Slashdot Mirror
Windows 8 PCs Still Throttled By Crapware
jfruh writes "Windows 8's Metro UI presents a clean and spiffy new interface for Microsoft's latest OS. But one of the operating system's oldest and most hated problems — crapware — still lurks below the surface. For instance, the Acer Aspire 7600U is an all-in-one that, at $1,900, is hardly a bargain-basement PC. And yet as shipped it includes over 50 pieces of OEM and third-party software pre-installed, much of which simply offer trials for paid services."
This is news? OEMs get paid a lot of money for preinstalled crapware. As the recession drags on, it's hardly surprising that they continue to load on as much as they can get away with.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.MicrosoftSignature
Vizio PCs dont have any crapware either.
What has this got to do with Windows 8?
If MS stopped OEMs from bundling Google toolbar, everyone here will be crying antitrust.
You want MS to make Windows a closed platform like iOS?
Freedom is not free.
This space for rent.
Let's not forget McAfee and Norton pre-installed which are the worst pieces of crapware out there.
Am I the only one that finds this list somewhat questionable?
Of the 50 items, most of it definitely fits the definition of crapware: McAfee® Internet Security Suite, WeatherBug, Wild Tangent, etc
But then there are some other items in here that have me scratching my head. When was Solitaire or Minesweeper crapware?
They seem to just be listing all non-stock software (since MS doesn't include their Metro games in the box), which is not the same as crapware.
I figure the crapware vendors pay enough to balance out the cost of MS Windows 8. Thus, when I wipe the hard disk and install Linux, I'm still breaking even.
My clean Android is full of crapware that I can't remove. Windows crapware is removeable.
Windows beats Android on crapware.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
why Norton Internet Security or McAfee Internet when MS own tools are better.
I know it is a pain. But I recently did just that on an older HP laptop with Vista ( shudder ) and it did not re-install any of the crapware. I even created a DVD full of software I wanted using a fully protected machine. I installed everything on the Vista laptop and it is actually quite sprite. I even did a 'dd' with an Ubuntu to another, larger drive. I swapped drives and rebooted. Six months, so far, and no issues.
Just don't do a dual boot. I found that it is easier and cleaner to install Ubuntu to a second hard drive and switch between the OSes from the BIOS. I don't need Windows 7 that often, but it has come in handy.
Why microsoft never put something in the volume licensing agreement like the ability to give users a one-click option that removes all the bloatware whenever they want.
For $1900 you could get a decent MacBook Pro, no crapware installed! Don't waste that kind of money on Windows (any version),...
If you cultivate rhinoberries you'll get rhinos. If you cultivate catnip you'll get zonked out cats. Change the ambit and you change the ambience
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
This is the OEM business model. Razor-thin manufacturing hardware margins mean that there's a HUGE department that does nothing but inbound deals for software product placement - this is how they get profitability. Don't expect much change. Even with a premium PC line, they won't turn down these dollars thrust upon them from Symantec, and the online-game-of-the-week. Be sure, all of this is instrumented with web-bugs and behavior-tracking galore.
Using a Windows machine will always be like this: Trapped face-up, under the urinal in Steve Ballmer's personal piss-dungeon.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Windows 8 arguably comes with crapware by default, even on a clean install. The Microsoft Store, Bing toolbars, weather and financial tiles, and the abomination that is TIFKAM (the interface formerly known as Metro). Clean and spiffy? I don't think so.
True, if you think Macs are not PCs...
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
My neighbour recently bought a new laptop which came with Windows 8. First she couldn't figure out how to use it because of the lock screen and Start page. Then she had trouble launching installed apps because there wasn't any Start button. But mostly the big issue was all the crapware. It was a nice piece of hardware, but it was completely bogged down with dozens of trialware and crappy apps. The CPU was constantly running at 95% just to keep up with it all, which made performing any action painfully slow.
Granted, this neighbour isn't particularly tech savvy, but she's not completely lost when it comes to technology. Windows 8, as shipped by the OEM, was a terrible experience for her and I don't think it's one she's likely to repeat. I suspect she'll move to Mac or Linux in the near future.
Awhile ago I remember hearing that you could download a clean iso of Windows x directly from Microsoft if you have a valid serial number for whatever version x is. IIRC it was supposed to be an alternative to those shitty reimage discs that OEMS used to give you (or force you to burn at your own cost) but better because they were crapware-free. Can you still do that? (I haven't bought a PC in ages and I'm still using Windows 7 so I'm not sure) The best course of action would be to reload a clean crapware-free version of Windows as soon as you get the iso burned to disc.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
All mimsy were the borogoves and the mome raths outgrabe.
(your turn)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
This is one of those "it's good to remind people of a pervasive problem" stories. Some people accept this as "status quo" and others see it as a serious problem.
We get it. The business of PCs is stupidly tight with slim margins. The easiest way to supplement profit is to sell software installation services to software vendors. It doesn't bother the OEMs that they are doing this at the expense of the PC customer or even at their own reputation.
Commenter Sussurros above states another obvious problem. Crapware on phones... android phones. And I heartily agree. I think we will see a bit less of it soon though.
Turns out Google is changing the game. I find it FASCINATING that the Google Nexus 4 phones cost between $300 and $350 and yet T-Mobile says it costs a LOT more and will sell it cheaper if you buy two years of obligated service with expensive data plan. What surprises me the most is that T-Mobile thinks they can get away with this... worse! They *are* getting away with it. Google sold out of inventory in minutes. T-Mobile sold out in hours. There are no Nexus 4 phones.
The phone you get from Google is bloatware free and carrier unlocked. I don't know if that's the case with the T-Mobile version... anyone know?
But just as in the PC market, the phone market cannot resist the extra money (even if they are making insane profits already) they make by including crapware.
I decided long ago when my contract is up, I will do this no more. I will have my Nexus 4 when it becomes available again. I'm definitely not buying from those scalpers... sheesh... $500, $600 each?! I know there's a sucker every minute, but I'm not one of them. I'll wait a bit longer... I've got time.
Android has enabled the game to be changed. This is something that ONLY open source software could do. It's not just free software. It's FREEDOM software. I know I'm not alone in my intention. I'll spend a little more up front and save a LOT more in the long run.
I'm done with your games, carriers. Are you listening? Done!
I built my own from Tigerdirect with a copy of Windows 8. None of the crapware listed in the article was on my machine:
http://www.informationweek.com/byte/personal-tech/desktop-operating-systems/crapware-lives-on-windows-8-systems/240012719
However, there were thousands of registry links to Bing services, and the "Apps" that were listed on the desktop were simply HTML links back to Bing. Now that I have worked extensively in the registry, my BluRay actually works, UTC is recognised after using Linux on my other HDD.
A simple keystroke enables or disables UEFI. ClassicShell rescued the desktop. Services have been tweaked. Firewall settings too. Now I can honestly say, that the Windows 8 experience is tolerable (though still inferior to Mint 14).
on Customers: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/the-new-crapware-apples-desire-to-force-its-apps-on-customers
Did anyone notice the specs on the $1900 Acer?
Its an all-in-one unit, with a 27" touch screen, 8 GB of RAM, and a 2 GB Nvidia graphics card.
I'll be happy to take that from anyone who doesn't want it. Despite the "crapware".
If you're leaving Windows because of the Metro UI, you probably don't want to be a lab rat for Ubuntu's Unity experiment either.
Ubuntu used to be the go-to distro for newbies, but these days I tell the Li-curious to check out Kubuntu or Mint.
Come to think of it, if you don't like crapware, or indeed if you're a sane and decent human being, you probably won't like Amazon ads in your program launcher either, so Mint it is. :(
How far the kind-of-crappy-but-almost-user-friendly-enough-for-grandma has fallen.
How else are you going to justify that i7 CPU? Crapware needs to run on something. Oh, and a little extra left over just for you. Enjoy.
Life is not for the lazy.
Everything that Windows 8 brings to the table works against bloatware -- for example, Windows 8 Store apps can't monopolize CPU and memory unless the user deliberately launches and is actively running them, generally speaking. Store apps (aka Metro) are very well behaved due to intentional OS constraints. Desktop apps can still be poorly behaved and set themselves to run on startup, phone home, etc., but that's just because Windows 8 is compatible with poorly behaved apps written for previous Windows versions. Microsoft's Windows 8 software logo requirements for desktop apps mandate that apps _not_ add themselves to the "run on startup" registry keys. But that part is not enforced, which was the right call on Microsoft's part. If they made Windows desktop software a walled garden, everybody here would be screaming bloody murder.
tl;dr version: basically Windows 8 brings a substantial improvement against bloatware in that the RT/Metro/Store side protects your CPU/memory resources from being consumed by it; but the legacy desktop side is still an unlocked experience, and vendors can install junk on there if they want to.
One of the worst pieces of crapware I've ever encountered, with regards to hijacking functionality, trampling user-defined preferences, insinuating itself into unrelated software, hogging resources, being uncooperative with attempts to uninstall, and just generally causing anguish and frustration is QuickTime. Last I checked, that's an Apple product and a Mac staple.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
is the crapware.
As of Ice Cream Sandwich:
- Settings / Apps / All
- Select the unwanted app/service
- Click Disable.
It's still in ROM of course, but it won't show up in the App Draw, it won't be started on boot, and it won't consume any memory or CPU time.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
These people are the reason that slashdot sucks now. Can't even set a file association using the simple 'open with...' interface for doing so.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
My father was in the Japanese Occupation Force and detested the Japanese til the day he died. I went to Japan to see what he was talking about, saw it, and fell in love with the place nonetheless. I learned Japanese poetry. I talked my sister through cancer with it - she said to me "my oncologist saved me but you brought light to a dark place." The finest Japanese poetry was written by Irishman, Yeats:
Climbing, falling she knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.
No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, O sea-starved, hungry sea.'
That is like Windows. I took a day off work to line up and buy Windows 98SE but when Windows ME cme out I knew iit was a dead seagull. Nowadays they who stuck with Windows sit on coils of rope, their kneecaps broken, and sing a song of freedom.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
This is the OEM business model. ... Even with a premium PC line, they won't turn down these dollars thrust upon them from Symantec, and the online-game-of-the-week.
This is a premium PC? Well, premium price anyways, when compared to an Apple iMac I see a higher res screen and better graphics for less. Of course, it'll also come sans all the fingerprints on the screen, since it's not a touch screen. I think that alone is worth several hundred $ in Apple's favor, or however much you value your finger should you ever try to touch my monitor. I kid, I kid... not.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Is it annoying? I guess so... I don't really get my panties in a bunch about it; I just uninstall it and then I never have to deal with it again. Basic computer literacy, really.
The thing is, when they sell to a corporate this doesn't matter. The corporation just creates their own image and drops that on every machine as standard.
The next largest market is not us techies but Joe average. Now yes, they do make money by pre installing this crapware but it also gives them an advantage. On the packaging they can show off that their machine comes preinstalled with this large list of software (highlighting various well known names). Joe average will tend to make his purchasing decision based on which machine has the largest list of features and the biggest numbers (works the same for stereos, TV's, etc). That's why all this tech comes packed with useless features that more often than not reduce the experience and performance. If you want to outsell the competition, sadly, this approach works.
This is why this trend is not going to change anytime soon.
You can win by not taking this approach (and Apple is probably the best example of this) but your product has to be well polished and typically you will be aiming for the upper market who more often than not doesn't fall for these marketing tricks.
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
I expect crapware. Blow away the OS and install from clean .isos using appropriate tools. I'll not detail it here, the internet is your friend.
OS replacement should be trivial for nearly every Slashdotter. Back in 1999 they even discussed such things in these very forums. (Now get off my lawn, though given continental drift it's probably somewhere in the Marianas Trench...)
If you don't know how, MANY nice folks on many forums offer their expertise for the reading. (Google "My Digital Life forums")
If you don't WANT to know how, Fark is that >>>> way.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The question is - why are people buying these computers? Newegg, TigerDirect, and others sell components, online, and cheap. In an afternoon, a guy can build an equivalent computer from components, install his favorite OS, and be ready to start installing all his required software in the morning.
Why pay 100 to 1000% extra, for a compromised system?
So, maybe some slashdotters really don't understand how to turn a screwdriver. I'm sure there's kid in the neighborhood who does. Maybe your own son, daughter, niece, nephew? Give the kid fifty bucks to assemble your machine, you're still money ahead.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
But I bet if they offered you a more expensive version with no crapware, you'd take the crapware, and clean it yourself, and be happy you saved the money.
The crapware makers subsidize the PC makers; without those extra marketing deals from all those companies, the new Windows 8 PC would be about as expensive as an Apple.
the margins aren't even remotely razor thin. you're talking about buying at retail in the first place. The ads are just a double dip on the profits.
Right click > open with > select program and check "always use this program for this kind of file." Just so you know. And you could always, like, uninstall the Word preview if you weren't planning on using it, which would solve the problem as well.
