News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

March 21, 2008

rivals

Sony will remove bloatware, with a little help from Ulysses S. Grant

Posted Mar. 21, ’08, 8:28 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Apple » Rivals

Sony VAIO CrapSo you go to buy a new car. Let’s assume, for the purposes of this exercise, that it’s a perfectly functional, if not super-luxurious car. While you’re haggling over the price, deciding what options to get, the salesman explains that your car will come with a bunch of limited-time features—say, cup-holders—that you can upgrade to the full version later—for a price. Also, the back of the car will be entirely filled with catalogs. And half-eaten cheese. Why? Who knows!

Of course, the salesman reasonably points out, you could forgo all the trouble of cleaning out that folderol—for a low fee, naturally. Raise your hand if you walk out of that dealership and never go back.

Gee, that’s a lot of hands.

The scenario isn’t as farfetched as you might think. We’re all familiar with the piles of bloatware and trial software that fill up pretty much any name-brand PC you buy these days. Back when I used to work in IT, wiping a computer was standard operating procedure upon taking it out of the box. Honestly, I’d do the same for any true friend or, heck, decent human being.

But if you buy one of two different notebook models from Sony, you can select a build-to-order option, charmingly dubbed “Fresh Start,” that will clear all that crapware from your brand new machine. Well, gee, that’s sweet, isn’t it?

Except it will cost you $50.

Okay, that’s not a ton of money when we’re talking about a multi-thousand dollar computer (hell, it’ll probably be less than the sales tax in many states). But come on: charging for removing stuff that most people don’t even want in the first place? That’s practically extortion: it’s like paying you not to release rats in my house.

And hey, while we’re at it, could you quote me a price on removing all those bloody Intel stickers that you guys like to plaster all over your computers? That’d be great, thanks.


12 Comments

fletcher Author Profile Page said:

That $50 is probably close to what Sony nets for placing all those ads on your machine. We end up in this absurd position where we as consumers have to pay not to be advertised to, on a product we are buying.

Along these lines I become suspicious of any company which runs ads on their own product pages. The product page is one big ad for a particular product. At most it should have links to related products. In my opinion, placing ads on the page reveals that the product is probably not worth much. Leave the ads to the blog/discussion pages at least.

March 21, 2008 8:45 AM
Paul said:

As someone who works for a company that once paid Sony to put one of our apps on one particular model (as desktop icon, no less - thank the gods I use a Mac), I know that PC manufacturers get paid to do this. So charging for removing it is likely just getting from the customer what they get from companies like ours.

March 21, 2008 9:10 AM
Dan Moren Author Profile Page said:

@Paul, fletcher: Oh, yeah, I can see it makes perfect sense for Sony. But for the consumer, it seems like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" deal.

March 21, 2008 9:17 AM
Walt Author Profile Page said:

The cost of those computers are subsidized by the crapware authors. Like cell phone prices (not including the iPhone of course). Want the phone without the contract? Pay more for it. Pay the "full cost" of it. I'm sure it's the same for all the crapware that comes with these types of systems. Your final cost has been lowered by the crapware authors by letting their software come pre-installed. Remove that software and they remove the amount of money that was reduced from what you would have paid.

Back in my PC wielding days I would have jumped at the opportunity.

March 21, 2008 9:26 AM
James said:

Macs are not innocent in this matter. My recent iMac came with trial copies of Office and iWork.

March 21, 2008 9:33 AM
Equinox said:

@James: True, same with me. But those are apps. That you will most likely end up getting anyway. At least Office, or if want to stick to the Mac, iWork. So, there isn't much discussion there. But, how many of the customers that get Dells, for example, ends up buying Blaster 4? Or using that stupid "Rhapsody Trial" ? It's different. At least for now.

March 21, 2008 11:21 AM
Walt Author Profile Page said:

@James: Office and iWork are much different than what I'm referring to. These are class A products. The original article defined what these software packages were: "Microsoft Works SE 9.0 bundled with a 60-day trial version of Microsoft Office, Sony's Vaio Creation Suite Photo Software bundled with a 30-day trial version of Corel Paint Shop Pro; the Click to Disc video editor; WinDVD, and a free edition of QuickBooks Simple Start that can only track 20 customers"

I'll admit that what Sony offers is a bit more classy than what others have that I've seen since it does include Office. But Works SE? Come on. The best deal with Works right now is the one that comes with Word 2003. I couldn't tell you how many people I've had to deal with that have Works and cannot open a single Word document. The file gets shuffled to me so that I can export it to a format Works can handle. I ended up having them download OOo - and that was a task in itself, having them download and install. These are not very computer literate folks. "what's the refresh button?"

March 21, 2008 11:42 AM
Dbug said:

How nice... kinda like being told you can now have hookers without a social disease if you pay more.
Maybe the social disease included discount should have been on the "feature list" before??

Some websites get paid for each machine they infect with adware/spyware, many PC vendors accept pay to preload machines with other things most don't want (although some buyers are too naive to realize what they're being stuck with at the time).

It's a little easier to understand those practices on bottom of the barrel cheap PCs to help lower the price, but it is a bit sad to hear that even Sony is down in the slimy part of the pond too. But after seeing Sony push audio CDs that installed rootkits on computers, I guess my higher expectations of them were misplaced.

Users should get machines without this stuff by default, and have the option to avoid getting (and paying for) Windows as well. They should be able to use Linux without paying for Windows, or have the freedom to use an existing Windows license they own if junking the previous machine. While I doubt MS would go without activation key hassles, they could provide a way to deauthorize an old machine to enable moving the license.

March 21, 2008 11:44 AM
pdkoenig Author Profile Page said:

If they were just a little more clever, they would offer a standard "Software Sample Bundle with $50 instant rebate" that you can opt out of and lose the $50. Of course they would have to raise the price $50 dollars and change the fine print in the ads to read "after instant rebate" so that the price appears unchanged.

March 21, 2008 1:04 PM
Goobimama said:

Gotta love that graphic!

March 21, 2008 5:15 PM
wesg Author Profile Page said:

According to Engadget, Sony has since gone back on their plan, and now offers the service free of charge.

March 21, 2008 6:22 PM
Cycomachead said:

When I get a new compute, I always wipe the drive and install what I want. Even though there's not much to remove on a Mac - I like to see to the process myself so I really know whats on there.

March 22, 2008 2:11 PM

Leave a comment

 



Visit other IDG sites: