The point of Microsoft Signature Edition was to sell PC's without bloatware and other manufacturer crap.
It hasn't really taken off, so it appears that people don't highly value such safety.
To appropriately market such PCs, you have to expose the ad-infested fraud that the standard BestBuy or Staples laptops are, and that is an uncomfortable position to be in for Microsoft. So no wonder Signature PCs didn't take off. It's kind of like advertising "Signature Boats", "Signature" because they have zero holes in them.
I think that's more an indicator that Microsoft stores don't account for a significant portion of sales.
I think Microsoft's Surface Book is a realization of that.
I've always been really happy with ASUS, their recent zenbooks are outstanding.
I'm happy with my zenbook hardware wise, but it still came with a bunch of crap installed. I only use my arch partition, but I think I'll wipe the windows partition it came with and do a fresh install if I get tempted to use windows for something.
Microsoft is the one to blame for this situation really, they need to take responsibility for checking the security of all OEM installs prior to shipping.
Where is Dell|Asus|HP|Lenovo going to find the margin to charge to be able to afford the sorts of capital expenditures that Apple makes to provide better hardware? I'm sure that the PC people know how awful an experience their computers provide; but they're trapped in a very low margin commodity business.
If I wanted an Apple, I'd buy an Apple. We don't need more tivoized crippled laptops that so thin! and so… useless.
You're going to have to explain this - how are Macbooks tivoized or crippled?