I had a similar problem on my Mac. Fucking iTunes used to try to open every movie I made in iMovie, so then a clicked the mouse a few times and told it not to. Problem solved.
anyone read that list?
spotify was mentioned twice. minesweeper and solitaire were included.
also, all crapware from all territories appears to have been added to the same list and presented as "this is what you'll get".
consider what comes out-of-the-box on an ubuntu installation.
i'm not defending crapware at all - i hate it. but a strong case against it is not made by misrepresentation or outright lying.
Most of it is, I'll give you that. OTOH, my ThinkPad came with some unusual processes running. When I checked into them I found one that checks for shocks and moves the hard drive r/w head to a safe place. Just removing everything that's "not Windows" might not be such a good idea. BTW, I never thought about that little service until I tried to play MP3s through the laptop while driving. It wouldn't work because bumps on the road were enough to throttle the drive and mess up playback. I was annoyed that I had to have another device for MP3s, but glad to know that software was doing its job.
Buy a Mac. The Apple business margins are fat
It's true. Locally I can buy a Win8 (ugh) laptop with:
24GB SSD / 750 GB HDD / 6 GB RAM / 15" screen / DVD drive for $650.
Same processor Apple laptop with:
500 GB HDD / 4 GB RAM / 13" screen / no optical drive for $999.
the big PC makers make a ton of money off those crapware distribution deals.. they make money on windows in the end, which is why you won't find a no-OS or linux PC from any of them for the same price as a windows one of the same model and specs...
i suspect windows 8 will be *worse* than earlier versions, due to having two separate user interfaces to pollute instead of just one.
Huh? Building your own costs more. OEMs get huge volume discounts on hardware and software.
I'm not sure what this has to do with Windows. There is nothing about Linux that prevents OEM's from loading software of their choosing.
And they mark up for it.
Building your own, if you know what you're doing and know what you want is usually cheaper. But it does require work on your part, and while most of building a computer is pretty trivial some stuff (like correctly wiring a case to a mobo, or properly applying contact paste for a cooling fan) can really hold people back. Also, time and space.
The question is - why are people buying these computers? Newegg, TigerDirect, and others sell components, online, and cheap. In an afternoon, a guy can build an equivalent computer from components, install his favorite OS, and be ready to start installing all his required software in the morning.
Show me someone who can build a 1.37-inch-thick 27" touchscreen all-in-one PC "in an afternoon" and I'll show you someone who works for Acer.
With all the new system form factors coming out, I highly doubt you're going to see many classic, slapped-together tower PCs in people's homes in the near future.
Breakfast served all day!
If they started selling any serious number of linux machines they almost certainly would. Money is money.
less people write crippled trialware for linux and linux users would probably format their new system and install their distro of choice after their first boot to see if the computer runs
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
"The crapware issue is so bad that Microsoft even has "Signature"-branded PCs whose biggest selling point is the lack of trialware. An upgrade that costs a crazy $99."
Yes folks, for a measly hundred bux we'll be slightly less offensive.
Crapware on PCs is kinda like The Shouty Man in advertisements. Sure they're so in-yer-face that we notice them, but our *only* reaction is "screw that!".
Seriously folks, for the price of a cheap-n-nasty USB stick you could make ALL this "crapware" infinitely less abusive-relationship by having your default browser homepage be a "here's all the stuff we *gave* you, clicky linky to install what you like".
(a) not in your face offensive
(b) easy to hit the "tell someone who cares" button
(c) doesn't by-default bloat your machine (especially good for business users)
(d) Free USB Stick (!!!)
All That AND not pissing off your customers.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
People who are already that technically competent already uninstall and purge all the crapware out of a Windows Box in less then half the time it takes you to install your Distro.
Actually I got a new Dell (windows 7 and no UEFI) and it didn't come with that much crap. McAfee 15 month trial, some disk-in-the-cloud for a year, and Dell utilities. I don't think I've seen a desktop prepopulated with lots of crapware and url links for over a decade.
All my Apple preinstalled software is fully functional. On my windows machines if I click on a text file it defaults to Word informing me I need to purchase the software. There's been a reader installed forever but it isn't the default anymore the non functional preview install of Word is the default. It's one of many reasons I weaned myself off Windows and I'm almost exclusively Mac now.
It's probably a good thing that you "weaned" yourself off Windows. Wouldn't want to learn something impossibly difficult like how to change default programs. That could take all of 4 mouse clicks.
Linux has package management. That makes it simple to remove crapware, and therefore less profitable to add it.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
If you're talking about QuickTime for Windows, there's a big difference between that and the QuickTime that comes with Mac OS X in terms of the things you describe.
Breakfast served all day!
Local jobber here in Oz - Scorptec - builds a lot of pc's for people, and you can build your system from components off their web page, and they'll match components and build it for you without charging an arm and a leg. They put a nice fast games machine together for me. I said "No crapware please" and all I got was a nod and -- no crapware. Zero trouble from the build.
It pays to know a good local outfit.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I guess you've answered my question. If you want the latest consumer goody, and appearance is more important than performance or security, then you're stuck with whatever the vendors are offering.
If you need a secure, reliable, stable system, and you don't care very much that it looks obsolete, then you can knock together a damned good tower at a fraction of the cost that you're going to pay for the vendor's comparable version.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
And they mark up for it.
Building your own, if you know what you're doing and know what you want is usually cheaper. But it does require work on your part, and while most of building a computer is pretty trivial some stuff (like correctly wiring a case to a mobo, or properly applying contact paste for a cooling fan) can really hold people back. Also, time and space.
Not really. It's hard to find as cheap parts that they use in the pre-built stuff. A quick look at NewEgg shows a Windows 7 mini-tower, AMD dual core x64, 4GB RAM, 320GB HD, AMD Radeon HD, integrated sound card, gigabit Ethernet, and 150W power supply for $229. Even if not a Cyber Monday price, picking the cheapest of everything quickly surpasses a pre-built PC these days. And for me it's difficult to pick the cheapest of every component.
I would like to differentiate where the problem is, and provide suggestions on how people can avoid this problem.
This is a problem with buying from certain manufacturers/retailers who add bloatware. Simply don't support this practice with your purchases. It has nothing to do with the OS. Linux and Android are just as susceptible to this if not more since the OS is open source, such as when wireless providers modify the Android OS itself(rather than simply adding applications) which can cripple the OS with bloated features, instability, or poorly designed UI. In this case you can't simply uninstall an app to undo the problem, but usually must flash the device. I'm not saying the OS being open source is a bad thing; I'm just pointing out how some carriers abuse this.
Examples of how to avoid bloatware(for phones or computers).
Phones:
-Only buy phones which come with the stock/vanilla Android OS. I personally prefer the Nexus devices for this reason. Additionally, these devices usually will have OS updates available earlier than others.
-If your phone does have a lot of bloatware, something like Cyanogen mod(if supported on your phone) can give you a OS with less bloat and more freedom. I actually flashed my Nexus One with Cyanogen and freed up alot of internal memory. Even my stock Nexus One had slowly become bloated with apps that I didn't need over time like Twitter, which came along with OS updates and could not be moved off internal storage or uninstalled. I went from 5 mb free internal storage(which is a serious problem) to 100 mb free internal storage.
Computers:
-Sometimes you can call sales and request that you get only the stock OS on your computer or laptop. I know businesses have been able to request Dell laptops be provided this way.
-Build your own computer or buy barebone, and load the stock OS yourself.
-Take note of bloatware when using other's computers, or go to a store where the model is setup and you can test drive. Take note of which manufacturers have the most OEM bloatware. If you are used to helping other's with their computers, it is usually pretty obvious what apps are things they didn't install, and are bloatware.
-Be wary of a computer that advertises lots of free software. If it is really full version software, then you are paying for its cost somewhere in the price of the computer. Better to buy a computer without this hidden cost, and use the savings to buy the software that you pick out(instead of the OEM's choices). If it is only trial software, then maybe the computer is a very tiny bit cheaper as a result, and your time is probably worth more than the trouble of dealing with the bloatware and "Trial Expired" popups. So either way, avoid bundled software. I don't even like bundled antivirus.
Windows 8 isn't throttled with crapware. Certain vendor PCs are throttled with crapware.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Why should a user have to fuck around with re-associating files to use a machine they just purchased? The issue isn't how difficult it is, the issue is that it needs to be done at all.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Quicktime for OS X is just a tiny shell written on top of the OS media playback/editing libraries, there really isn't a whole lot you can install/uninstall there(I guess you can delete the .app, doesn't really do a whole lot).
Monstar L
I ordered one recently too, they now have a "none" selection for the McAfee. So you can buy it, get the trial, or not have it at all. There was very little else installed outside of the OS and the utilities included with the hardware (usable Bluray software, nvidia stuff, etc).
Huh? Building your own costs more. OEMs get huge volume discounts on hardware and software.
For a dplicate machine, yes but onl in the lower end. (Sry typos slow phone) For what you actually want, absolutely not.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
Apple machines aren't loaded with crapware.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Only two types of people would pay a $500 - $1000 (or more) premium for something anyone with the most basic computer literacy can do in 15 minutes: an idiot, or someone who likes to boast about having the money to do so. Which is funny, because in the grown-up world, most of us can afford an extra $500 or $1000 here and there, so your thinly-veiled bragging just sounds pathetic, that's all. ...although if people are willing to pay that kind of money for no crapware, I think I may have a new career as a Crapware Removal specialist.
Which is why many of us would rather build our systems and pay the OEM licence fee ... or go to the Microsoft Store for the less inept users. This is a serious problem and yes many would be willing to pay $10 for that better experience. Or get a Android tablet without that problem.
http://saveie6.com/
I wanted to build my last system bad. I could not justify with my wife. I got an Asus anyway at BestBuy but I reformatted the disk with an OEm pirated build but put the key in that way for a fresh install.
http://saveie6.com/
The kicker is the fact that any parts you throw together in some frankenbox are bound to be superior to what an OEM will try to sell you. This is partially due to you actually knowing what's in the box and the fact that franken-parts are geared towards people who know what they are doing.
"huge volume discounts" are mostly on the software YOU DON'T WANT.
As far as the rest goes: you're probably better off with a clean copy anyways ( system builder license).
Sometimes you get what you pay for and the cost of an OEM copy of Windows is just the cost of having a PC that's not full of crapulence.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If text files open in Word, it's something you set up manually. There's not even an option during Office installation or setup to open text files with Word. Notepad is, and always has been, the default app for .txt files even if you've installed Office.
Fortunately it's easy to fix after you've messed it up. Right click, Open With, Always Open With. Choose Notepad. Done.
That AIO is going to be an oversized paperweight the moment one of it's components breaks or becomes painfully obsolete. Depending on your hardware vendor, your machine may be painfully obsolete as soon as you take it home.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
most people are NOT DIY'ers
to build your own, you need to keep tabs on computer hardware, install your own OS, and keep track of warantee on a dozen or so parts.
Then you have to fix it when it breaks.
Fine for me. I know far far far more, than anyone who works at level 1 help desk would ever learn in his life, this isn't everyone. Most people WANT that help desk.(part of the cost).
You also get one point of contact for warrantee. If ANYTHING breaks, they fix it. How the fuck would a n00b know a CPU/motherboard problem from a HD problem?
Then there is OS installs. Most people want to plug it in, and have it work. A prior generation preffered laptops to desktops because they couldn't figure out which holes to plug things in. Expect them to navigate a windows installer?
Fuck no. After making the mistake of building PCs for friends and family, I tell anyone who's not tech savy to just buy a computer that comes assembled, with warrantee, and tech support.(those guys don't get paid enough for doing that, an extra $200 on the tag to answer stupid n00b questions for two years), If anyone wants me to build them a PC, today its $50 on top of parts for assemble and test, and another $200, for 2 years of being able to call me on the phone and answer your stupid n00b questions.
when you buy a PC in the store, your not paying for the parts, your paying for the service.
You also have to buy into the idea that Windows can be 'cleaned'. It's kind of like believing that you can trust your system after a virus infection. It just needs to be wiped and rebuilt regardless.
THAT is not going to be faster than doing Linux from scratch.
The idea that you can "clean windows" is just the kind of wishful thinking that causes Internet crippling malware outbreaks.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
First, it's common across platforms; second, yes, the issue partially is how difficult it is, because in the grand scheme of things it's about the most minor annoyance you will ever have to deal with in your life. First world problems, anyone? "Meeeh, my computer keeps trying to open Word when I want to open the file in Notepad, I had to actually click the mouse three times to stop it, meeeeeeeh". I'm a person who usually stands on his principles but fuck me, this is meta-complaining at its finest.
Buit all my pcs, for years. Then I got my first laptop. Then they came out with ultras. That works for me, I haven't built a pc in years. I don't mind paying more for it. Except the damn microsoft tax, I hate paying that, especially being a Linux user. Bastards.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
If you want to use Windows you're often stuck with a choice between using the OEM crapware installation or paying for a new retail copy of Windows. Whereas on Linux a clean reinstall is generally free.
