows 7 Ultimate? Especially without going to Korea to buy their localized copy? MSDN subscription gives you all that. Do you need a checked build of Windows Server $whatever to work on a driver? MSDN subscription has that. Where else would you get a checked build of any MS product?

Why don't OEMs offer this?

[geekmux]

Somehow I seriously doubt that any OEM is making $99 per machine in crapware profits, so what's stopping OEMs from offering a "clean" image install for $30 less than a crapware-laden one as a competitive offering?

Sorry MS, but I fail to see the real advantage here in paying you when one SHOULD be able to eliminate the crapware step in the first place.

Re:Why don't OEMs offer this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The OEMs have a contract to install it. That's what Norton pays them to do. They use that subsidy to make the PC cheaper to you. It'd end up being $30 *more* than the crapware-laden one, *plus* they'd probably have to break contract. Depending on where you purchase it, you *can* remove crapware when purchasing it. Most business-class systems come with little to no crapware, but they tend to be more expensive.

Re:Why don't OEMs offer this?

[DigiShaman]

Because an OEM is under contract to supply said crapware. It's what subsidies the cost of a new PC in the first place.

sounds expensive...

[hherb]

format c: - voila, all crapware removed. Then go to http://www.distrowatch.org/ and select a non-crappy OS and install. There, saved you $99 bucks.

Re:sounds expensive...

[Anonymous Coward]

you can deal with all the support calls from everyone who expects their printer to work just by plugging in the USB. or expects their new PC game to work no problem. Linux is great, but its still far from being user-friendly with anybody but those who are more knowledgeable about PCs.

Re:sounds expensive...

[colinrichardday]

Actually, in Linux my printer (HP Color Laserjet 2025dn) did just work by plugging it into my USB port, as did my USB ethernet connection, and my external DVD drive. Windows 7? Not so easy (haven't tried the external DVD drive).

Re:sounds expensive...

[colinrichardday]

How can you access the internet after you reformat your hard drive?

Re:sounds expensive...

[hherb]

Man, that was a WINDOWS computer! Surely nobody is crazy enough to access the Internet wit that, so there must be another computer with a safe OS to access it ...

Or You Can

[rhook]

Just do it yourself for free.

blank PC withont OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't PC manufacturers sell blank PC with no OS (hence cheaper) and the customers can bring it into MS store to install "Signature Windows"? Or better yet, the customer can install Linux themselves?

Re:blank PC withont OS

[colinrichardday]

Can we say "cliff-tiered pricing"? I knew you could. It's cheaper for the manufacturers to bundle Windows with PCs. Also, how many people would want to take a blank computer to an MS store to install Windows? How many Microsoft stores are there?

10 bucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll do it for 10 dollars as long as you bring your PC to me.

Are people really stupid enough to pay for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes about an hour to remove all the crapware from a new computer at most. And maybe another hour to do whatever settings changes are wanted. I doubt anyone is stupid enough to pay for that (even a really computer illiterate person can google it and figure it out).

Or spend an hour and install linux instead...

Makes ultraportables even more overpriced...

[Kergan]

At this rate, people will soon go buy MacBook Airs at Apple stores because they're cheaper than their Windows counterparts.

Re:Makes ultraportables even more overpriced...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what I did, and I am by no means an Apple fan. I went looking for laptops with an SSD about a year ago. Most such windows-based laptops were 2.5k - 3.5k, while the macbook air was 1.8k with comparable ram and processor. The SSD easily makes most of the speed difference in a laptop, and the price difference was shocking. (Note: I am Australian, so I pay the "I'm Australian" tax - if these prices seem inflated.)

The macbook air is fantastic. Apple make the best laptop hardware today, period.

OSX, on the other hand, is a festering turd that constantly annoys me by doing things it "thinks" I want to do. It is usually wrong. Finder - whose primary purpose is, presumably, to help you find files - is absolutely useless. I hate the operating system.

