Microsoft Watching OEM Bloatware for Windows 7

[lexspecialis]

What good it will do if it only drags the system down to a crawl, hence the name "bloatware"? I don't want useless trial version of programs i never wanted in my laptop. It hurts the overall user experience, and then many people point their finger to Windows for such a slow system start up, when it's actually caused by those bloatwares cramping up the Start Up list. To remedy this is, user must go to MSCONFIG and disable all those bloatwares, or uninstall them alltogether.

If those manufacturers can just give me the laptop with clean installation of the OS (drivers etc. included) without the bloatwares, i'd be more than happy. I don't see why that justifies a price hike.

 

[outacontrolpimp]

How about a list of approved programs that OEM's are allowed to install. If they break the contract, they pay. If dell...ect decides they don't like the rule, they don't make money, they will HAVE to agree if Microsoft makes it a law. ANYTHING to take away bloatware. I personally hate macs, and a big reason they have the "quality" reputation is because OEM's kill the windows reputation with this bloatware.

Make them pay for putting bloatware on please, make it in the OEM term's of use.

 

[vaskodogama]

I recently bought a HP pavilion laptop, and started it, and windows got alot of time comming up! A LOT compared to my desktop vista pc, and I was like WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG? and I just un-installed all of the bloatwares and BOOM! everything went good after that!
yes, the bloatware kills the great user experience of windows with their resource eating and the services they require! I love using vista smoothly on my home built desktop cause it is fast [not as much as XP in THIS machine], and great!
so, MS must put pressure on OEM's to not blow the windows 7 speed and experience, because the computers OEMs sell, use MS's OS'es!
They ruin it, MS is blamed!
I'm with MS in this!

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]MDillenbeck[/nom]Glad to see everyone here is supporting the price hike for laptops that will occur when all that paid advertising (called bloatware or trial versions) is forcibly removed by Microsoft's OEM policy.Yes, I am in the category that says the end manufacturer has a right to add advertisement for products in the laptop they manufacture. If you don't like it, then you go and buy a different product. We vote with our purchases.If Microsoft wants to show how their OS can shine by creating an artificially clean system (OS only with no office apps, no antivirus, no games, and so forth), let them design it, manufacture it, and market it. I bet you'd see them throw on a bunch of bloatware to keep the cost down and compete in the market.[/citation]

Exactly, and there are many applications installed by manufacturers that do have a place on the install, My dell studio 17 came with loads of extra "Bloatware" on Vista Home Premium and it never takes 5 minutes to start, more like 40 seconds from switch on and 5 seconds from standby ( as fast as I can type the password!) I have only removed one thing being Office 2007 60 day trail as I have Office Already to install, The rest is still on there and mostly used I am afraid. And I am glad it is because it represents good value and I can remove anything I dont want.

Besides, almost all people I know (That is everyone of my customers) can uninstall programmes easily enough, give people a little more credit, they are not as stupid as most people on here like to think.

 

[FlayerSlayer]

[citation][nom]captaincharisma[/nom]no half to all of that useless software they put on there is trialware so while the software does have a use that use will be useless after a certian number of days. wish the OEMs allowed an option for us to install the OS ourselves. send me the pc with nothing on it and a copy of the OS and let me install it myself is all I wnat[/citation]
HP does that. Whenever I get an HP laptop at work (in the IT dept of an accounting firm, so this happens a lot), it comes with a Windows install CD and key. The system is pre-installed with Windows and all the HP garbage utilities and other junk (Office 2007 trial edition), but I can reinstall off of the CD and have it clean. Best of both worlds. Heck, all the drivers are on one page on their website to reinstall those too.

 

[Glorian]

Bloatware is added to a pc for two reason imo, one is advertising, these software companies pay the manufacturer to advertise on their machines and in return actually drops the price of you computer purchase. Basically "We will pick up some of the bill on the computer if you put our software on it."

Or the other reason being they put that crap on there so they can charge to take it off. good way to poke the eyes of the inexperienced but for those of us who know what they are doing it just takes up our time to remove it ourselves.