You will not come out ahead on a "cheapest of everything" PC doing it yourself - and it won't work when you put it together. You can very well come out ahead building a "workstation" - in the $1k-2k range, you generally get more for your budget, and especially better reliability, by picking top-quality parts yourself (and avoiding the very fastest anything).
You'll never built a cheaper Walmart PC than Walmart - but then, who would want such a thing?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Windows does not give media companies a universal remote backdoor to delete your data. It doesn't make sense to blame Windows for the fact that you decided to buy DRM'ed movies/music/books.
I know this is "computing myths of the 90s" month on /., but that's particularly old school.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"Cleaning" Windows is just a fresh Windows install, which is prettty quick these days if you actually have drivers (and if you don't even have Windows drivers for some crapbox, linux drivers seem far fatched).
At least in my experience, the install-and-patch cycle for Win7 was significantly faster and less hands-on than for Ubuntu, which just seemed to want to keep patching and patching. But I was doing both naively through their GUIs, with no special tricks to make anything faster.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Windows also has package management - has for many years. Crapware doesn't play by the rules.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Building your own only works for desktops.
Non-geeks exclusively buy laptops.
That AIO is going to be an oversized paperweight the moment one of it's components breaks or becomes painfully obsolete. Depending on your hardware vendor, your machine may be painfully obsolete as soon as you take it home.
So like a laptop, then? I think vendors have sold a few of those by now.
Breakfast served all day!
Building your own, if you know what you're doing and know what you want is usually cheaper.
No, it's not, unless you have some extremely specific requirements, and even then it's unlikely.
Go ahead, price it out. The massive volume discounts that a Dell or an HP gets, combined with an extremely sophisticated supply chain, make it cheaper for them to build on an assembly line than the price of the individual components. That's before I count the value of my time.
If you enjoy assembling PCs, great. Have fun, treat it as a hobby.
If you want something extremely specific, then maybe it really will work out cheaper.
But don't think it's a cost saving measure.
Son, I've been married for a while now. The trick with the wife is to buy what you want and then worry about it later.
Which wife is it now - your second or your third?
#DeleteChrome
iTunes might have problems but it's the only music library manager that actually makes an attempt at music library management. It also integrates with a lot of neat gadgets in ways that no other software does.
And Safari is great simply because it's the only web browser in the world that renders fonts properly. Firefox, Chrome, IE, and even Opera look just hideous.
maybe some slashdotters really don't understand how to turn a screwdriver.
There are actually some people in the world who don't read slashdot, and I think there are enough of them to establish a market for ready built computers.
Also, ever tried building a laptop? Unfortunately, it's not that easy to find parts that fit together as easily as with minitowers. Especially if you want a sleek ultrabook. And there are many people who are not interested in non-portable computers.
(For the record, I have built my own computers in the past, but now I'm a laptop only user due to my work.)
This hits the nail right on the head. Unfortunately, it's the corporate marketers that dictate what's cool, and home-built high-performance machines with clean installs of non-proprietary operating systems and zero crapware/malware ain't it.
And what are the weights and thicknesses for each of those laptops?
Thinner, lighter laptops cost more. It's not a Mac versus PC thing - most companies that sell cheap, thick, heavy Windows laptops also offer thin, light, expensive Windows laptops.
#DeleteChrome
Which wife is it now - your second or your third?
If I could like you this comment like Fabebook I would,
In all honesty the only good thing about this boring underclocked CPU/board is that I can get a replacement when needed if it has shit capacitors and looks kind of cool with the blue LED lights that says ASUS. There are worse things in life.
http://saveie6.com/
Apple does its own evil. iCloud in every menu. Facebook, Twitter everywhere. And those can't be removed with a clean install of the OS.
ML by default is set to not allow installation of applications that were not purchased through the app store or not signed with an apple certificate. I know this setting can be changed, but they are obviously banking on most people not knowing how to do that.
Then there's iTunes. I guess there's no need to go into detail about that one.
BTW, both notepad and wordpad are completely free, and wordpad is a functional document editor. If you are talking about office trial, just uninstall it.
The last time I installed Windows, it was more straight-forward than many of the programs I installed afterward.
Really, sounds like what happened to me with both Dell and Gateway systems. Hours and hours on the "hotline" with a nitwit.
>
Using a Windows machine will always be like this: Trapped face-up, under the urinal in Steve Ballmer's personal piss-dungeon.
Bullshit. Just stop buying PCs and make them yourself. It's faster than fucking around with sales people and its A LOT cheaper. Also, you won't get crapware unless you put it on yourself.
As has been mentioned several times in this thread, most people are afraid of trying to assemble a computer themselves because it's a computer and what happens if they fuck up? Yeah, you can teach somebody how to assemble a computer in under half an hour. Teaching them to get over the fear of assembling something 'as complicated as a computer' will take a helluva lot longer. They tend not to realise that modern computers are designed to be assembled by third-worlders on a shoestring budget to keep profit margins high enough to make selling them cheaply worth it to the rebranding company. After all, every piece is slotted to go in only one way.
I think it took me all of half an hour to assemble the desktop machine I'm using now. Then about 20 minutes to install a bare-bones Ubuntu to the point where I could install all the software I wanted to install over a few days.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
It's not an easy task if you don't know that the mouse has more than one buttons, and clicking the one on the right opens up a menu.
I helped a friend with restoring iPhoto on her macbook (she dragged the icon to the trash to remove it from the dock or eject it or whatever). After it was done, I showed her that is she presses the trackpad at a certion location, she gets a menu where she can remove icons from the dock. She was astounded, and told me that this revelation opened up a whole new dimension for her.
yeah and their sleek prettyboxes, made of that glossy plastic that fingerprints and scratches too easily, are largely useless for anything beyond checking facebook AND they're loaded with crapware. yay!
You lost me at Metro being "clean and spiffy," but you're right otherwise. I give it one or two years before some bright bulb dreams up an OS or even hardware to force feed advertising to the user, all the while claiming it reduces costs... Consoles already do.
If you're leaving Windows because of the Metro UI, you probably don't want to be a lab rat for Ubuntu's Unity experiment either. Ubuntu used to be the go-to distro for newbies, but these days I tell the Li-curious to check out Kubuntu or Mint.
Come to think of it, if you don't like crapware, or indeed if you're a sane and decent human being, you probably won't like Amazon ads in your program launcher either, so Mint it is. How far the kind-of-crappy-but-almost-user-friendly-enough-for-grandma has fallen. :(
I'm indifferent to Unity simply because I never used it much. I've been a *box fan for ages, starting out with the old Blackbox 0.4.x series way the hell back when, after trying it out and replacing FVWM/FVWM95 with it. I currently use the Lubuntu cut, with stock Ubuntu and Kubuntu and even Xbuntu installed, just for the libs and the software. For the desktop, I use LXDE. Love it, even though it does remind me a bit of Windows XP.
I recently installed Lubuntu as a secondary OS on my brother in law's laptop for him He likes it.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
This goes both ways. Why does image capture open when I hook up my phone for charging on the mac and why do I have to hunt for some obscure pulldown to turn it off? Or why do function keys not work as function keys unless they are set to work as function keys in keyboard preferences? Or why does the scroll wheel on the mouse work backwards?
I rooted my Optimus V for that very reason. The internal storage was full from just a handful of apps installed by me. It got to the point where apps could no longer update. Someone was nice enough to include all the rooting tools in a zipfile with a batch file to walk you through. After that get Titanium Backup and uninstall what you want. Just be careful because some apps are needed by the OS.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Dual core AMD x64 processor: $58. Hard drive: $59. MB: $59 with integrated AMD Radeon HD and all the extras (didn't see gig-E or USB3.0 in the first example, but you can shop around). 4GB ram: $19 (yeah, ram is that cheap). 250W PSU (couldn't even find 150W): $20. Case: $15. Total: $230 USD, right now. And that is bottom-end components, if you want anything higher, you start getting cheaper than the mass-produced stuff. This took me 1-2 minutes to find, if I shopped around I could maybe push it a bit cheaper (of course, that is with sales, but that works in your advantage since you can pick up each component separately or in combos for the best prices).
And I'm not even using any combo deals, which could drop the price a few dollars. Of course, you don't get Windows for that price, but you don't get the shovel-ware crap, either, plus you get to choose exactly what components you want to maximize without massive markups. Most of the components are likely going to be junk at that price... but the whole computer is junk at that pre-built price.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Keep it up preacher. FYI how long have you been single?
My 5 year old daughter wants the tablet and brush from this Windows 8 commercial. Does she qualify for your all in caps comment?
Home Built PCs tend to follow a simple formula if you're jinxed and don't know what the hell you're doing.
Really, that's pure FUD. First, if you can't properly diagnose hardware, what the hell are you doing building a computer yourself? Second, that only happens when you don't properly select your components. The only things you shouldn't skimp on are memory modules and the PSU. Especially the PSU. Funnily, that's exactly where some of the popular manufacturers cut costs, since they can spend the same amount of money on an i3-based machine with a good PSU or an i5-based machine with a crappy PSU. Since they "hey, it's an i5" is way better advertising than "hey, it has a good part that you probably never heard of and therefore don't care about", they all go for the i5 and then you're possibly fucked on the long term because almost every part of your PC is being fed incorrect voltages (and that can be insanely hard to diagnose at home if you don't know what you're looking for). They also tend to invest as little in cooling as possible, so at most you get an extra fan. Build correctly and you can do way, way better than any manufacturer. After all, they must pay their employees and profit from sales, and no amount of black magic will let them do it while charging you as much as the cost of the components.
iTunes might have problems but it's the only music library manager that actually makes an attempt at music library management.
I don't know what you're definition of "library management" is but if you're talking about tags/covers/file naming etc. then there's like a gazillion other apps do can do this in, Mp3tag, EasyTag, MediaMonkey, MusicBee...
It also integrates with a lot of neat gadgets in ways that no other software does.
Hmm, iPad, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, and Macs. That's a whooping 5 products.
And Safari is great simply because it's the only web browser in the world that renders fonts properly. Firefox, Chrome, IE, and even Opera look just hideous.
That is purely personal preference. And you'll find that the majority of people like their fonts more hinted because they don't really care what the type is like if hinted fonts are easier to read.
Then how does Apple do it? They make not only a higher quality product but don't include crapware and have some of the largest margins in the industry. Just look what Vizio is doing: http://www.vizio.com/computing/
No crapware!
It works: http://the-pc-decrapifier.en.softonic.com/
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I think that depends on one's definition of cool.
What's cool to me is dictated by ... me.
I find it works out better for everyone that way.
You can get a laptop built to your specs with vendors like Pioneer. http://pioneercomputers.com.au/products/categories.asp?c1=3. They used to give you the option of Ubuntu pre-installed, but even now you can avoid the Microsoft tax by not selecting an OS.
To my mind, this is how all laptops should be offered.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Only because at the lowest end they can get the OEM windows so cheap (which I would immediately wipe anyway).
Below would be a better option (for me) than the one you're referring to which is an AMD E-350 (Intel Atom comparable).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103873
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130630
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148538
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811353007
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817822006
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148766
Total: 191.95
No, it doesn't include a Windows OS license, which I would be wasting money on anyway, and would be faster.
Vizio. Beautiful PCs with all the crapware removed. It's the only thing I recommend for anyone who wants a prebuilt PC.
Because Symantec and McAfee are businesses whose goal is to make money, regardless of how relevant they are. Theyre actually quite good at what they do, your mistake is thinking that "what they do" is to provide solutions.
computing myths? windows does hardware checks to make sure that it god forbid, has been moved between computers?, still contains drm for media, and requires install keys a form of drm for the os? still has a habit of only patching security wholes that they absolutely have to? or say that the whole will be patched in the next version instead of fixing the problems? have they been getting better about security yes but they are far from the security level of you average linux desktop.
myth? i think not.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Youre calling Mac Mail "functional", are you?
you don't want a $20 PSU in any system.
That is the one of the worst places to cheap out and lot's of the low end Walmart PC do have shit PSU's in them.
Which is fine, for OS X (given it's a necessary subsystem for proper use of the operating system).
With Quicktime on Windows it seems to think it deserves to take control over your machine as well, as if you deserve the level of integration it has in OS X (despite being entirely different systems).
Dude...
To be honest, it's not worth anyone's time putting together a budget PC for themselves, in purely financial terms - they'll end up with a budget PC, and not have saved much, if any money. Budget PCs are almost disposable now. 1 month of 20 a day cigarettes costs about as much as a budget PC where I live (UK).
Building your own is more an ethos, rather than a saving money strategy. I've built my own for years, and saved a little money doing it. I've also, and more importantly IMO (getting back to the original point of the thread) avoided crapware. I hate it with a passion, and won't have it on my PC.
My system is not the best... but until yesterday (power cut) I had 2100 hours uptime. After that 2100 hours, and the obviously poor shutdown... I booted to workable desktop within 1 minute without a hitch. This is with Vista.
This is why I make my own PCs, and get the operating systems separately. The headaches, time, and irritation I avoid is worth more to me than the initial time it takes to build it.... That and the fact I like building a new PC, too.
Back in 07 when i bought this computer from Dell, I really wanted to build my own. I had even priced what I wanted and it would cost me around $800. Sadly, the pc I was using at the time was having random hardware failures, and as I had already spent $200 replacing bits of a 5yr old box, I figured it was time for a whole new box.
The thing was, Dell extended me $1500 in credit. So I could have waited for months, buying a piece here and there as I could afford it, or I could buy a pre-built from Dell and get it right then.
I think that is the reason most people buy the pre-built systems, they want a whole system that works out of the box, right then. And a lot of the major manufacturers offer lines of credit.
I find it interesting is that every statement like this excludes (or more frequently, omits) the cost ($80-100 or higher) of a legal Windows installation. Most people run Windows, and prefer it to be legal. Then you have to tack on labor - even if you only count active work to build it, it still takes a fair amount of time. Combine that with the illusion of support and warranty, and those $300 PCs (probably closer to the $260 ones) are a more attractive option for most people.
Plus, I've seen a lot of self-built PCs. Biostar boards, Apex (or worse) PSUs, unbranded RAM, and no testing. Almost all would've gotten a better product if they'd just bought something off the shelf- even Acer makes better systems than that. Granted, I've seen DIY systems with ASUS/Gigabyte/etc, but those tend to be even more expensive.
The only market segment where it makes financial sense is the high-end of the market. All major OEMs have razor-thin profit margins on the low-end. They make their real money on the high-end. When you get to the $1000 range, you can build a substantially better machine for a lower price, Windows and all.
I helped my brother pick out a new computer this weekend. After looking at the prices of PCs in his range ($350), I decided that building him a system would be far more cost effective. Note I didn't say cheaper--it wound up being $50 more--but it's a pretty decent system all the same, and with specs significantly better than the pre-built he was looking at.
When I compare my PC to similar pre-built models, I find that the pre-builts tend to cost $800 more, and with worse hardware.
Then again, maybe my local stores just suck.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
I'd agree. I would still get an Apple iMac over the Acer, but I'd vote neither personally. And this is from someone that owns Apple products and has built a number of my own systems, including 3 hacks (ie, home built OSX machines) My current rig runs about 20% faster than the equivalent Mac Pro at the time, and cost me significantly less, primarily because I happened upon a deal and a half on the CPU. I installed W7 for all of 10s on it, and the promptly installed Ubuntu and started on the hack, mainly to see if I could do it. I now use it as my primary machine.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
This remains much of my extended family.
Bog-standard Windows PCs at big-box store. One says "Includes over 50 programs and supports millions of Windows applications" on the box. The other says "Windows PC" on the box.
Uncle no-name: "Well, I'll take this one because it includes tons of software and is compatible with millions of programs. The other one isn't."
Me: "Those programs are all worthless, and the other one supports just as much software. They're both Windows PCs."
Uncle no-name: "Hey, free is free. And if the other one really could support millions of programs, they would have put it on the box. That's an important feature! You're so gullible, no wonder the younger generation is gets such bad value out of everything."
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
People pay more for a better product.
That's something the "me too" PC vendors cannot do. There's little to differentiate. Now, they are addicted to this model, on top of everything.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
That depends on whether you use a computer as a tool or as a fashion accessory and status symbol.
This space available.
Yes. I saw this on the Register.co.uk at the time. It seemed like an appropriate metaphor.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Not to mention that most people don't know the difference between hard drive space, memory and how many photos they're allowed to upload on Facebook.
This space available.
Do you know anyone who actually uses "Windows Media" with drm?
I don't.
People use MP3s, mp4s, avis, and mkv files. Even if hey don;t KNOW it.
Who buys music in WMA format with DRM?
Anyone? Maybe a few, but not the vast majority of Windows users.
On the other hand, what percentage of Apple users use media with Apple DRM?
ALL of them.
This space available.
Knowing what you are doing has nothing to do with it. Parts fail, and often they are nearly impossible to diagnose exactly what the problem is. This is why most corporations pay for quick replacement on fail of equipment, because it's not always easy. Otherwise the vendors wouldn't come with a new piece of equipment, they would arrive and swap what is broken. But they don't do that.
It also boils down to what you buy, and more importantly, where you buy it. I used to make my own equipment, and for me it was fine; however after returning a faulty MB with an intermittent network card failure and watching them while I am still in the store air clean it and put it back into stock convinced me that you generally don't want to buy parts from anywhere other than the manufacturer, and who does that? It's impossible to spot faulty PC equipment by eye (most of the time), so selling returns as new happens. They even put new stickers on the anti-static packaging.
I congratulate you for being the supreme king of diagnostics who can look at a computer for 20 seconds and know exactly where a failure occurred, because I would say most of the people who are purchasing PCs can't do that, and have to put a value on the time they have to waste trying to figure it out without any spare parts.
Is to go the expensive way and purchase a naked license of the OS.
That way I can get a clean machine without crapware.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Computers sold through the MS store come pre-cleaned of all that crap.
Oh please! You make it sound like its some big hard problem! Just use PC Decrappifier takes five minutes IF that, and call it a day. It'll not only clean out the trialware but any extra crap the OEM puts to sell their own stuff (such as all the HP services crap) and it takes just a couple of clicks and all done.
And I would remind everyone that Sony offered a few years back to sell any PC you wanted crap free for just $50 extra, they had so few takers they quit bothering. Personally I'll keep the $50 and take 5 minutes to clean the crap on a laptop, desktops i build my own.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The price of a computer depends mostly on what you include in the price! Good IPS monitors used to be pretty expensive, as did Bluray drives.
In my case I tend to pay a lot for storage (I'm a storage guy, so I'm just sensitive about perforance there). A fast SSD and a few TB of high-quality spinning disk adds a few hundred.
Still, easy to spend more and get lower quality parts when you pass the $1k mark, whichever parts you're counting in the total.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
you obviously never built your own
...but then again i also install debian, not winblows
i build all my pcs and i won't buy unless i can make up at least a 50% saving compared to retail oem
I do a clean install after I buy a PC. For windows 7 I had to do the following.
1. Get all the drivers from the OEM for the specific model.
2. Get the REAL windows product key (& OEM cert) of your pc. Google is your friend here.
3. Get a Retail windows copy from MSDN or some other legit site.
4. Format the PC, install windows and use slmgr tool to activate it.
5. Now install all the drivers & you are good to go.
No crapware now & it saves me disk space that the OEMs manage to steal in the name of recovery partition.
I have an inkling that Microsoft/OEMs will make the process more onerous going forward but I believe its worth the pain.
What are you going on about? Sure, Windows wants to make sure you actually paid, but that part's unobtrusive (if you swap several parts it will give you an "activate" button to click, but I've never seen it fail so it's just a click.
I guess Windows gives you a way to play media that has DRM? Is that bad? Anything that can stream Netflix "contains DRM for media", right?
Are you confusing the OS and applications when it comes to security? Modern security threats target the user and the add-ons to his browser. Since Vista (5 years ago now) Windows has joined the pack in not having users run as admin. The only modern OS that's different in terms of security these days is SE Linux, the rest are basically the same, for what little that matters.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
My last home-built PC that had any cycle like that was almost 10 years ago, and it broke around 3 years after building it (upgrading GPU and HDD meant new PSU, new PSU was bad, and fried pretty much everything). Before that I had a problem building one due to a string of bad motherboards, but all of that was Fry's fault (before they had to label used/returned parts), never cost me a cent, and Newegg saved the day (and some money). This PC runs like a charm, and its on year 4. The only bits I replace are for upgrades.
I'm sorry you had a bad time of it, it seems, but this is pretty rare once you know what your doing. I've been building my own PCs since the mid-90's, and rarely have had a problem. But I've had terrible luck on pre-builts, and when I don't, I need to buy a new one every time I upgrade something since they generally suck for expanding, and have pretty crappy components. I'm not willing to spend $800+ (about the level of components I have,pre-build price) every 2-3 years, just to upgrade my graphics card.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
he's obviously never heard the age old (and oh so true) saying "happy wife, happy life"
i'm sure there are husbands that feel the need to "be the man" and "wear the pants", but they really are the idiots of the married world, and will often be the ones that end up a multiple divorcee.
Do you? Windows has package management by any reasonable definition. XML-manifest-based installs and uninstalls that handle dependency checking, upgrades, and so on. Heck, the XML installer toolkit was Microsoft's first "shared source" project to be hosted on SourceForge.
Not everyone uses it, of course: corporations just love to give money to Macrovision for some reason, and force user interaction when there's no need for any. But even the hideous InstallShield uses the package managment system by default these days, until you override sane interaction with the OS.
What Windows doesn't have (until Win8) in an app store / managed distro. But that's something that uses a package management system.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
based on personal experience, and since i don't use windows, its cheaper (unless you're an idiot and buy your parts from an oem)
Apple movies have DRM, yes. As does every other movie rental service. Apple music, though, hasn't had DRM in a very, very, long time now. They actually were one of the first music stores to strip DRM, this is one thing I actually liked Apple for, they were the good guys here.
The only caveat is that music from iTMS does have some watermarks, which doesn't really affect anyone unless they release it into the wild (even then, I haven't heard of it hurting anyone, but the potential is there). For normal use, it is completely open music.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Yes, I'm serious. But if my comment is as moronic as you seem to think it is, maybe you can actually help me. I have a couple of computers here which came with OEM crapware Windows and no clean install media (only the option to create crapware recovery discs). How do I get a free, legal, clean Windows installation?
Do price it out...
I very much doubt that Dell or HP offer systems that have top end graphics cards at prices you could build yourself, buying retail parts. That's not extremely specific, that's what a whole host of people use their PC's for, that's gaming. People buy these cards. Dell and HP don't put them in their machines, because they're expensive.
If someone wants to build or buy a gaming rig, you're either spending top dollar or building your own. There's no real in between.
Firstly, even now processor speed (I'm not talking just Ghz) matters way more than the number of cores in gaming - there are still basically no games that utilise more than 2 cores effectively. Many "gaming" rigs feature slower multicore processors.
Secondly, there are lots of cheap (or at least cheaper) motherboards out there which are as quick as the expensive ones. By the same manufacturers. Sold rigs always use high end ones you don't need.
Thirdly, expensive high speed RAM that a lot of "gaming" systems use actually has worse latency than cheap slower RAM. In many cases, the latency is more important than than the outright speed.
Fourthly, many of these gaming systems throw in old SSDs, or no SSD at all. Not all SSDs are the same, and these systems generally put crap ones in.. I've never used them, but the next system I buy they will be first. Currently I run 2 striped SATA drives, which are quick enough for me most of the time.
I've just installed Skyrim on my ancient (comparatively) system, and it thinks I should play on high graphical settings, 1920*1200, 8AA, 8AF, most things on. This is a relatively inexpensive about 5 year old system, the only upgrade being a new graphics card a year or two ago (460gtx*).
*This is, however, about the quickest graphics card you should put in my motherboard, which is only PCI-E 1. Quicker cards than this will be limited by the older interface. My next upgrade is going to be an entirely new system.
parts fail regardless of whether you build yourself or buy oem... the difference is that oem shit is likely to fail sooner (as soon as the warranty runs out) and unless you're willing to pay a premium for after sales service, you'll get nothing but runarounds and idiots on the phone that you can't even understand when you need to get something fixed.
i buy parts from my local store owner, who i can talk to in person and he's a local too. he gets parts as part of a national network, so cost is very cheap for decent brands.
linux is even easier (well, debian anyways)
Every Windows box ships with a key on the side of it that you can use with an OEM Windows disk to put a fresh install on...
Yes, building your own is cheaper if your time is worthless.
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Often the only copy of Windows that you are legally allowed to put on the machine you just bought is the restore CD that came with it. Which has all the crapware loaded on it.
So to "clean" Windows by doing a fresh Windows install, you generally have to either purchase a whole new Windows license (in addition to the one you paid for when you bought the machine) or pirate Windows (despite already having paid for it)
True. But his point still stands that Crapware doesn't play by the rules. If an OEM installs Crapware that they want on your system, they won't put it in a package that can easily be removed through the package manager, You'd likely have to do it manually which is no different from Windows.
Some people just want a computer, not a hobby.
Has something changed there? Because in the past Microsoft has been quite clear that the OEM license on your machine does not permit you to download a retail copy from wherever you want to install it, and being that the only Windows CD that comes with most machines is the restore CD (which is loaded with all the garbage) I'd love to hear how exactly you are supposed to legally acquire a clean copy of Windows to install on that machine that came with the OEM version on a restore CD (not an install CD)
This is something of a dated way of thinking. In 2012, you don't usually see component failures; while it happens, it doesn't happen nearly as frequently as it used to. Therefore, "knowing what's in the box" is a value add of dubious value to many users. "Seagate, Western Digital, I don't care, I just don't want it to break on me."
"A fraction of the cost," while technically true, is far from the truism it used to be. Gone are the days where you could spend $800 and get the equivalent of a $3000 prebuilt system. In many cases, you're hard pressed just to break even today.
