Sony wants $50 to remove bloatware from their laptops

Today I was having a conversation with my Mother about what to get my sister's son; he's graduating from High School this year AND neck and neck to be valedictorian.

Neither of us can afford a brand new laptop for him.

I passed on some $300.00 leather luggage I didn't use to my older nephew. My parents were a bit doubtful but it was that or a $20.00 gift certificate. The leather looked as new as the day I bought it. My sister told me he moved right in and was using it and liked it.

I can't afford to buy his brother $300.000 leather luggage. Even all together none of us can afford to buy my nephew a new laptop.

But if we could....it is nice to know this about the Vaio. I'm not a Windows fan anyway. But having to PAY to get rid of demos and unwanted software? Are they kidding?

My Mother and I discussed my possibly giving my nephew my rebuilt Apple Powerbook. It's worth about $700-800. I'm not sure I'm ready to part with it yet. She had doubts about how he'd feel about Apple. I told her it has Office and everything he needs for college. But he couldn't play his games on it. We both thought that was just.....too bad. Just awful. Really disappointing he wouldn't be able to play games instead of doing school work.

At any rate...I'll certainly file this info on the Vaio for future reference.

Thanks.

 

I don't think this is unique to the Sony Vaio - I think the crapware is a typical thing for most PC vendors. The news is that Sony is offering to remove it for a fee. Most vendors don't give this option from what I've read - many people wipe the HD and reinstall the OS as a first step on a new machine.

Apple doesn't load crap on their Macs, unless you want to go back in time when they used to install IE as the default browser.

 

Often, if "media" is purchased (usually for ten bucks or free), a fresh install when the computer arrives gets rid of it. This is not the "recovery" media but the OEM version of the operating system.

Home and Home Premium Vista will not attach to a domain controller so the 'Business" version is necessary for most corporate environments where the added "bloatware" can be more than a simple annoyance, as it can significantly conflict with a corporate infrastrucure.

 

Having built a computer for the first time, I can't imagine doing it any other way next time. (OK...I admit you can't really do that if you want a laptop.) Not only does it get you exactly what you want and nothing else, it's cheap! This thing does what I need just as well as any top-of-the-line pre-made PC but only cost ~$650 plus software. One could build a very decent email/internet/homework box for under $500 plus monitor and software. (And once you choose compatible components it's reeeaalllly easy to put a PC together.)

A side note on software: I was able to get MS office for $20 through my employer. (I guess they pay enough money for MS licenses that this perk gets thrown in.) Similarly, students can get excellent deals on "educational addition" software. It's exactly the same product, but the license for full-time students costs a fraction of the cost of the commercial version. This takes a big chunk out of the cost of setting up a PC for someone who is going away to college.

Then there's Linux, which gets closer to being a plug-and-play solution every day. No cost, no crapware. But ATM there are still drawbacks and a bit of a learning curve.

 

They have now decided it will be free.

Sony Retracts Bloatware Removal Fee

 

OEMs install crapware because they are paid good money to distribute it. Old software and free software work just as good or better than the latest versions from Microsoft & the others so I vote for building your own desktop.

How old is the student's current computer?

 

Mac has installed demo versions of Office and iWorks. But if you don't like them, you simply drag and drop into the trash, empty and poof. Gone. Nothing bloated. No need for someone the "help" you.

My nephew doesn't have a laptop. He has a very old PC hand-me-down from my Dad.

When I got to my Mom's house she was on the phone with my sister. Nephew has to have PC laptop. He'll be using some special science software that has to run on PC. We're trying to figure out between the three of us how to pay for a new one. Too bad really.

Good news is so far he's been accepted to UCSD and UC Davis. Still waiting to hear from Stanford and a few others. Stanford would be a cakewalk but for any of the others it then becomes a matter of....how to pay for it. My sister and her husband didn't save a thing toward their two son's college education. The older boy is going to UC San Marcos and my Dad is paying for it. Looks like my parents may be paying for his brother as well.

My brother is an Air Force Academy grad and his son looks to follow in his footsteps, so at least his education is covered. Not sure about my niece. But whatever she decides, I'll bet my brother and his wife have already made adequate plans.

Hmmm. Not only am I the only Democrat in the family....I'm also the only Mac user. Go figure.

So....anyone have a good recommendation for a reliable PC laptop that can get my nephew through 4 years of college?

 

Worth every penny!

Wildkow

 

Geek Squad did this for our desktop back when we got it for $20.

 

I just did the exact same thing for my own PC, Core 2 quad processor $200, motherboard $150, 4Gb RAM $85, 500GB SATA hard drive $99, and Vista ultimate OEM ver $150. I used my existing case and optical drives from my previous home built PC, built it including software install in a couple hours, and the net Vista computing index is 4.8
I got the same $20 deal on Office from MS, I believe it is part of our corporate enterprise license with Micro$.
We get our PCs with our standard image installed by the OEM (presently Dell, soon to be HP), no bloatware, but with each comes a CD with the garbageware

You can do the exact same thing with the PC. When I got my laptop about a year ago, I spent about a half hour uninstalling and cleaning out the junk, did it while I was setting up my user account so I didn't have to run in admin mode when I'm traveling.

 

Last week I reformatted, installed the OS, and cleared off all the junk on a laptop that my daughter was given. I then installed OpenOffice (openoffice.org), AVG, AdAware, SpyBot, downloaded and installed all the appropriate updates (XP), and then made sure that all the settings were correct.

This took me over 12 hours. I am really, REALLY, wanting to switch to Mac...

 

For those that want to reinstall XP, there is a really easy package you can get from Torrents or eMule. It's called LastXP, and it's up to version 17.1.1, i think. It's a DVD-image that has XP, drivers, Updates, and whole heap of optional applications, like Firefox, Combined Community Codec Pack, etc... I've used it to reinstall plenty of systems. It takes less than an hour. There's no need to find/download drivers, as they are all included. Once everything is installed, you can change the XP key to your own key. If you're only installing XP, and no additional apps, it takes less than 30 min for the whole (unattended) process to complete.

 

I bought a new MacBook Pro last month. I started it up, it asked if I wanted to transfer info from my old computer. I said yes, it led me through the steps to plug in a Firewire cable and transferred my docs and settings to the new computer. Email settings, bookmarks, web passwords, etc. Took about 30 min.



I don't buy Anti Virus software; I download ClamXAV for free (although I did send the author a small PayPal donation to reward him for his effort). I don't find Mac viruses, but I have found a Win virus on my Virtual PC disk before. I have another program called Little Snitch which monitors outgoing connections to guard against the possibility of keystroke monitors, email zombie sw, etc.

 

I just installed Linux on new hardware for my mother. It took about 30 minutes for the entire installation, download and installation of 109 updates, and copying her home folder onto the new drive. With Linux, you copy the home folder to restore all of the user's settings and documents; no screwing around with the registry. The installation included open office and evolution email, plus the other miscellaneous programs she uses. If only Windows were that easy, or better yet, if only I never had to touch Windows again.

Tom