So what is one to do? Buy the macbook air and stick Windows 7 on it. It's an excellent combination.

Re:Makes ultraportables even more overpriced...

[ceoyoyo]

They already are. I took a stroll through the ultrabook aisle the other day. The decent quality ones are more expensive, sometimes much more expensive, than an air.

All crapware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will they remove their own crapware (Office 30 day trial). Yeah right! KDE works for me.

Already bought it!

[Anonymous Coward]

The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better" so I installed LINUX.

Now I don't have to reboot the computer all the time. Thanks Microsoft.

Microsoft Gets You Coming And Going

[swaha]

The "Microsoft Tax" or tribute to MS that every major PC OEM pays is largely responsible to why there is so much crapware in the first place.
Now you have to pay to have it removed.
Looks like a racket to me.

Re:Microsoft Gets You Coming And Going

[Dynedain]

No, the race to the bottom in an overly-saturated market is why there is so much crapware.

As manufacturer, if you are selling the same machine, built with all the same parts, from the same vendors, with the same costs as your competitors, how do you beat your competitor's price? You offset your costs by charging crapware vendors to include their products on your machines. And then you claim that crapware is actually a "feature" that sets your product apart from your competitors.

Trading OEM crap for Microsoft crap

[Doh!]

I bought my current laptop from the Microsoft Store and it came with the Signature setup. It did have a very minimal set of third-party programs (mostly driver-related utilities), but Microsoft added a bunch of their Bing and Windows Live stuff. I suppose Microsoft doesn't think any of their own software is crap, but I'm sure Norton doesn't either.

Re:Because of Walmart and BB

[Billly Gates]

THe pressure to lower costs come not from ignorant consumers per say but from retailers. If you ever do business with Walmart you can go in and show them your product and they will show you a generic e-machines and their own label which is $199 cheaper.

You simply match the price or they will refuse to do business with you. Worse, with BestBuy they force you to install the intrusive BestBuy software nag and installer that pops up every time at boot to get you to buy downloads from the virtual BestBuy store. It is always the first go to according to PcDecrapifier. Bestbuy makes you sell the most obsolete desktops/laptops for the lowest prices. Walmart may even force you to use only one USB port or they will find a competitor in China who will. You can't say no to Walmart.

This creates the crapware issue. If you hate this buy the computer from the MS store or maybe the OEMs website. The business class machines from HP do not have this garbage to make the retailers happy.

Sad state of affairs, yet the price may not be bad

[King_TJ]

To all the people complaining about the "outrageous" price of $99? I'd have to point out that Microsoft doesn't make their own computer hardware, so their stores aren't able to stock pre-made "restore" discs to bring their systems back to a "clean" state as people bring them in.

Unless they're making it a requirement that you supply the proper recovery discs for any system they work on, $99 isn't really a bad price for what's typically involved.

It's not that often I can simply wipe a hard drive and load a copy of Windows 7 on a given PC, and have everything on it fully functional. That tended to work out the best when Win 7 first went retail, since MS tried really hard to incorporate drivers for everything they'd encountered up to that point in time. But as new PCs have been manufactured since then, we're seeing everything from oddball proprietary webcams to newer video chipsets that don't have their drivers in Windows 7 itself. Sometimes, it can automatically download the correct driver, but just as often, that doesn't work and you have to go get it from the appropriate vendor website.

Plus, you've still got all the other things that require updating, post-installation, like the anti-virus software (which I would *hope* you'd include as part of your clean Win 7 install for someone).

I know when I do on-site PC service work for people, I bill $75/hr. for my time, and I'm one of the cheapest in town at that price. (Most I've encountered want $85/hr. and up). It takes me well over an hour to load a new Win 7 on a machine, make sure all the applicable updates are done, and all the right drivers are installed.

do they get MS Office Starter edition?