The last time I built my own and tried to install Windows I got this. It was a bug that didn't allow Vista 64 to install on my motherboard chipset with more than 2gb of RAM. You try to fault diagnose that - windows install bluescreens and reboots. You can't see the bluescreen message, because you can't get windows to halt on errors because it's not installed yet. It just reboots.
Fortunately, I had a win2k installation on the same machine, and I managed to find other people who had had the same problem, and then got to the hotfix. However, obviously you could not install the hotfix without running Vista, which would not install. Fortunately I had 2*2gb sticks (rather than any*4), so I took one out and it installed fine. Applied the hotfix, stuck the other stick back in, and it worked.
When did you last install Windows?
Stop letting apps control install/uninstall. Start showing dependency chains so you can reasonably uninstall a program without breaking other things.
Linux systems solved this problem and became the easiest systems to maintain. That is why they're still around and Solaris is owned by Oracle. The Mac had a good idea 20 years ago with their mostly resource/data forks and keeping everything in one file. They partially abandoned that with MacOSX and you ended up with guts that were on top of a UNIX fs with a GUI designed to hide that from you. Consequently, the apps all had access to drop their crap wherever they felt like and then you've got the same problem windows has.. only worse
because you need to hide metadata on portable and shared media so you dump .Trashes files everywhere along with 17 other interestingly named files. They also started using filename.extension as a format for sharing files, so you get troublesome results with applications that choose to creatively crap on your filesystem.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2001/08/metadata/7/
The answer is for commercial companies to stop allowing apps to run an executable to uninstall themselves. That has to be the dumbest idea possible from every approachable angle. Asking malware/adware/crapware if it wants to uninstall and if it would be so kind as to do so gracefully and without breaking anything, or leaving any files behind, or redirecting you to a website asking you why.
Building your own, if you know what you're doing and know what you want...
That's a pretty big if, and is equally true for cars, houses, low orbit launch platforms etc... which is why there exists a market for turnkey solutions. Not everyone knows everything, and most people are happy to pay for someone else to do the hard work.
Where I work - Puget Systems - we don't pull any of that crap :)
Shameless plug:
http://www.pugetsystems.com/aboutus.php
William George
Laptops are trickier because of the thermals though, you can't throw whatever into a case and if you need more cooling add a fan later. With a laptop you have very narrow limits on how much heat you can get out of the case, and more than that and you're going to cause yourself no end of grief, and most of us can't do that maths.
Swapping a hard drive is one thing, but the GPU/CPU combo can be a big problem.
When did you last install Windows?
Probably after Windows 7, it installed very quickly and easily last time I installed it (probably a month or two ago, I build a lot of computers.) Plus, you're referencing a 6 year old bug from an OS that has been followed by 2 major releases. I'm generally a Windows hater (especially 7) but you're arguing just for the sake of arguing.
I price this stuff out on a weekly basis. Sometimes, especially really low end or really high end machines I recommend a pre built. If you want to spend under 400 bucks I usually can't match the component costs. If you want to spend 3000-20 000 I usually can't source the components because they ~10-15k runs and almost all of that inventory goes to the big guys first.
The 700-2500 dollar price point is almost always cheaper to build yourself, but of course you don't get a warranty with that, but you also can get more sensible combinations of components. Putting a 70 dollar graphics card in a 700 dollar machine is not doing the buyer any favours.
Granted I live one block from a tigerdirect so I don't have to pay shipping costs.
Depends how long it takes. I usually charge 100 bucks an hour for IT work and 200 for consulting or research related stuff (PhD candidate in comp sci). I can build a machine in about 30-45 minutes. And I typically charge 50 bucks for it. If I take 45 minutes it's usually because I forgot something and have to run to the shop to buy a SATA cable or something stupid.
Of course. I wasn't suggesting it's necessarily worth the cost savings to build your own. If you're going to save 50 or 100 bucks you might be happier to have a pre-built with a warranty. If the first thing you do when it gets to your door is void the warranty though, there isn't much point.
You also have to know what components you want, that requires research and time. I build probably half a dozen PC's a week for people on the side, and I do requirements for each one so I tend to stay current, but if you build one PC every 3 years and don't know the difference between GPU's and don't know where to find the difference buying a pre-built will get the job done.
OEM machines do include a product key attached. You are licensing the software when you buy that machine, you aren't buying the recovery disk. Grab a clean OEM installation disk from a friend, ask for a copy from the shop you bought it from (a non crapware version that they keep in their workshop) or download a copy. The disk is just an installation media, and has nothing to do with your license of windows.
That said, the disk is still handy. You can call up MS support, claim your sticker has been torn up or damaged, and get a replacement key from them - they will ask for either the part number on the inner ring of the disk, or ask you to scan/photograph the disk.
Additionally you are able to activate your copy of windows online up to 3 times per month, after that you will need to contact them over the phone, and when asked by the automated machine, say that you are installing it on the same computer, and that it is only installed only on that computer exclusively.
Central Computer, Silicon Valley's PC retailer, will also sell you a "no crapware" machine if you ask. They actually put "no crapware" on the purchase order.
my concern is that the consumer goodys will become so ubiquitous and saturate the market that it will become near impossible to buy separate components in future, and even having the choice of whether to build my own machine or not will be indirectly decided by the masses.
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
so... I've got a problem with the bluetooth. I've tried usb'ing into the internet, but when I download the flash drive it gives my ram a virus and I'm pretty sure that's why I'm not getting farmville updates
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
The GP was asking about portable systems, where hacking the hardware yourself isn't really an option, given how immodular laptops are. Maybe you can swap out or add RAM or the HD, but that's about it.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Knowing what you are doing has nothing to do with it.
These words are typical of someone with a really, really bad case of doesn'tknowwhathe'stalkingaboutitis. Trust me, I'm
the supreme king of diagnostics
All the major OEMs are idiots who decided, at some point, that marketing mattered more than the hardware they put in the machines themselves. They're just getting their own desserts in that regard. I mean, the average consumer just has never been taught that a 5400 RPM HD is a giant bottleneck, and can't tell the difference between an OEM that offers one with and without -> they see machines purely as appliances, something to buy and never upgrade. And surprise, OEMs worked to maintain that image -> they shipped 'smaller' cases with no upgradability, custom PSUs, and underpowered heatsinks. They confirmed their customer's bias, which is their own fault...oh, and look, they're doing the same in the Smartphone world! Hands up, how many people have or have had a phone which, while being capable of running ICS, is still stuck on 2.2 or 2.3? How many people fault Google for going nuclear over this, and buying part of Motorola to 'fix' the problem? These people save a few bucks in the short term, and destroy the companies they are working for in the long term. They have no understanding of planning, or maintaining a certain level of brand / quality among their customers. It's just pump and dump: pump a product up (usually done before they are hired), with rave reviews and good hardware, then gut the hardware / fire the engineers, then outsource it all overseas, and cash in as people continue buying the next version of the product, unaware that the quality has gone to shit -> what's it matter? In six months, the people in charge of that Titanic will be piloting another company into an iceberg, while the old one is up on the blocks (all the capital has been spent, the talent gone, and no one wants to buy from them even with special cut-rate deals).
HP? Hands up, who here, having dealt with Compaq for any number of years towards its end, thought that that merger was a good idea? Anyone? See, no one. Compaq needed to die, to prevent spreading the plague to others. Instead, someone arranged a marriage; how trite.
The major OEMs want to save themselves? Fire the morons; if Marketing is telling the techs what to build, you're in for a world of hurt (remember, Marketing would be happy selling hot dogs on a corner somewhere if a customer survey said that it was the next big thing). Then spend the next 5 years actually listening to your techs about your build quality, and maybe you will survive. You'll need to combat brand fatigue, where all your customers are wary of whether or not you are just getting lucky with the latest builds, or if you have actually changed. It will take 5 years to clear out everyone's current beliefs about you and your quality, there is no rushing that. You're going to need to 'lift the brand,' not reinvent it. You'll have to convince your customers, through proof, that you are not following Apple, that you are where they want to be, and hate themselves for not being there right now. Stop trying to guess where Apple is going next; you're not them, you have different advantages, and you do not want to be them. Give the whole form factor thing a miss, as the smaller form factors tend to have lower margins (or as it is commonly known as "Why are we shipping more products than before, but our profits are in the tank?"). And there is nothing wrong with having money on the books if you haven't decided what to do with it yet: there is, and I repeat, there is, nothing wrong with having $2B laying around in the company coffers if you don't see anything worth investing in. I know, Wall St. hates that, as does your Econ professor, but guess what? There are a lot of shit investments out there, and it takes a long time to see if one is worth purchasing; buying shit investments just to get rid of the extra money / please the Street will doom your company. And once again, there is nothing wrong with issuing a one-time Dividend to shut them up, if they get too loud.
I am John Hurt.
This is gross, and is insulting to the consumer. During thanksgiving, 1/2 of my family was using or thinking about buying Apple products, and it's primarily because of outrageous practices such as this. 50 crapware programs pre-installed? Is this comedy?
Unfortunately, I would have to agree with you there. There was, at one point, an attempt to fix the laptop market with upgradable motherboards and what not, but I haven't heard anything about it recently.
And yes, non-geeks tend to buy laptops, or tablets. *shudder* They just need to see, first-hand, the difference between a desktop and a laptop, and they will eventually come around to the dark geeky side. The designated comfy chair + hideaway tends to appeal to the masses, as you can do whatever, with a lot of power under your fingertips, in a socially acceptable situation, which does not work elsewhere. Gaming, work, pr0n, etc. And yes, the comfy chair is very comfortable, as is not having a 17" laptop frying your nads.
The only problem with my current build is AMD's attempt to take Intel's "WTF were we thinking" crown that they earned when they bopped out the Itanium. Windows doesn't seem to like the full-core / not full-core design, and keeps throwing up cross-threading errors with Explorer. That it got this far is beyond me...
I am John Hurt.
Can Dell or HP make a cheaper machine? Certainly.
Is it a machine that anyone should be allowed to buy? Hell no.
They tend to rank up there with the Cyrix machines of yester-year, something to avoid.
Unfortunately, the types who buy the bottom barrel machines are typically the ones who know the least about the hardware. "They certainly wouldn't sell me a shite machine" -> average person who buys these machines.
Yes, yes they would, and their designs are built around the idea that "one is born every minute." The kind of person who does not take the time to understand what they are buying, and thinks that some god out there protects fools from their actions. Well, there might be a god out there who does, but IMHO, he / she / they appear very overworked, so let's do a little something nice for them around this time of year, and try to lighten the workload a little, right?
If you see someone buying a machine with a 5400 RPM HD, stop them. Same thing if it has 2 GBs of RAM, or, arguably, lacks a discrete video card. Just do it, and feel good about doing it. You're saving everyone else a lot of hassle 3 weeks into the future.
Ask the person, when you go to buy a car, do you buy the absolute cheapest model that just ANYONE is offering? No? I didn't think so. This machine is not the one you want, this one over here probably is.
I think a major problem for tech is that there are simply no words which convey an adequate understanding of how much nicer their experience will be for every extra $20 they chip in. I'd say its inversely logarithmic, but even that might be too complicated. Nerf the warranty they are trying to sell you (the manufacturer typically covers machines for 3 years, and so on), and spend the money on better features.
I am John Hurt.
Building your own is cheaper if the market simply doesn't offer what you want.
Surprise surprise, larger OEMs do not tend to put out machines with Radeon HD 7970s. That means the top-end is not being covered either, unless you think a Radeon HD 7870 is the best that ATI can do (it's not). The larger OEMs are sitting kind of on the middle to lower end of hardware offerings, from what I can see.
But they will certainly charge you like they are top of the line if you will let them.
I am John Hurt.
Parts fail, and often they are nearly impossible to diagnose exactly what the problem is.
Actually most teenagers can diagnose what the problem is. Hell your earlier post is a clear indication you should not be part of the computer building industry. Suspecting RAM and then not running some simple products that test the RAM is a hellova newbie mistake. I don't know of anyone who's ever gone through what you suggest. There are test suits for bloody everything these days.
Also last two times my sister's Dell laptop broke the vendor came out and did exactly what you said they don't do. They came to the house and swapped out the wifi card, and then next time the monitor, both broke because pre-built system are made out of cheap crap components.
Most people are sheep, and would consider a worthwhile life to contain a happy childhood, a good job, and a wonderful family.
Some people want more. Some people are like Cave Johnson, and will not be satisfied with life's meager offerings. They're the ones looking down from distant mountain peeks, and still pressing the elevator button up.
And for many of them, their life's passion started off as a hobby that they practised in their garage.
So why are you asking people to settle for less? L-o-w-e-r E-x-p-e-c-t-a-t-i-o-n-s...
I am John Hurt.
And that's why there is a market for people who do want to know everything, or at least sizeable chunks of it...and who will pay quite handsomely for any offerings that actually deliver.
I am John Hurt.
Will not be a problem for much longer. Those corporate marketers have bled their home companies dry.
