Comment by michael_miller | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michael_miller | Hacker News Reader

I'm really glad this is happening. Hardware companies have long been stingy and focused on the bottom line. One of the things that annoys me to no end about most PCs is that they have "Intel Inside" and "Designed for Windows" stickers. Hardware companies get maybe $20 from putting these stickers on the computers, and another $20 to put crapware on the computers they ship. $40 profit on a (say) $700 computer. As a consumer, I absolutely despise this. If I'm spending $700, I don't want to have to use rubbing alcohol to remove stickers. I don't want to have to spend several hours uninstalling trial versions of software I didn't want in the first place. I'll pay the $40 out of pocket, just give me a clean usable computer. It's really a shame that only one company has realized this.

I'm glad that Google has wised up and is taking a stand against the race to the bottom that has pervaded the hardware industry. With both major platforms having high quality hardware, the pressure will be on for the third-party manufacturers to up their game.

> $40 profit on a (say) $700 computer.

If you're willing to pay $740 instead of $700 then you might get that -- but most people aren't. It's not that only one company realizes it, it's that one particular company also charges you a lot more.

Who's making that $740 PC without crapware right now? I know I can buy a Mac and have a usable machine out of the box, but who is doing this in the Windows PC world?

You can buy any pc from store.microsoft.com or the physical microsoft store and that would come with no crap/bloatware

Story time:

Two years ago, I bought a Lenovo IdeaPad with the intention of running Linux. I bought it from the Microsoft Store website, because it was $200 cheaper than buying it from Lenovo (even with discount codes from dealnews.com)

So, as I was checking out, the store asks me if I would like to pay $80 more for "Microsoft Signature" setup. Given that I was going to run Linux, I was already upset at the implicit Windows tax, and declined without even checking what "Microsoft Signature" was. Especially since the whole thing was $650, so $80 is almost a 15% increase.

Three days later, I get the thing, and the box says "with Microsoft Signature". I first looked to see that they did not charge me for it. And then, just before calling to shout at them for installing crapware I didn't ask for, I checked what "Microsoft Signature" really means. Lo and behold, it means "Lack of manufacturer crapware".

Microsoft was offering to charge me $80 more so that I would only get Microsoft software out of the box.

(The Intel Inside and Win7 stickers were still there, however)

Neither are available in most countries.

Vizio makes bloatware free laptops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np3N10Awd64

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/business/23dell.html?_r=0 suggests its more than just the 20 dollars per machine at stake

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