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest hurdle to users reloading themselves is the inability to re-install the MS Office Starter edition. Office _IS_ the value of the system to many users (remember how they all say "Isn't office included?") OEM's do not provide users with a way to re-install Office Starter, and as Office is the key app they all want, I have a hard time convincing them that they should suck it up and do it anyway. Most users will stick with the OEM crap rather than re-install.

Secondly (and this is my personal issue), the user having Admin privileges is the 2nd biggest factor. I never give the user Admin (UAC is still enabled) but I give them an administrator password for the default account with a long and abrasive password of something like "I want to install this program or virus now."

If MS addresses the above two issues, and done well (all appropriate drives setup, etc), I think that $99 isn't a bad deal for the user.

I have a simple solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Insert Win 7 installation DVD, then reboot with the optical drive selected as 1st boot device in the BIOS. Format drive fully, partition 120GB for a System/common programs drive (stuff like browsers and other stuff that updates all the time), 15GB-50GB for a page file drive (Linux calls this a 'Swap' drive), and the rest for raw data and large programs like games on a Data drive. Install Win 7 on System drive, set Page File to use the entire Page File drive -1 GB so the system knows where to write to at all times and doesn't scream that the drive is full, run updates, go to hardware manufacturer's web site for drivers, and then install common programs on System drive. Install large programs and add important documents, pictures and what not to Data drive.

On a slow dual core Dell this will take 3-4 hours. On a faster machine, it can take as little as 1.5 hours.

Now if you have an OS failure, you are less likely to need to re-install large programs or have to use a backup disk. You should still make backups though, this is just to save time later on. The Page File partition will help reduce drive fragmentation on the System drive and can increase performance when loading from hibernation or sleep.

Re:I have a simple solution:

[madhi19]

It would be a solution unfortunately you don't get a CD anymore with Windows 7 OEM computer. You get a restore partition with all the crapware included.

Re:I have a simple solution:

[colinrichardday]

No users */home in *nix) partition? And a 50GB swap partition seems excessive.

how about...

[2fuf]

...not installing it in the first place, is that an option?

Crapware that overrides decent features

[dpbsmith]

Microsoft exerts control on their OEMs and dictates many aspect of the user experience, particularly allowing them to put various Windows logo stickers on their goods ("Vista-Ready" being a case in point). If Microsoft believes users will have a better experience without the crapware--$99 better--if they actually cared about their users, they would make crapware-free systems a requirement for using the Windows logo.

Or, at least, require OEMs to submit crapware to Microsoft for approval to make sure it is a genuine option that doesn't degrade the user experience simply by its presence.

Microsoft should definitely prohibit crapware that overrides decent Windows features that work fairly well. The biggest problem I have helping friends with their Windows systems is that when they want to know how to do something simple like burn a CD, I never know what to tell them--because their system has invariably had third-party crapware installed that takes over the Windows way of doing it, and does it in some entirely different way.

Re:Crapware that overrides decent features

[Dynedain]

if they actually cared about their users, they would make crapware-free systems a requirement for using the Windows logo.

The line between crapware and useful software can be very hard to define since it all depends on what the particular end user wants.

4 antivirus packages - probably crapware
1 antivirus package - probably not
Media library manager/player - depends on the user
Driver packages - not crapware
Scanning software? Image editing software? Online photo printing?
Games?
Bluray player?
Firefox or Chrome?

Logically

[Tasha26]

If it does what it says on the tin, then it will remove Windows and leave an MS-DOS prompt.

Another option.

[couchslug]

You paid for a Windows OEM license.

There are clean Windows .isos available for free download from certain MSFT VARs.

There are well-known loaders and OEM keylists to go with them.

Do what you think ethical.

Re:Another option.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is your time worth? How long does that install take? What if you had to figure out exactly how to install an OS from scratch, too? $100 starting to sound like a deal?

Re:Another option.

[couchslug]

"$100 starting to sound like a deal?"

It never sounded like a deal, so my first PC was a tool to learn how to install and maintain operating systems.

Re:Another option.