I am John Hurt.
You say you hate crapware and yet you're running Vista?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
In that case, you might want to check again. While Quicktime was historically a bit of a rude resource hog, that hasn't been true since Snow Leopard. iTunes has, in some ways, taken over that role and insists on being the default for most sound files. That's no bad thing exactly, the majority of Mac users are probably perfectly happy with that.
I setup a lot of Macs and maintain a list of useful and unobtrusive software as the default install list. In some ways, you could say that I load up those nice clean Macs with crapware before I kick them out the door, except for one word that the majority of PC manufacturers don't seem to have cottoned on to - unobtrusive. It amazes me that so many computers are shipped with their performance so hamstrung by the sheer weight of crap that gets loaded at boot time. Custom written user interface extensions are the worst offenders in my eyes. They never offer anything that can't be done natively in Windows. They are the very definition of pointless.
Posting with a head cold = rambling.
They aren't part of the OS. Apple have never integrated apps in the OS like MS have, and I've used a number of Macs which have had both of those pieces of crap removed. Of course, I've used Safari to download Firefox first, but after that, it's gone. That's pretty much impossible with IE, not sure about MS Media Player.
I'm spending my spare time doing things I enjoy.
If you enjoy researching the hardware and building together your own machine then fine, but if not than it does really boil down to how much you value your time. Hobbies cost time and money, why wouldn't the hobby of building computers?
I much more enjoy other things than researching and buying all the prefab parts and screwing them together. Actually the latter part is still a fun 30 minutes or so, but doing the research and having to wade through pages of marketing spin in order to find the grains of truth I need in order to figure out the best components for my purposes, is just no longer enjoyable.
Point is, if you are building your own computer solely for the purpose of saving money, you should measure time spent as a cost too.
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Laptops are portable, and the laptop market does not support custom builds.
The desktop or home market, on the other hands, are not portable, and do support custom builds.
Let's compare builds:
Acer Aspire 7600U
Weight: 22 lbs
Dimensions: 25.98" x 18.58" x 1.37"
Screen size: 27" Full HD 1920 x 1080 wide-viewing
Touch: 10 points multiuser touch
Hard drive size: 1000 GB HDD
RAM: 8 GB
Processor: 3rd-generation Intel Core i7-3630QM or i5-3210M processor
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT640M, 2 GB VRAM
Lightknight's Custom Build (currently shipping)
Screen size: 47" Full HD 1920 x 1080 wide-viewing (Vizio)
Touch: None on the screen, optional with slate / stylus (for artists).
Hard drive: 240 GB SSD (Corsair Force 3 / GT), 3000 GB HD (Seagate 7200 RPM)
RAM: 32 GB (Corsair)
Processor: AMD Bulldozer 8150 or Piledriver 8350 (with Corsair self-contained water-cooled setup, currently using SilenX fans)
Graphics: HIS ATI Radeon HD 7970, 3GB VRAM
The fans that I am using have not, under the latest loads, proven adequate enough (I like my processors to barely exceed room temperature), so I am swapping them out for some Deltas (which WILL cool the system no matter what the load might be). I also use discrete sound cards, with Asus / Omega being some of the latest offerings. The cases are ATX Full Tower, the optical drives are Blu-Ray burners from LG, the media card bays (accepting any number of flash cards) are AFT (had some issues with the Rosewill parts), the power supplies are Thermaltake ToughPower (supported wattage varies with market availability / pricing, minimum is currently 850 Watts) which are designed to survive a direct lightning strike or something. Keyboards / mice are typically user-specified. Motherboard is an Asus Crosshair V. The machines are not overclocked, but have all the hardware / cooling necessary to overclock them to a frightening degree; customers can safely overclock to a much higher setting. And yes, I have been looking at Intel's offerings, as the Bulldozer / Piledriver fiasco has been an irritation.
The important differences are that the Acer item is self-contained, and has a touch-screen. And I'd probably not ship a machine with Windows 8 (you're getting Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate Edition). So, if you like a machine that 'looks good' but runs like a dog, you'll probably favor the Acer. Or if you have some killer app that needs a 27" touch screen (restriction on the screen size, as I don't think customers will be pleased with having to get up, lean over, or walk around to hit various icons on 40"+ screens; making the touch interface only useful on smaller screens, not exactly a selling point, as I can scale up as large as LCDs can be made; you're stuck with a 27" touch screen, and I'm offering a 60" regular screen with mouse and keyboard...wait you have one too, so what was the point behind your touch screen?).
I am John Hurt.
I do it all the time. Just out of curiosity, what motherboard did you encounter this on, so I can add the company name to the list of people to avoid.
I am John Hurt.
Lol. Yes, the larger OEMs tend to have better testing on their configurations, no, they are not immune to criminal stupidity when sourcing some of their components. They have, in times past, been burned many a time by component providers, and even their weight was not enough to ensure a fix.
Getting hit with a configuration issue is something about as rare as a lightning strike these days. You have to have some serious bad luck to choose some components with a hit or miss issue, which once again, can mostly be avoided / curtailed by reading the customer reviews / doing a little googling when deciding which parts to buy.
I am John Hurt.
Well, let's see here, it does run games, and it is still reasonably open when compared with the walled garden of Mac OS X. God forbid you should install a video card not blessed by the late S. Jobs.
I am John Hurt.
Indeed. And remind me, how is Ubuntu these days? Loving the Unity interface, and I believe recently, some Amazonian love?
"This boot brought to you by Cheerios. Setting up eth0...."
I am John Hurt.
Sadly, this is somewhat true, but then, it is the cost of living. One copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, OEM-pricing off Newegg...not a high price to pay for being able to play games, run Visual Studio (the heroin of the programming world), etc...
I am John Hurt.
So, if you like a machine that 'looks good' but runs like a dog, you'll probably favor the Acer
All due respect, but by most accounts Windows 8 requires fewer resources and runs better than Windows 7, the new Start Screen notwithstanding.
Breakfast served all day!
Bah, you should have gone for the jugular. Ask him how Gnome / KDE are working out for him lately (we all feel the pain).
I am John Hurt.
1.) People who wouldn't pay $300 for a Windows or Linux computer will gladly take out a mortgage to afford a $2000 Mac. So, money.
2.) The hardware is fine, the software is fine if you like being stuck in one of those rolling hamster balls...
I am John Hurt.
Hell, yes. I actively discourage people from buying hardware from me - I can't justify enough of a markup to make it worth my while. So if customers insist, I quote them a realistic (for me) price. Typically, a populated mini-tower for the same price as {major retailer} gives you that, plus keyboard, mouse and monitor.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
Nonsense. The people at the "Pirate Bay" movie rental service tell me that none of their movies come with DRM...
I am John Hurt.
And yet they are perfectly willing to call a tech friend or family member at 3 AM to drive out to the boon-docks to fix a minor browser problem. Repeatedly, actually.
I think it's not fear, but laziness. We've successfully taught people that learning = pain, or is some nerddy exercise, and they are just living up to society's expectations of them.
I am John Hurt.
And yet we let them drive metal vehicles with sharp pointy edges at high speeds from place to place.
Someone, put together a "My First Build / Computer book," and put it up on Amazon for $5. Will make an excellent stocking stuffer.
I am John Hurt.
You don't have to build it yourself. Here in Australia it is the same price to get someone at a specialist PC shop to build the PC and install windows for you as it is to buy the parts and assemble it yourself, I've been buying PC's that way for at least 15yrs and never had a problem with crapware. One tip, the OEM windows CD that comes with the motherboard is about half the price of the retail version of windows, I have never found crapware on an OEM windows CD, which implies it must be installed separately at build time.
Of course if you go to a big department store where the PC's are pre-built and displayed alongside washing machines and fridges, your going to get crapware when you boot it up at home. This (along with price and service) is why I recommend to friends that they should avoid buying a PC from a department store, I always point them towards a local PC shop and tell them to do their own shopping.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You can Frankenstein your laptop too... I bought a Dell and replaced the motherboard, processor and heatsink, memory, hard disk, wireless card, and part of the case. I have a replacement video card and keyboard waiting to be installed. But admittedly you cannot simply build a laptop from scratch.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
By the way: You can always wipe the hard disk and install a new os (or the original sans crap). Just sayin'
he's obviously never heard the age old (and oh so true) saying "happy wife, happy life"
This and the good old "hell has no fury like a woman scorned".
Maybe, just maybe, you might want to consider that some people have different priorities. If you want to climb mountains you should probably spend more time outdoor than at home assembling a computer. Of course it provides a better (at least for your use) result, but sometimes close enough does the trick just fine. I have built quite a couple of computers and just fail to see, why this is much grander than assembling Ikea furniture.
Which wife is it now - your second or your third?
Are you forgetting where you are? It's his inflatable wife.
(Who knows how many have worn out on him. 'Til death or a leak us do part.)
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
First time you plug the phone in, it ASKS YOU what you want to do with the device when you plug it in. Try again.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I have never, ever, in all my life spent $2k on parts for a high-end PC.
Then you're just not old enough! I remember 64K of memory costing well up to $100k (IBM System/3). I remember $10k hard drives. I remember $2k monitors... and you guys are complaining about $50 here or there for multi-gigabyte multi-gigahertz machines with terrabyte storage. Sigh. But you want to know the funniest thing? The way the computer industry is going, you are about to lose everything and you will never even realize what you had... until yeah, your devices won't be worth more than a couple bucks because they're no longer your tools, they're just devices used to spy on you in exchange for email, a very expensive phone service and angry birds.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
As you said, it's the OEMs, and yet you are blaming it on the chairmonkey.
Get the the version of windows you want on your pre-built machine, and either (a) uninstall the crapware (works well on my Toshibas), or get the cheapest version of windows offered, and install your own OS (either an OEM (buy a HD or memory upgrade) or Linux/BSD/Hackintosh-but-at-least-buy-a-licence-and-don't-be-an-asshole). Even if you go with a copy of Windows in the latter case, you aren't getting slathered with the hardware vendor's addware/trialware.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I actually kind of like having the Office preview preinstalled, since with about 3 clicks you have a functional ad-supported version, or with 3 clicks can remove it, or 3 clicks can activate it with the product code that everyone generally has.
You see, the MAJORITY of people who get new computers actually WANT office on it, seeing as its one of the most popular computer programs out there. Would it be "easier" on the user if they had to go download the whole 500MB package?
You say you hate crapware and yet you're running Vista?
Out of date Microsoft hate. A fully updated Vista install with current drivers is roughly equivalent to Windows 7 these days.
Fear is the mind killer.
Good points you raise there.
I'd also want to know about the shipping costs associated with any quoted prices. I've done my share of building systems. I know from experience that the strategy of seeking the cheapest cost on each and every part is easily undone by shipping fees.
===
Commenting now on the larger discussion, it's not always about getting the cheapest price. Building my own NAS cost me more money than buying an off-the-shelf solution, but what I got with my own build was better specs and much more flexibility than what vendors offered. I've performed experiments with it that I'm sure I would have had a hard time performing with an off-the-shelf solution, even with one whose firmware I could have replaced with somethig more palatable. There was no direct equivalent to what I ended up building.
Has something changed there? Because in the past Microsoft has been quite clear that the OEM license on your machine does not permit you to download a retail copy from wherever you want to install it, and being that the only Windows CD that comes with most machines is the restore CD (which is loaded with all the garbage) I'd love to hear how exactly you are supposed to legally acquire a clean copy of Windows to install on that machine that came with the OEM version on a restore CD (not an install CD)
So... download an OEM copy from wherever you want and install it. Because that results in a 100% legitimate licensed install. You're using the media you are permitted to use with the license you paid for. While the act of downloading the media is questionable and even potentially unsafe, it's quite justifiable and would be impractical to be prosecuted for.
"Oh no... he found the
One of the worst pieces of crapware I've ever encountered, with regards to hijacking functionality, trampling user-defined preferences, insinuating itself into unrelated software, hogging resources, being uncooperative with attempts to uninstall, and just generally causing anguish and frustration is QuickTime. Last I checked, that's an Apple product and a Mac staple.
But of course! Apple wanted their Windows software to fit into the ecosystem properly.
Are you sure? I'm pretty sure that Vista is still classed as crapware for anyone who has to use computers professionally.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Because, much like servicing the brakes on your car, some people don't know how, and don't care to know how.
Changing brake pads and taking the rotors to get turned* only requires hand tools and isn't challenging. Yet there are countless shops that do endless streams of brake service.
*note that I am talking about disc brakes. Drum brakes are a whole different story, and are the spawn of the devil.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
$5K for a G3 Mac? That doesn't sound right. I bought a G3 Mac soon after they showed up. I'm thinking that with the monitor it was around $2.1-2.5K. I think your memory is a little fuzzy.
You're absolutely right when it comes to component cost. However, you don't have the full cost unless the purchaser regards their time as completely devoid of worth.