 

[E7130]

[citation][nom]waikano[/nom]Now all you need to do is get rid of that nasty marketing scheme you are planning to push on us and we will all be happy.....6-7 SKUs......FAIL!![/citation]

What are you talking about? The Public will only be able to see 2-3 version: Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. The Pro version will most likely only be available to businesses. I don't see the problem?

 

[sublifer]

It's be nice if they'd block known problem programs like Realplayer from even getting installed unless the user clicks on an "I acknowledge that my computer is going to run much slower for having installed this application" diaglog box.

The QA testing MS does on drivers should be extended to apps. Anyone want to go into business doing app QA testing with me?

 

[Phrexianghoul]

woah, not microsofts place to tell OEM whta to do with the licences they and systems they build,if the manufacturer decides to add extra applications then they should do so, its up to the end user to decide which ones to keep, a lot of the bloatware is annoying but it is better deciding what you want to keep for free than never being given anything for free!

the solution to this is simple. put it on a freak'n cd/dvd. the user can then decide if they need the bloatware.

 

[waikano]

[citation][nom]E7130[/nom]What are you talking about? The Public will only be able to see 2-3 version: Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. The Pro version will most likely only be available to businesses. I don't see the problem?[/citation]

Yea what about this...1 OS with installation options to suit your needs much like a Linux distro or OSX. 1 Price that is fair for everyone. OK, I know I am asking too much from Microsoft, but that is what I am talking about. And as far as only 2-3 that's not what I have been reading so far.

 

[Guest]

I seem to remember an article from several years ago that stated something to the effect that pre-installed programs were a way for the company selling the computer to reduce the sale price to the consumer. In some cases they were getting $150 per unit to install extra software on every machine they sold.

The way it worked out they got to sell the machine, they advertised all the extra software as a feature and they got paid to put that software there in the first place. Thus the bloatware became a form of double advertising (once to sell the laptop and again to sell all the Professional Versions of the bloatware).

Unfortunately I can't find the article to quote it. Anyone else heard of this?

 

[DeadlyPredator]

Very good thing..., it should be a free option. AND WHY THE HELL THE TITLE BAR IN IE IS "Internet Explorer Provided by Dell" WITH DELL LAPTOPS! WTF??? They are just crazy, they have nothing to do with ie! Why they want to put their garbage everywhere? Because yahoo, symantec and others pay them to do so.

 

[glorfendel]

Well if you want one just plain windows 7 then you better be ready to pay for it. Don’t give me this crap there only in it for the money they are. Don’t give me this crap apple does it for less. Apple charges a huge amount of money for developer rights and packs. OSX is a there just so they can sell hardware. you have to consider with a release of a new os from Microsoft how much overhead there is there thousands of software and hardware makers out there each of which looking to get M$ to do as much of their job as they can. Only the really big ones dell hp even act like partners the rest just are just sub venders each of which run up the bill for everyone.
There are yes allot of versions of 7 there is a lot of versions of xp and vista as well I bet you have only ever seen 2 of xp and 3 maybe 4 of vista. Microsoft is not charging you more to get vista ultimate they are charging you less to get home premium or basic they are taking core features out of the main os to cheapen it up every other industry does it as well.
and to clarify starter is the nearly free option for schools grandmas first computer etc. basic is for the 3rd world home premium pro and ultimate are off the shelf and oem for new pc and upgrades. Enterprise is for volume licensing and is for a managed network.
In case you think this is new
there is xp starter xp home xp pro xp enterprise xp 64 bit and media center. The 3 programs on the starter version started with xp I bet none of you have ever even seen one.
Vista has starter basic home premium pro ultimate and then enterprise version.
When you think about windows compared to other software of its size and ability its cheep. Do you know how much accounting software costs or plotting sql cad etc these are programs that are half the size and just have to work with windows most use windows functions to run and they cost three to five times as much most you have to pay for support you don’t get it free from dell for 3 years.