[Anonymous Coward]

With Windows 7 you can use any retail copy (I use my MSDN sourced one) with ei.cfg removed and just install away and watch it happily activate with the key on the bottom of your laptop.

Re:Another option.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also just download a Windows ISO from msdnaa, and use your OEM licence ?

Re:Another option.

[couchslug]

Quite right. Me bad for forgetting that trick too.

Re:Another option.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can continue to remain blissfully ignorant on how to maintain the devices you use every day in an attempt to save "the money value of your time". Have fun with that. After that $100 for someone to decrapify your PC for you, then $200 for your car mechanic to refill your blinker fluid, and so forth, you might learn that ignorance is actually pretty expensive.

yes they have that!

[rubycodez]

takes out the crapware AND the windows shitiness
http://goodbye-microsoft.com/

Now that we have quantification, a price

[Anonymous Coward]

Time for a class action suit against those that placed the stuff there in the first place.

Re:Now that we have quantification, a price

[Osgeld]

enjoy your coupon for a free happy meal in 6 years

Re:Now that we have quantification, a price

[Killjoy_NL]

How the hell did McDonalds get on the defendant list? :)

Re:Thanks for the laugh, buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

You are by far one of the worst zealots I've had the misfortune of running into. You give the rest of us a bad name.

Branding issue

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised that Microsoft doesn't come down hard on any and all pre-installed crapware. Frankly it's a branding issue for them. Each time a user is frustrated by a slow computer it's one more person that will take a look at an alternative be it mac or linux. And charging 99$ to solve a problem that just shouldn't exist when you buy a new computer? That's adding insult to injury.

Re:Branding issue

[Osgeld]

crapware has been installed since before windows ... it hasnt seemed to effect them much

Re:Branding issue

[Patch86]

Apple computers don't come with much by way of crapware, unless you count the various Apple-branded software bits themselves. As Apple is both the software and hardware distributor, it's in their interest to make everything feel clean and smooth. That's one of the reasons people think Apple computers "just work". It's also one of the reasons they don't tolerate 3rd party Mac clones; they don't want to lose control of their branded experience and risk someone like Dell selling Macs that no-longer "just work".

If MS wanted to close the "just works" gap, stamping down on their OEMs shipping systems that are broken by design would be stop number 1, in my opinion. It's not like MS don't have a stranglehold on their OEMs- if they ordered them to behave, most of the big ones would do so without hesitation.

Re:Branding issue

[Osgeld]

its not their concern, reality chcek, most people are not having issue with windows, most of them are still buying PC's, most go BACK to PC's after owning a mac, if it aint broke they have little to no incentive to fix it

cause most people just dont care

Re:Branding issue

[Patch86]

Of course people care. Windows still does well because it has lots of other things going for it, such as the great software and good price point.

But Apple's market share has gone up and up and up in recent years, both with Macs and in the iOS segments. This is despite the fact that Macs have some huge drawbacks- the inflated price, the lack of software compatibility. What reason to people always give? Macs are clean, smooth, "just work".

If MS want to take that selling point away from Apple, they'll need to get their OEMs on side. Otherwise they'll keep slowly bleeding marketshare, half a percent a year or whatever, until Mac gets critical mass and can start beating Windows on those other selling points too...

This is so fucking dumb it hurts my head.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so fucking dumb it hurts my head. This is double dipping if I ever saw it. Fuck that. Fuck Microsoft.

A poor craftsman blames his tools.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a f***ing joke piece of s*** software!

I would like to suggest an alternative point of view to you, one handed down to me by my grandfather who worked with his hands all his life: A poor craftsman blames his tools.

If I were going to be presenting at a conference my last hour before going on would involve preparation: pressing my suit, doing my hair, going through a final practice run, and ensuring that all of my equipment was ready for the job at hand.

If the presenter's suit started ripping at the seams in the middle of his speech would you blame Brooks Brothers or the man for wearing it and failing to realize its shoddy condition?