My time is valuable. I don't want to spend half a day figuring out how a heat sink retention clip works, putting the motherboard studs in the right place, but not that one hole that isn't on the board that will short it, finding out that the cheap shitbox case has 1/4 inch less clearance than it needs to for this particular CPU cooler so I have to run back to the store which is 25 minutes away, etc.
I'd rather work with the computer, than work on the computer. But then again, that's why I use a Mac Pro.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Yes, building your own is cheaper if your time is worthless.
...and the knowledge you gain about hardware, OS'es, etc, has its own value that offsets the cost of your time.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
The question is - why are people buying these computers?
Um... because not everyone in the world has the skills and time? Sure, you and me like to build our own, but most people want a PC that works out of the box (Having said that, the last two computers I bought were custom at-the-shop builds because I don't have the inclination to do it myself anymore). Don't those people deserve a computer that works properly?
Know any good resources for building your own ultrabook? I admit I haven't looked, but I don't think there are any options other than just buying one pre-made. Mine came installed with a whole load of crapware. Thankfully I got it through work, so I just bought Windows 7 Pro and nuked it with that.
I did try Mint as the base OS, but network drivers were missing since it was a brand new model (ASUS UX31, got it the day it came out). So now I run Linux in a VM.
which is totally what she said
Windows has package management? Oh really? So which package is the MSHTML engine in, so I can rip it out. Oh, and while I'm at it, how about ripping out the entire Win32 subsystem and just leaving a CMD line? Sysinternals can do it. Debian can do it using the package management system. Linux packages *everything* - typically giving granularity of tens of thousands of packages. Windows? Maybe tens, if you're lucky. BTW, I liked the XPlite tool that did give some more package control over the system, is there anything like that for Win7?
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
Or, if you had a decent package system, you could get a list of all files that *aren't* part of a package and trash them.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
Quality for quality, OEM is more expensive, but they usually cut out quality to make the average case work "fine" but cheaper.
I remember when I purchased my Dell. I tried to price it out on NewEgg and it was about 50% more expensive to build. Now, if I priced out a "high end" $1.5k+ system, then I would save money, but not on a low end $800 system.
to keep the prices soooo low. Otherwise that PC might cost $2000!
You people. Do you want our CEO flying around in last year's jet, or drinking domestic champagne? Philistines!
In the beginnings of a technology, the marketers dictate what's cool. In the end, the market has it's say, and the market has no fear of derailing fads.
What's the adoption rate of 3D TV now?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Oh, you mean like the GTX 680 that I have in my 2009 Mac Pro, with absolutely no firmware updates necessary?
Get with the times, please.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Because every OEM-licensed Windows PC doesn't have a sticker on the side of it with the license key?
Oh, no wait, they all do. Every single one of them, as required by the OEM contract with Microsoft.
They may not come with the installation media, but the Internet fixes that.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Yes, yes, and yes - and yes again!
The Telco's are pushing the stuff you're talking about, and people just run out and buy it.
My computer isn't as fast, or as nice, as some of the guys here are talking about. I can't afford to drop two grand on computer components. In fact, I recycle some of my components, only replacing them if/when they crap out. A DVD writer lasts me a long, long time - the one in the wife's current machine is a decade old.
Despite my relatively old, relatively crappy hardware - the machine is mine, mine, all mine. No crapware, no spyware, no bots, not trojans, almost no advertising, no trackware, I never see a popup, popunder, popout, or even Popeye.
And, since I don't run anything from Symantec or their competition, all my CPU cycles are mine.
It's adequate to play the games I like to play, while I have more browser windows open than I know what to do with, and I can do real work at the same time.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The computer I use most now is built out of the following things:
A used copy of Ghouls n Ghosts for the Sega Genesis.
So... does it die a lot?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I used to build my own computers. First one, with the help of a buddy, back in the mid 90's, an Intel Pentium P455C with a COAST module, Lian-Li case, and bunch of other stuff I don't remember anymore. Then I migrated to SFF systems from BioStar and Shuttle - I made 3 or 4 of those things, set them up for various things. Last one I made was from a barebones HP small server (can't recall the model) a year or two ago, and it is my file server. But it is getting replaced with a Drobo Mini. ;)
It was fun but there was overhead in construction and maintenance, not too bad overall, but the interest left me. I no longer enjoy poring over specs making sure everything I bought work together. I just want a decent physically small systems that are QUIET these days, and would rather fiddle with software development, or my Arduino kit, than play lego-snapin-construction to "build" a computer so I can do stuff I really want to do.
I'm not down on computer builders, it's fun and all, but I don't see it as a good tradeoff for my time. Honestly, the main benefit for me was the clean OS install and fancier video card (not having to buy some stock system to throw out the card for something better - but now, for the games I play, a reasonable video card is fine), and I can cut straight to that after getting a system, if I want.
Using a Windows machine will always be like this: Trapped face-up, under the urinal in Steve Ballmer's personal piss-dungeon.
Last time I installed Windows I grabbed an old machine of mine, wiped it, and installed windows.
Last time I installed Ubuntu I grabbed an old machine of mine, wiped it, installed Ubuntu, and then looked into the process of deactivating/removing the Amazon lens stuff.
It's not a Windows thing, its a PC thing, I think we can just assume that we should continue consider the first step after unboxing a computer to be 'WIPE'.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
First, the precursor to this trick is to make sure she bought something first... :)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Makes you wonder if the system speed / battery life / HD throughput / graphics performance / etc system ratings are given BEFORE or AFTER crapware installation on the initial release systems.
Also, how do the initial system performance ratings compare in reality to the "released a week later with updated [crapware]" units?
Gee, I wonder. I wonder. :-)
Trapped? Hardly. Repartition, format, install. But wait, you say, grandma can't do that! You're right, of course, but grandma also can't acquire and install Ubuntu.
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
Show me someone who can build a 1.37-inch-thick 27" touchscreen all-in-one PC "in an afternoon" and I'll show you someone who works for Acer.
Why would you need or even want a touchscreen on a PC? The only systems where these have any real utility is in special-purpose embedded applications like POS terminals, self-check units, and ATMs (yes, some of these are Windows PCs).
Actually I really prefer they load the PC with as much crapware as they can, so my total buy price gets subsidized. It's a piece of cake to remove them. I'd rather receive a crap loaded PC for $100 less, than paying more for a clean PC.
It's cheaper to buy a bare-bones pre-assembled PC with mobo, CPU, memory already installed. No need to buy a new mouse or keyboard, and just transfer your old hard drive to it, which takes far less time than moving all your data to the new machine. also, it has the added time saver of not having to remove MS crapware and third party toolbars and other third party crapware.
Free Martian Whores!
Dual Core E450 Hudson ASUS Mobo IGP... 2 3TB Cavalier Green Drives in a ZFS Raid Mirror, 60 Gb SSD 8 Gb Ram all in a micro ATX HTPC case $500 kickass low-power green redundant storage array with HDMI Out and Lightscrivbe DVD burner .... and did I mention 3 TB redundant mirrored storage?
Walk with Music;
I just spend the long weekend shopping for a new laptop for my wife. Overpaying for the 'features' that will make her happy is a bit like having your fingernails ripped out, but it's still less painful than spending the next 4-5 years listening to how crappy her laptop is.
First time I've ever bought a Sony, and if you spend the extra $30 to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro, they'll let you select a clean install without any crapware. I'll be throwing an SSD in anyhow, so I saved the $30, but I think it's a fair compromise on the crapware front. Sony was the only company offering a sub-$1000 notebook with a touchscreen resolution greater than 1366x768. I think that's a bigger travesty than the crapware issue. It takes 15 minutes (not including updates) to install Windows (with an SSD and a quick thumbdrive), but you're never going to fix a cheap screen !
- tensions in our lives that are attacking our minds, unite themselves together to make our consciousness blind - op'ivy
well, maybe your real problem isn't that you need a new computer, but that you need to grow a pair so that you don't feel the need to justify everything to your wife like she's your mother.
I can see that you've either never been married (you're young, I see, from your lack of capitalization) or have been married several times and just don't learn (also shows up by your refusal to use the shift key; I know 40 year olds who act like teenagers).
Free Martian Whores!
Not really true anymore. You can legitimately download Windows 7 and 8 images straight from MS. They used to be dicks about it but have gotten a lot better. All you need then is a legit license key, which you should have on a sticker somewhere. Plus with Windows 8, they're allowing you to upgrade from OEM license keys. You enter the number off the bottom of that old laptop, for example, and voila! Windows 8 Pro license key. The installer then downloads an images and makes you a usb key or whatever. I'm hardly a MS fan, but they've gotten a lot better, mostly due to competition.
You can download an iso straight from ms and then use the key. You can also upgrade to Win 8 Pro with an OEM key. Both of these things are legal.
You don't have to use the package manager to install software, crapware likely will use their own installer and be pretty hard to remove (though should be trivial to disable if you know where to look). It's just convenient to stick to your package manager.
Grab a copy from a reliable source (The Pirate Bay for example - no kidding - check the comments - enough people to check on it to make sure it's OK), then activate it with your official, paid for key.
One key, one installation.
Any problem there?
Are you referring to Mac OS X when you say "rollig hamster ball" ?
Do some research, and buy from vendors that don't do it. Sager is my choice. The assemble and sell Clevo laptops. Highly customized, great components, no crapware. Not really much more expensive, either. MSI was also good last time I bought one. Not 100% free of 3rd party stuff, but very little and none of it real crapware.
Vote with your wallet.
> Really? No Google Now, Youtube or Facebook apps?
Google? There's an app for that. It's called a web browser.
Youtube? There's an app for that. It's called a web browser.
Facebook (bleagh)? There's an app for that. It's called a web browser.
Local Weather? There's an app for that. It's called a web browser.
Get the picture?
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Wow, that's crazy. Someone should make a program that has a list of known junk-ware titles and can uninstall them all automatically.
Look at Android(a Linux based OS) and all the bloatware you get with carrier provided phones. You can't even uninstall most of it, and the OS itself is often modified in ways that make me sick. Only those savvy enough to flash an alternate ROM can resolve these problems. So it has nothing to do with Windows.
You are just going off on a Windows bashing tangent that has nothing to do with bloatware. Advocating for free windows has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. As far as application level DRM, that already can and does exist in some Linux applications.
Security holes (not spelled wholes) have affected Linux which were around for weeks before patched and required admins to workaround/hack to plug in the meantime.
These things exist in Linux to some degree or another, and would be on par with Windows if it had the same size user base, and Android is proof of that.
Smashing ignorance like a boss.
I've found Windows 7 to be a very clean OS IMO.
Most Linux distros come with all kinds of UI enhancements that are inconsistent from release to release and are just junk fluff IMO. The only consistency you can get is at the command line, and even then from distro to distro you get different shells.
I'm not saying one or the other is better. Both OS's are victims of people adding all kinds of extra apps and thinking "hey this is cool" instead of going for a polished professional OS. Windows 7 IMO has gone the farthest in the direction of usability/stability of desktop OS's I've used. I still have yet to find a Linux distro that I feel comfortable recommended to family/friends.
They certainly don't make that easy to find on the microsoft website... and yet the "average" user is supposed to be able to find and do that? hardly likely.
Show me where to find legal and trustworthy download links to MS software. and as this is supposed to be easy for the average user to do to get a clean install, please show the links from Microsoft's website to these downloads.
As much as I don't like Windows, I'm not arguing about what the base OS includes. The problem is that when you buy a new PC from any major brand, you don't get the OS install disks, or a clean install. You get a whole lot of garbage pre-loaded by the OEM. They also don't include install disks, only restore disks, so cleaning is difficult.
At least with Linux, if the OEM messes with it, you can just download the original un-modified version from your favourite distro's website and install. Microsoft hardly has easy download links on their main webpage.
Lets define it as anything without source code. Since without source how can you call it software.
That's an interesting idea... is there any package manager that actually does this? and how does it differentiate between what's not in a package and is an installed program, vs what's not in a package because it's a user's personal files or what not?
Of course I would expect an OEM to play really dirty and simply not install "base operating system" package, but instead install "base operating system with all our crapware pre-loaded" package (which happens to have a name that looks the same as the first one). Sure you CAN remove it, but then you're left unbootable unless you also re-installed the real one at the same time.
It's back to the point that you CAN remove it, but it will never be "easy" the manufacturers gain too much through this stuff.
Of course your best bet is always to simply install your own OS on any new machine, then you always know what your starting point is.
You conflating OS components with applications. Fair enough: plenty of "internal" WIndows bits aren't packages. So what? Why do you care, beyond geek OCD? I still see people complaining "OMG, I can't remove this service and it's using 100K of memory!" on 12GB systems - boggles my mind.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Why should OS components be treated differently from applications - they are applications themselves. Microsoft got in trouble in court over that with IE. And dozens of processes running that I don't need. Virus-bait crapware. LitePC's embedded 98 on a PC/104 card made for a sweet and user familiar info kiosk. But linux does that much better. Because it's package manager isn't a toy.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
rpm -v and debsums will get you quite a bit of the way there. Only time I've had to use that in anger was after a "make install" went crazy. There's some debian tool for checking what an install does, but since that does a "before and after" that won't work with crapware. Or the base-os+crap package. Yeah, clean install is always best.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
It's not just looks. Space is also at a premium in many places. To state the obvious, having one box that's the monitor and PC takes up less space than having a monitor and a separate mid-tower or even desktop.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Lots of reasons.