 

[FHDelux]

Microsoft is building themselves up for the biggest failure of all time on this OS. Their marketing team is in high gear "forget about vista, focus on windows 7". Everyone is going to expect some earth shattering, out of the box, perfectly compatibility, better than Vista, XP replacement. It'll be better initially than when Vista came out, but its not going to out perform XP on anything, because at heart, its still Windows Vista. I hope i'm wrong about what i say, but i lose more respect for Microsoft as an innovative company everyday. Its like they are simply focused on sales numbers and could care less about the quality of their products.

 

[Grims]

I love all the trials and bloatware...if loading up a few trial programs means the unit price was lowered because of kick backs the manufacture received....great I'll just uninstall them or format.

 

[p05esto]

Or at least offer a version with just a pure OS install, even if it means $25 more on the laptop purchase or whatever. It would be worth my time not to have to reinstall.

MS is doing Windows 7 right, they have to - people spoke loudly and they are listening. I'm excited about 7 for the first time in an OS launch.

 

[IronRyan21]

Does any1 think microsoft is actually getting it right?

 

[cjl]

[citation][nom]FHDelux[/nom]Microsoft is building themselves up for the biggest failure of all time on this OS. Their marketing team is in high gear "forget about vista, focus on windows 7". Everyone is going to expect some earth shattering, out of the box, perfectly compatibility, better than Vista, XP replacement. It'll be better initially than when Vista came out, but its not going to out perform XP on anything, because at heart, its still Windows Vista. I hope i'm wrong about what i say, but i lose more respect for Microsoft as an innovative company everyday. Its like they are simply focused on sales numbers and could care less about the quality of their products.[/citation]

Just so you know, the beta (which is only going to speed up as it goes towards the actual release version) is already faster than XP in almost every way. Your statement about performance is already provably false.

 

[Guest]

On one hand it's a good thing.
less bloatware.

But the real reason that MS is doing this is because of keeping their monopoly!
Recently there has been a lot of discussion about MS programs like
internet explorer and windows media player,
that both suck in comparision with other products
(e.g. firefox and vlc) by the way.

Somewhere there has been the idea of letting OEM's add an extra media player or browser that is much better than the windows programs.
Now MS is getting scared and putting money in it to try to get rid of it.
They have made some modifications by letting users not installing IE and WMP and other stuff, but inexperienced users won't know that there are other things and install, use those anyway.

And the failure with windows without media player has proven that making a windows version without those windows programs doesn't works out the way it should.
That's why they are doing this, not because they want to make a quality product with less bloatware on it. Windows can also be fast with a lot of crap on it IF it was designed a little bit better.

(e.g.: 400 start menu delay mentioned on other post before this one)

What are your opinions if OEM's would deliver a computer with the following: windows + bloatware + useful programs(e.g. vlc, opera)
Microsoft doesn't want to have competition.

 

[PCfreak15]

Thank you microsoft! Every new vista laptop that I set up for a customer runs like crap thanks to OEM bloatware. HP, Toshiba and Sony are the biggest culprits but Dell and Gateway could do much better. Vista isn't the snappiest OS around but if the OEMs hadn't jammed 30 pre-installed useless start-up programs on machines with 512MB-2GB of ram back in 2007 vista wouldn't have the reputation it does today. A clean install of Vista 64 on 4GB or more of ram runs excellent and Vista 32 on 2GB or more runs pretty decent as well.

 

[Guest]

PC OEMs are killing themselves with the stupid shit they install. On the PC you see the work of engineers with hard antiquated mindsets; a super fancy-looking "dell dock" which is just a huge second quick-launch bar that gets in the way and interrupts the flow of Win7's new taskbar and the start menu, 10 antivirus demos with their own way of bothering you about subscribing, At least one or two browser toolbars that have almost no useful features and distract the user from the latest browser's useful and efficient design, OEM brand-exclusive productivity/game suites that don't work well with anything else, and horrible touch gimmickry that distract the user from the fact that on Windows' interface, touch halves their efficiency.