How to get your life back

[SurfsUp]

Hey guys, there is no longer any need to put up with this. Just wipe Windows, put in Linux, reinstall Windows to a VM under Linux, and go play. You will get your life back. Take your pick of at least three great open source VM solutions for free or pay a modest amount for classic VMware, an amazing product that is one of the handful of proprietary binaries I allow on my system.

Re:How to get your life back

[DigiShaman]

I haven't used Linux as a desktop platform. In fact, I've done it the other way around. I've ran LAMP under Hyper-V (cheaper than paying VMware). Which desktop Linux destro provides native backup to disk support along with BMR functionality? Of the ones that do, will it backup a running VM via shadowcopy like Time Machine does on a Mac?

Re:How to get your life back

[Anonymous Coward]

But then you have to buy a Linux IP license for $699 from the SCO Group.

Re:How to get your life back

[Anonymous Coward]

How can I play Crysis 2 or Diablo 3 in a VM?

Re:How to get your life back

[SurfsUp]

How can I play Crysis 2 or Diablo 3 in a VM?

If you're playing Cyrsis 2 or Diablo 3 you don't have a life, so don't worry about it.
 
...speaking as a longtime gamer.

Re:How to get your life back

[SurfsUp]

I haven't used Linux as a desktop platform. In fact, I've done it the other way around. I've ran LAMP under Hyper-V (cheaper than paying VMware). Which desktop Linux destro provides native backup to disk support along with BMR functionality? Of the ones that do, will it backup a running VM via shadowcopy like Time Machine does on a Mac?

If you care that deeply about backup, replication, snapshots etc, just screw up your courage and buy VMware and run it on Linux, it's cheap and i's the real thing. Your proposal has the unfortunate drawback of leaving you stuck in hell.

Re:How to get your life back

[gl4ss]

How can I play Crysis 2 or Diablo 3 in a VM?

by having a vm with d3d, dumbo.

Re:How to get your life back

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Linux. But Linux does not work well with my games. I don't spend tones of moony on the latest hardware to be handicapped by the OS.

Re:How to get your life back

[Anonymous Coward]

I get what you're saying and with my latest laptop, I tried. Boy did I try. First I did a complete reinstall of Windows and played with that for a while. Then migrated to a dual boot system with Windows + Linux. Then Microsoft, as is their heavy handed way, decided to screw with the Grub bootloader with Win 7 SP1. So I decided to flip Microsoft the bird, install XUbuntu on the bare metal and relegate Windows to a VM.

As a previous poster indicated, I simply traded one set of problems for another. In this case, hardware problems...nothing terribly critical as far as my intended usage for the laptop was concerned but after a while these little issues wore me down...
  - inablility to successfully install the drivers for my video card / inability to get GPU Switcheroo working
  - some really bizzare behaviour regarding the battery charger (i.e. if I started on battery power, the OS would then refuse to recognise that I'd plugged in the battery charger)
  - sadly, some instability with XUbuntu itself. Occasionally, it would fail to load the desktop, forcing me to Alt-F1 to drop into a terminal and launch a desktop from there.

There were other issues but in general, I simply lacked the skills to get my laptop to 'just work', and I really wanted to use my laptop for its intended purpose, rather than spend ever more time going down a configuration rabbit hole.

I felt myself in a situation where going either Windows or Linux would result in a compromise:
Windows = using an OS that is designed to bloat and become inefficient over time (otherwise how can they 'encourage' you to upgrade)
Linux = using a superior OS that is designed to allow you to do whatever you want, at the expense of time required to work around the various niggling issues such as hardware support and GUI stability

For now, my desire to be able to use the hardware on my machine has won out. So now it's Windows host to do nothing more than support the various hardware drivers + Windows and Linux VMs where I do my actual work.

I have a dream, however. One of my VMs is there to see what needs to be done to get back to a dual boot situation...

Re:How to get your life back

[Fri13]

Go Play? Does DirectX finally work with Windows running on VM?

