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Apr 06

New PC Woes

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Using Even New PCs Is Ruined by a Tangle Of Trial Programs, Ads talks about the frustrations of purchasing a new machine, only to find it bogged down with so much useless software that the experience of owning a new computer becomes more troublesome than exciting.

We've purchased a few new Dell laptops for office use, and every one that I've worked on has had to be reformatted and re-installed just so it could be used. Let me restate that: directly from the factory, these machines were almost unusable before installing anything.

This is frustrating from a support standpoint because screen reader users are often quick to blame their adaptive software for slow downs and system problems, when many times the problem lies with the convoluted configuration of crapware.

If a customer purchases one of these Dells, and immediately installs Window-Eyes, they're going to have a miserable experience. We're going to get called about it because "Window-Eyes is running slow." And we'll end up spending a lot of time trying to diagnose the problem, when the reformat solution could have been completed in about a half hour.

So if you're planning on purchasing a new laptop, when you get it, here's my advice:

  1. Open the box
  2. Find the restore CD
  3. Restore
  4. Install Window-Eyes
  5. Breathe a sigh of relief that you didn't have to deal with 8 hours worth of frustration

9 comments

  1. § Robby® Email said on : 2007-04-06 @ 17:11
    I know exactly what you mean. We've purchased four Dell computers (notebooks and desktops) in the last two years and they were full of software like MSN, AOL, etc which we never touched. I reformatted all four of them. In fact, this is a bit extreme but I prefer to format at least once a year since things tend to run faster.
  2. § Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis Email said on : 2007-04-07 @ 04:05
    I think this process needs to begin before you buy a new laptop. Some manufacturers ship all restoration software on a recovery partition on the hard disk, or on a set of CDs or DVDs containing disk images. These will usually restore the system exactly as purchased, i.e. along with all the unwanted junkWare. It's worth asking before you purchase whether the laptop comes with a real OEM Windows setup disk.
  3. § Michael Massey Email said on : 2007-04-07 @ 08:36
    Hi. I noticed that desktop computers weren't mentioned in your post, Aaron and this is not a criticism--merely an observation. When I purchased my Dell XPS-410 I practically begged and pleaded with the customer service rep to not have all of the unnecesssary junk installed but to no avail. I am beginning to wish I had somebody reformat to get rid of all of this crap because I don't know what I do and don't want. Incidentally, I read Walter Mosberg's article and found it informative.
  4. § Cory Samaha Email said on : 2007-04-07 @ 13:34
    HP is one computer manufacturer that fails to include a Windows CD with their computers. Rather, they have a recovery partition on the hard disk that will restore your computer to its original state that is, the state it was in when you first took it out of the box. I bought a new HP desktop PC a few months ago and luckily I was aware of this. I had my own copy of Windows XP so I repartitioned and reformatted the hard drive and installed a nice clean copy of XP on it and it ran great. Then when Vista came out I did a clean install of that on the same computer. It works great now. But, for the average computer user, this is probably not something they would want to, or may not even know how to do. And in most cases if you don't have your own copy of Windows and the computer manufacturer does not include an oem copy with the computer, you're pretty much out of luck. Unless of course you want to spend somewhere between $100 to $400 to buy a retail copy of Windows.
  5. § John Gunn Email said on : 2007-04-07 @ 16:27
    Good point on the restoration cd but a question, won't the cd re-install the crapware as well?
  6. § John Gunn Email said on : 2007-04-07 @ 16:41
    Sorry guys, I posted my comment lastnight and forgot to submit it for some reason but all good points especially from Corry.

    John
  7. § Aaron® Email said on : 2007-04-09 @ 08:39
    John, I've only had personal experience with Dell machines. They include a restore DVD with just the OS, and a separate disc for all their software, so you can get an OS installed without all their junk. Although I've not seen first hand, I hear that Sony also includes a restore disc with just the OS. Like Benjamin said, find out before you buy.
  8. § Darragh Email said on : 2007-04-09 @ 14:04
    I'm batteling this problem on a HP TX1020 laptop at the moment. I blogged about this a few weeks ago at http://digitaldarragh.com/archive/2007/03/15/a-microsoft-update-a-rant-about-search-oem-s-and-some-news-about-twitter.aspx? It's a really annoying problem but HP's recovery CD just reinstalled all the crapware and the drivers that I installed from the HP website haven't worked correctly after the fresh installation of Vista.
  9. § Josh de Lioncourt Email said on : 2007-04-09 @ 14:49
    I dealt with this for a bit on a Gateway I purchased a month ago. As it turned out, I ditched it for a MacBook, Parallels, and Windows Vista installed clean under the virtual Machine. Window-Eyes works stellar with this configuration and I'll be writing an article for it soon. If you don't know, Parallels Desktop is a program for Mac that allows you to run Windows and Mac OSX simultaneously. It's fantastic.

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