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Comment by wehadfun | Hacker News Reader

Suprise that no market their computers as "crapware free".

Microsoft's trying to create a premium “Signature Edition” category with that as the selling point:

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Signatur...

I've bought a couple of these. They're sure nicer than the crapware-ridden vanilla consumer machines (where it takes me an hour or two to remove the crapware . . . and even then I'm not sure).

Thanks for the link, I did not know that cleaner/pristine Windows install are available out of the box. Out of curiosity, if these laptops are the same price as the one laden with "crapware", why are'nt consumers buying these instead? Is it awareness that they are available?

My guess is that it's a combination of limited selection and higher prices. The OEMs seem to be treating this as a premium feature so it's simply not on the radar for the people looking to buy the cheapest (i.e. ad-ware subsidized) PC.

That's funny. Take a look at that link. Microsoft, itself, is talking about how crappy their own product is in its normally delivered form.

Only because vendors other than Microsoft have control over what's shipped. If Microsoft wants to include something, they won't describe it as crappy.

I would call it "honesty", and it's very refreshing that they not only acknowledge the problem but offer a solution. Making fun of them for this is punishing good behavior and providing ammo to any number of marketing people at MS who would rather the company never admit that anything is wrong, ever.

Its wasn't that they were totally oblivious to the fact that junk/crapware were bundled with their OS, it was that they couldn't have a say in it because then that would be deemed as an anti-trust violation. Antitrust laws are really good to encourage competition but it also has side effects like this.

Thanks for sharing. I hadn't seen that before.

Apparently they do still include Windows Defender, which is described as "free anti-virus protection that never expires". Although it's a Microsoft product, I would place it close to third party junkware on the scale: in my experience, it often turns out to be the culprit if performance degrades over time, every now and then an update will completely break a box requiring some sort of restore disc or similar to get back up and running, and in any case it seems to add little value being so much less effective these days than a lot of other security software. At least it probably uninstalls cleanly if you do want to swap it out, though.

I found this an interesting, if somewhat inflammatory, criticism of the same Windows Signature programme:

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/mic...

Sadly, the UK version of the Microsoft Store seems to have a very limited range of devices available on the same basis.

I prefer Windows Defender to the alternatives since it's just as [in]effective and tends to lower performance less than the non-free alternatives. That said, the only times I use AV are when there's a non-negotiable company policy since it's been a losing game for decades.

I don't think one should be surprised. At least two reasons can be given:

1) "crapware" is not well-defined for all users, some utility that absolutely is annoying and unnecessary to medium to advanced users may be found useful by complete novices, e.g. the prototypical "your grandma".

2) The bigger cause is, of course, affiliate money. Companies have little backlash to crapware other than perhaps some lost sales due to disgruntled users. That's hard to quantify. The money you get from an affiliate whose crapware you preinstall is absolutely easy to quantify, though. This is definitely the mode of operation for cell phone companies. My Verizon phone comes with NFL apps and other crap that I can't even uninstall.

3) In lost cases, though, it's the companies own additional software that is the crapware. Again, the cause is money, the tracking and/or usage data is worth a lot of money.

Unless there is a big punishment, large enough to really hurt these huge companies, the status quo will continue. That's why this particular lawsuit is so important.

Regarding (1), has any computer manufacturer ever installed anything we might call "crapware" that anyone ever found to actually be useful? Not something that grandma thinks is useful, but something that is actually useful to grandma (not quite the same thing!).

The rest is totally right, though. For any behavior by a company that seems to do more harm than good, you can usually trace it back to some decision-maker who is rewarded for the good parts but is not responsible for the bad parts. If your decisions cause $1 in gain for your department and $2 in loss for another department, many companies aren't smart enough to do anything but reward you and punish the other department.

I find the Lenovo battery manager mildly useful; not amazing, but enough that I installed it on a fresh Windows install on my work Carbon. It just gives me more granular control than the Windows power options.

I don't buy Apple computers but isn't that a main selling point with osx?

It is one of the selling points. It has been over 5 years since Apple has sold a computer with any third party software on it.

Out of curiosity, what 3rd-party sw did Apple bundle over 5 years ago?

Java

Apple used to bundle demo apps and games with their computers. I for example remember getting a demo of a Tony Hawk skating game and a couple of other apps with an iBook.

Oddly enough, I have a fresh install of Os9.2 here, from 2001.

It's got IE5, Stuffit Expander, Netscape Communicator 4.7.7, and Outlook Express 5.0.2, and Java.

Depends on whether you consider iTunes crapware :-)

iTunes isn't crapware on OS X. It is on Windows though, I think mostly because Apple doesn't want to put too many resources into iTunes on Windows.

iTunes on OS X runs better than any other music apps (that are not command line music clients like ncmpcpp) I've used, and I've used a lot. On OS X, I can't see why people would call it bloatware/crapware.

Though never conscious to me before, Macs are crapware free. I wonder how more often PCs would 'just work' if it only came with the OS and core drivers.

Microsoft Store.

You used to be able to pay $50 extra on Sony laptops for it to come clean.

While that's technically better than no option at all, it doesn't make me miss them too much.

You also used to be able to buy a Sharpie marker at the same time as a CD purchase to defeat their rootkit installed from music CDs. I don't miss them too much either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

Microsoft uses licensing discounts to bribe PC manufacturers into force-bundling Windows in jurisdictions with weak consumer protection laws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows#...

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