Re:How to get your life back

[SurfsUp]

inablility to successfully install the drivers for my video card / inability to get GPU Switcheroo working

That issue has largely gone away with recent xorg drivers for Intel, AMD and nVidia.

Re:How to get your life back

[SurfsUp]

Sorry, I forgot that "play" means "play games" for some people. If it's worth it to you, just stay there in Windows hell and play your games, the rest of us can have a life ;)

Re:Thanks for the laugh, buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, a lapse of judgement on my part to even question your trolling.

IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Does their service remove IE from being embedded in the system? that might almost be worth the cost

Windows disk

[Skapare]

I installed a full edition of Windows on a PC I built, once a few years ago, and there was no bloatware. At this same time my father's Acer computer came with so much crapware that he, a non-expert of computers, wanted me to put Linux in place of Windows (he's still using Linux today). The problem with the full edition of Windows is I had one license key for it, so it only goes on one machine.

What I am wondering is, can the full edition disk be used to install Windows using the target machines own OEM license key (if that's even available), and get the real Windows system as intended by the OEM key, but without the crapware (since the Windows disk doesn't seem to have any).

Re:Windows disk

[Scott64]

It can be done for sure. I'm not sure if it'll work in every scenario, but I do this to my girlfriend's laptop every time we reinstall Windows. I tried once to use the toshiba recovery discs. After 2 evenings of failures and frustration, I downloaded an untouched MS Windows ISO, burned it, installed it, and used the key on her laptop to activate it. Worked like a charm. (Toshiba C650 with Windows 7 Home Premium).

Make recovery media first.

[couchslug]

I always make recovery media for any PC I lay hands on. Even if you don't use it, it's often handy for reloading others machines.

Are you fucking serious?

[idbeholda]

I'll remove the crapware myself AND have the $100 of my own money in my pocket. I'm sorry, but that's the fattest steaming load I've seen in quite some time. The consumer should be able to choose whether they want the abomination that is shovelware on their comptuer or not before they purchase it.

This is an entirely reasonable fee.

[Karmashock]

WAIT HEAR ME OUT!

MS has no control over what OEMs put on machines in addition to the OS. And it would cost MS something to sit there and pay someone to remove the crap off the machine. Would the make a profit on this fee? Probably, but then they didn't put it on the machine and why should they care?

That said, many companies offer this service. It's not hard to do and there are even free programs you can download that will remove most of this stuff. I think there is a program called "decrapifier" or something like that. Anyway, MS can't release a program that explicitely removes things or it will piss off the people that paid the OEMs to put it on the machines. AND it will thus piss off hte OEMs that paid MS for the licenses. MS can't piss these people off. So they can't release a program. They have to train someone or use an internal program that does it. But if the program becomes public they have to explain to OEMs why their advertisers got screwed.

It's a troubling situation where there are a lot of conflicted interests. MS has to make the OEMs happy, the advertisers happy, and the end user happy. These groups don't have the same interests and it's impossible to make them all happy equally. Offering this service is a compromise.

I personally don't like it. I would instead foster an open source project loosely monitored by MS to create a decrapifier program that simply removed such programs automatically. In this way, MS would make end users happy by offering a simple and free means of removing such programs. While at the same time it could claim with some justification that they don't have control over what is and is not removed so they could possibly escape blame from the OEMs.

Ultimately, the advertisers won't be happy with this option especially if it is effective at removing their products from most machines. And this might mean losing a revenue stream from the OEMs. But it will be at the discretion of users and the OEMs could chide the advertisers that if their programs were less obnoxious that people wouldn't be so eager to remove them.

In the end, it's hard to blame MS for much. They really don't control most of what is wrong in this situation. The OEMs are responsible for the additional programs on the machine. If you're buying a cheap computer often one of the reasons it's cheap is because it has this crap on it. Also, many OEMs offer the ability to have these things not on the machine for either nothing or very little.