Time.
Convenience.
Not everyone gets a boner at the thought of building a PC.
Most home-builds look... well, home-built.
I can build my own but choose not to, for these and many other reasons.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Yeah, like iTunes, Apple neglected it. Or rather, they didn't really do anything special to make sure it just worked.
Which is why nobody uses QuickTime anymore. Back in the day, Real and Realplayer was the crapware, and QuickTime was the premium codec. Now, it's Flash, and for good reason. Flash does not take over your system, even if it's got its shares of security holes.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
in android it is the fault of the phone manufacturers not wanting to patch their products in hopes that you will cave in and buy another one, also their haven't been any viruses for android that I am aware of, for android though their have been numerous Trojans though but those require the user to install them and the user is the biggest security whole in all systems and one they can not be patched. besides I wasn't talking about phone system but desktops (though with windows 8 i can see the source of your confusion). GNU/Linux/Xorg is to android as FreeBSD is to iOS.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
As is Suse, kubuntu, and Mandriva. Hell, I haven't tried Suse in ten years and it was easier than Windows is now. Well, maybe not easier, just less annoying; none are very hard.
Free Martian Whores!
The only real "burden" here is having a clue. If you don't have a clue then the salesman at Best Buy or the Apple Store will simply take advantage of you. It's the same as if a car salesman thinks you're an idiot. There is really no glory in being an idiot.
If you can't pick your parts you can't know whether or not the latest Apple product is a turd.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Your post is really funny considering you specifically mention Seagate.
The "I don't want to be bothered" experience is not very compatible with components that are notoriously failure prone. It's very easy to find out what those are.
To think, there was a time when Consumer Reports specials ran on HBO. I suppose that was before the Idiocracy.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
not in usability it isn't.
Windows 7 and windows Vista are basically the OS on the backend. And it gets the job done. The problem is all about useability and Vista is inferior to 7, (incidentally, 8 is inferior to 7 as well).
My "home builds" all look as good or as bad as the case I bought. I can spend as little money on this or as much as I want. It can be as stylish as any Apple product or I could not bother with that at all.
Plus I can have it all done for my by someone else. The web is full of such vendors. It has always been this way.
My first 486 was "built" exactly the same way.
Except it was a magazine ad rather than a website.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I find building PCs to be an enjoyable, even cathartic experience. Regardless, the system I built on Saturday took only an hour to assemble. I watched some TV while doing it. Not every second of your waking life needs to be about 100% productivity.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Indeed it is. Although assembling your own computer is more of a 1 month of post high school college training level than say, building your own car which is more like a year worth.
No need to be ashamed of plugging a no-crapware pc vendor in an article about crapware, that's for sure.
On the other hand, anything posted to slashdot is subject to criticism as well. I went through your system configurator and found I was unable to deselect the RAM. Actually built a nice little system other than that, but why would I want to pay $90 for a stick of RAM I won't use? In some cases I would want to be able to specify no hard drive, though not in this case - at any rate that option is also missing.
Pretty good place to work eh?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
OK. You guys still just don't seem to be able or willing to get it. I already stated there are niche applications. You want to take an example that applies to far less than 1 percent of the population and pretend it is significant. It isn't. I agree that if you are using AutoCAD then you need to run Windows in a VM to act as a kind of middleware on Linux. That doesn't make Windows better, it just means they managed to use their undeserved influence to acheive some degree of vendor lock-in in markets where there is little overlap between the user and developer domain (i.e. Almost no users of the product are capable of writing software. You literally have it ass backwards. Windows isn't better because AutoCAD and Photoshop only run on Windows. Windows is worse because these are merely examples of successful vendor lock-in attempts. Again, note that all the successes are in niche markets, since for the 99% / non-niche application domain there are plenty of people willing to implement a solution.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
And dozens of processes running that I don't need.
And? Again, why do you care beyond geek OCD? I hear "I must must must control every running process and make it exactly like I want it to be" from geeks, but there are drugs for OCD now. Win 2008 (server) runs a fairly small set of components by defaut (e.g., the default install doesn't have audio), and the majority of OS components are independently selectable. Win 2012 is quite a barebones default.
Again, the package manager in modern Windows is fine. How many or how few OS components actually use that pacakge manager is a different question.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I really like working here - been here since 2005, so a little more than half the time the company has been around (started in 2000). Working for a smaller company with little / no BS bureaucracy and a positive employee culture is great. Very flexible, and able to take care of our customers well :)
As for the inability to remove parts, we decided a while back that for the best customer experience we are going to require all the core components to be included in any system sold. That means the motherboard, CPU, CPU cooler, RAM, some sort of internal drive (SSD / hard drive), video output (either a dedicated card or onboard), chassis, and power supply. As long as those are all in there, and supplied by us, we can ensure that every time a computer leaves here it is fully functional - so if it arrives to a customer and doesn't work, we don't have to troubleshoot whether stuff they added caused the problem.
Now folks are, of course, welcome to add items on their own - or even to send in more parts to us to be added to a system (if they already have a second drive with data, for example). We used to allow a couple of the core items to be supplied by customers, but it caused too many problem situations. If a customer sent in four sticks of RAM, and the system starts throwing memory errors (we run Prime95 before installing the OS) then we have to spend time troubleshooting which memory module is the defective one... and all of that for an item we made no money on. Not only the time, though: once we figure out the defective module, we'd have to send it back to the customer (with the system only running on partial RAM) and they'd then have to RMA it... and it if wasn't RAM, if it was instead a power supply or drive, we couldn't even complete the build at all!
William George
Nice - I'm glad that is still the norm at a lot of smaller computer shops :)
It is also rather amusing that Microsoft's 'Signature' service - at their physical Microsoft Stores and corresponding website - involves taking the junk software *off* of big-brand computer systems that they sell. Even they know it is a problem for customers, but they don't do anything to discourage their OEMs from installing it in the first place.
William George
same with ubuntu. Now for someone with no tech skills. Most people simply can't/don't want to do it, either way.
Then fix it for the next 2 years. Most people do not have the tech skills to fix a computer for the initial two years
AccuWeather isn't crapware! Sure, it's not necessary and it should be up to the user whether or not to add it but it's NOT crapware (my boss might not like me saying that)! However, the user should add it.
Of course, I'm biased, I work for AccuWeather. But seriously, it's not crapware. It's pretty good stuff.
In an afternoon, a guy can build an equivalent computer from components, install his favorite OS, and be ready to start installing all his required software in the morning.
Because people don't want to do that. Your average user does not want to select and then build a computer from components.
Not free I will grant, but you can use this link: https://om.one.microsoft.com/opa/Validation.aspx?StoreID=b19f4ce9-dfcb-44e4-9abe-1c9dfbad47d0&LocaleCode=en-us&JavaScriptOn=yes
Not that the average user you reference has any business reinstalling their O/S. With extra steps like needing chipset drivers, Joe Average doesn't have the resources or experience to do the job. If they do, they're not average.
Final comment... a few minutes of Google searching results in MD5/SHA hashes for known MS media. So... grabbing ISOs from non-MS sites isn't as dangerous as it seems.
"Oh no... he found the
Practically, I agree with you as pre-built have horrible PSUs. I've not had trouble with pre-built's RAM, but that could happen too, I guess.
But theoretically, I don't think "they must pay their employees and profit from sales" explains it. They must be getting much better deals on the same hardware than retail shoppers would. Their Windows costs are negligible, or even negative because of the crapware. Their hardware shouldn't suck so much, but it does.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
so I can add the company name to the list of people to avoid
Microsoft
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Crapware is a thing from the big pc manufacturers. You can also buy a ready made pc from a small shop, who build them for you. These little shops are often run by pc ethusiasts, who can give you advice on what to choose. The one I know, even gives you the option no os, os on disc or preinstalled. No crapware, just an oem version of win7.
But then there is quicktime alternative: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/quicktime_alternative.htm
And! Again! With the ad hominem insults about OCD! If there was any substance to your claims you wouldn't need to try personal attacks. Windows one-size-will-fit-everyone approach does not mean that Windows package management is any good. Have a look at this for a real package manager, and that's from 1997.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
I'd call you an idiot, but you posted AC, so there's a chance you may not be a complete idiot.
That said, there's at least a small group of people that prefer no fingerprint smudges on their screens, especially when they are working with graphics, as those smudges tend to blur details. Others just prefer to have clean screens regardless (I fall into both camps) Lastly, your reading comprehension is lacking, as is your ability to research even the most obvious facts - the iMac is cheaper than the touch screen Asus, and for me not having a touch screen, and hence not having any temptation for a moron such as yourself to touch it is worth several hundred extra dollars to me, i.e., raising the value of the iMac, over the Asus even more.
I take it back - you are an idiot.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
One real problem on Windows nowadays is the number of things running in the background just to check for updates. A typical PC is likely to have the Adobe Flash updater, the Oracle Java updater, the Apple QuickTime updater, the updater for the user's choice of browser (Firefox and/or Chrome), an antivirus updater, a vendor-specific updater, and many more. All of these chew up memory and CPU time; not a lot for each one but collectively they add up. The model used by Linux distributions is much better. You have ONE updater that can draw from all the software repositories (it can add repos for programs that don't use the official repository) and you're done. Much cleaner. Microsoft needs to step up to the table with a comparable solution; Windows Update is halfway there but it doesn't cover most non-Microsoft applications or some device drivers.
When something goes wrong with that system, however, he's going to be knocking on your door to fix it, not a system vendor's. If it smokes and loses his PR0N^H^H^H^Hdata the blame will be on you, not on Dell/Apple/Asus/etc. Don't underestimate the costs there.
poor APK... sucks to be him :)
hey i can't help it if i'm just that irresistable
I would have guessed most of you build your own computer and start with a clean drive
Like "no other software does"?
Re: I find it interesting is that every statement like this excludes (or more frequently, omits) the cost ($80-100 or higher) of a legal [Microsoft] Windows installation. /. , where there are users of GNU user space programs, Linux kernels, BSD boxen, and loaded hardware with various styles of free software and open source software and MIT/BSD licensed software. We don't need no stinkin' Windows installation. (note I am not implying that we don't need a "legal Microsoft windows installation" and thereby allowing for an "illegal" install of MSwindows; I am stating clearly that we [and you] do NOT NEED any sort of Microsoft Windows installation). You can get your windows the MIT-licensed way: X-windows!
:>)
First point: I've got a legal Windows installation: it's called X windows. Don't just say "Windows" when you mean "Microsoft Windows". Now on to the original retort.
This is
This is the OEM business model. Razor-thin manufacturing hardware margins mean that there's a HUGE department that does nothing but inbound deals for software product placement - this is how they get profitability. Don't expect much change. Even with a premium PC line, they won't turn down these dollars thrust upon them from Symantec, and the online-game-of-the-week. Be sure, all of this is instrumented with web-bugs and behavior-tracking galore.
Using a Windows machine will always be like this: Trapped face-up, under the urinal in Steve Ballmer's personal piss-dungeon.
There is no razor thin problem. The problem is that whil bank interest pays less than 2%, corps want at least 50% net profit.
Before global economy, a company that made a net of 15% was doing extremely well. A company that made net 5% was doing better than ok.
We have been brainwashed to paying $6.00 for a $2.00 item. The extra profit is to finance expansion of new brick stores. You are paying for the next Big Box store, rather than that store having a reasonable mortgage and having it cover those costs from store profits.
I guess I am in dreamworld.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
You are not paying for stores - or any other significant re-investment in the business.
You are paying for the 500:1 differential ratio of CEO salary and compensation from the average employee.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You are not paying for stores - or any other significant re-investment in the business.
You are paying for the 500:1 differential ratio of CEO salary and compensation from the average employee.
Just as bad. I am in the 99% who pay for the 1%. There are those in the 1% who complain they are paying for the 0.1%
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Save the Earth.
Assassinate a CEO.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I do, because I don't turn off my PC. I'm a home user.
Yes... that's why I bought OEM and had 2100 hours of uptime. After my reboot I downloaded a binary blob from nvidia to update my graphics drivers, and rebooted again (because obviously there were loads of updates during that uptime). I can forsee another 2100 hours of uptime now.
My system isn't special. I abuse it all the time. It just works. I play games.
I built the system myself - Vista OEM when it came out, which had big problems installing. Hardware-wise, I've replaced one HDD which died, and upgraded the graphics card. I'm running Skyrim at high detail 1920*1200 at a good FPS. Any system which has over 1000 hours uptime and runs fine is a good system IMO.... your standards may vary.
i merely used similar "terminology" as the post i was replying to... so if you think i had a "shit fit", you're admitting you had one before me
but i don't blame you because it must suck being wrong all the time and not even being able to find a simple python bug (even when its pointed out to you numerous times)