I personally build my machines, reinstall the OS on OEMs, or buy from small OEMs that pride themselves too much on customer service to install such things. But that's just me. I spend either less or no more then the average person on a given system. So if you're plagued by bloaty crapware then to a certain extent that's your own fault and paying someone 100 dollars to sit there and take it off is cheap.

Re:Yo Dawg

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo dawg, I heard you like operating systems, so I put an operating system in your operating system.

And why not make pay those who installed ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it not be a base for civil damages from the vendor who intalled al the crapware ?

PC Decrapifier

[flyingfsck]

This one is free too: http://pcdecrapifier.com/download

Pay ? Or refund ?

[AncalagonTotof]

Hi,

Here, in France (and probably in some other countries), we can get money back for OS and crapware. OK, I'm talking about the whole set of crapware, Redmond one included.
It's difficult, it's long, you have to go before a judge (or somebody close to). But you can get your money back. Several computer manufacturers have lost in court.

M$ gives tools and procedures to OEM and manufacturers to add it. And now they want us to pay for it's removal ? "Vindju" comme on dit !

Thanks for the analogy, buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot more Linux servers than non-Linux servers. LOLZ... works there too..

erm .... msconfig?

[Anonymous Coward]

Start>Run>msconfig

services tab:

tick "Hide all Microsoft Services"
Click "Disable All"

startup tab:

click "Disable All"

Click OK, restart

When you reboot, none of the OEM rubbish will load up. Of course, this will disable any third-party firewalls and virus scanners too. Manually starting the AV/Firewall usually resolves this, it will add itself back to the startup list.

$100?

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! This is purely aimed at the older stupider clueless-about PC crowd. Every other sane person on Earth knows how to open "uninstall programs" sys pref.

Proof That Windows Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

If Windows gets bogged down by those puny bits of "crapware", then Windows must surely suck, since it obviously can't handle the extra few processes running.

ccleaner

[gedw99]

use ccleaner.

its free and works very well at removing anything.

Also for mac crapware?

[Anonymous Coward]

So for $99 I can exchange OSX for Windows?

A better alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

I know of at least two system that come without OEM-installed crapware. Ubuntu and OSX.

Might as well buy OEM Windows 7 home from Newegg

[laffer1]

For $99, you can buy your own copy of windows. Not only will you have the DVD to do a reinstall, but it will be clean too. Most OEM restore disks put that crap back on the computer.

The problem with stereotypes...

[WebCowboy]

...is that they are even harder to kill than cockroaches. When the big nuke goes off in the sky and wipes out humanity, all that will be left are cockraoches and they will be using Windows because they think Linux is "only for comp-sci majors".

Linux is a great idea and has many powerful tools, but for everyone who's not a comp-sci major, the OS is just supposed to launch the programs you want, and preferably do it fast.

Using the "powerful tools" in Linux is not a requirement. My parents use a web browser, and email client and Libre Office 90 percent of the time. Ten percent of the time they play solitaire. and copy the pictures off their digital camera because they've filled their SD card with pictures of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They can do that on a Linux OS without "powerful tools" just as well as they can on Windows, maybe better.

It was those pictures that made my dad in particular interested in migrating away from Windows. They caught a virus that rendered their old Windows system unbootable and they had hundreds of pictures that had not yet been printed or backed up to CDs or DVDs on there and were quite upset that they may have lost all those pictures. I used Trinity Rescue Kit bootable Linux CD to recover their files, then reformatted their drive and installed Ubuntu. They still keep their Linux machine because "Windows is easy but I don't trust it with important files anymore", and they also hanve found F-Spot and Shotwell to be faster and easier to use than the crapware supplied with their digital camera for Windows.

Those same people could have avoided all that junk installed on their pc if they'd just bought a computer assembled by an enthusiast company or a local computer shop in the first place. Those low prices at Best Buy or many online retailers are subsidized by all the crap they pre-load the systems with. Complaining about the crapware on an HP is like complaining about the ads on a "Kindle with special offers".

OK, first you suggest that Linux is for "comp-sci majors", then you suggest the solution is to buy a PC from a system builder? I do agree with you, and it is why I bought a "no name" Clevo notebook online from a build-to-order vendor (finding a notebook with interchangeable discrete graphics cards and CPUs and is not pre-loaded with crapware-laden Windows that has no proper re-install media is impossible from a big box store). However, The kind of people who could not adapt to a change of an OS from Windows to Mac or Linux wouldn't have the first idea of where to go anymore. It seems that local system build shops are trending in the direction of video rental stores--sure some may be around forever, but they are the domain of the computer enthusiast, and that is a very narrow market. Also, the general public has a certain "comfort level" with the big chain stores--they know what they are getting (even if they don't always like it, at least they have expectiations). It is probably just as easy for average users to have someone format and resinstall an OS (Windows again, OR a Linux OS or whatever) than to spend time to seek out a local computer shop and worry if they are trustworthy.

In my area we are lucky--there is a regional chain called Memory Express that builds their own line of "Velocity" desktops and servers, both pre-configured and build-to-order. That is the closest you can come in my area to a "local system builder" that can offer you crapware-free computers. However they do NOT offer build-to-order notebooks--you can choose from Lenovo, Acer, ASUS, MSI and so forth--the one consolation is that their brand selection is very diverse so you can fild one that is relatively crapware-free. However you are still spending extra time shopping, or extra money booking with their service dept. to give it the MemEx version of the "signature treatment".

How much is that car?

[sjames]

Your new car will cost $20,000 but for an extra $1,000 we won't piss on the seats before we give you the keys.

ultimate removal

[Anonymous Coward]

How about installing an alternate OS, such as GNU/Linux, and removing crapware altogether.

Why Bother with M$???

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: LINUX!

Reformat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you could just back up your important files and reformat with a clean Windows install. Problem solved.

Dog/tail wag

[QuickBible]

It is Microsoft's own poor practices to saturate the market with their product that they are even in this predicament. Many in the tech community, whether enthusiast or professionals, have known that Windows is very fast and responsive when it is installed and configured properly. It can even be secured decently for consumer grade usage. Microsoft hurt their own brand by letting OEM's have free reign to dump all over their brand with buggy, unsupported bloat ware that cripples a new PC right out of the box.

Yes another reason I stick with OS X

[bryan1945]

Feel free to flame me about how I spent too much, I'm a 'fanboi', whatever. Guess what, it's my money, and apparently I have enough that I don't have to settle for some $400 piece of trash system that requires an extra $99 just to get rid of crapware. Or several hours of your time to remove it yourself. And don't bother with Linux, get back to me when you can use it in real business desktops (don't bother with "well in my small assed company"; I'm talking real businesses).
I can feel the heat already.
(It's too easy)

PC Decrapifier for free why pay MS?

[NSN A392-99-964-5927]

You can use this tool for free http://pcdecrapifier.com/removes Why the hell would someone want to charge you to remove bloatware that you never asked for in the first place... hang on don't tell facebook they will remove your profile, photographs etc for $300.

The Distro - Revealed

[Zero__Kelvin]

I have been a Mandriva user for more than a decade, and continue to use it today, though I will switch to Mageia in a few days since Mandriva has announced that they are turning their support over to the user community and Mageia (a Mandriva fork) releases version 2 on May 22nd. I have also used many other distributions as well, including Gentoo, Fedora, CentOS. I didn't answer the question because it was clear that the person who was challenging me to reveal it was simply looking for an argument and it wouldn't matter what answer I gave (as I expect I am about to confirm when I hit submit.)

Re:The Distro - Revealed

[exomondo]

Ah fair enough, I've always liked Mandriva, it's well-balanced distro.

Re:The Distro - Revealed

[Zero__Kelvin]

I could sense you were the reasonable sort ;-)

Re:The Distro - Revealed

[exomondo]

Not always ;) But in this case yes... :)

Wait

[Vrtigo1]

Microsoft have stores?