Seth Goodin on Setting Up a New Computer

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/its-no-wonder-they-dont-trust-you.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+typepad/sethsmainblog+(Seth's+Blog)' target='_blank'>http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_...g+(Seth's+Blog)</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"I just set up a friend's PC. I haven't done that in a while. Wow. Apparently, a computer is now not a computer, it's an opportunity to upsell you. First, the setup insisted (for my own safety) that I sign up for an eternal subscription to Norton. Then it defaulted (opt out) to sending me promotional emails..."</em></p><p>Seth Goodin is a brilliant marketing/PR guy who somehow manages, every single day, to send out an email with meaningful thoughts about his industry. His email today struck a cord that I thought Digital Home Thoughts readers would be interested in - it was about his experience setting up a new PC. He's 100% right; setting up a new PC does feel like a carnival experience, with distractions and conflicting experiences as part of what customers have come to expect. So much of the new computer experience feels whorish; HP is the worst for this, with their co-branded HP/AOL home page, HP/AOL toolbar, eBay links on the desktop, etc. <MORE /></p><p>HP should care about their brand, striving to present their product in the cleanest way possible. I laughed when I unboxed the <a href="http://www.digitalhomethoughts.com/news/show/96112/hp-dm3-laptop-unboxing-first-impressions.html" target="_blank">HP dm3</a> - HP went through all this trouble to make this excellent-looking laptop, with a gorgeous brush-aluminum lid, and then they went and stuck a stupid Energy Star sticker on it, completely ruining the aesthetic. I've never heard why companies like HP and Dell do this - are they really so powerless as OEMs that they can't control the look and feel of their own product?</p><p>I know keeping prices low is important to the OEMs, but just once I'd like to set up a new computer and not feel assaulted by antivirus software warning me that I need to immediately pay in order to be protected. If you're an antivirus software company, why not give the customer at least 90 days of protection, <em>completely silently</em> without any scary "BUY NOW!" pop-ups, before you tell them their subscription is about to expire? Impress the customer with how non-intrusive you can be, silently protecting their computer, and when the time comes for them to reach for their credit card, I bet then won't mind paying for your service.</p>

[randalllewis]

Hear! Hear! I had a conversation on this topic a while ago with an HP rep in a Best Buy store. He repeated the "everyone wants the cheapest computers" line as to why OEMs load up machines with stuff. I mean, who uses AOL anymore?

As a heavy user of HP products, I can attest to Jason's comment. Yet I've seen glimmers of hope. My most recent HP Pavilion came with a 15 month Norton subscription. Annoying trials I always delete, but this one I kept. It has been my first experience with Norton in many years and so far, so good. And up until early this year, HP offered an option on their consumer website to purchase a customizable full sized ATX computer that came with no software other than Windows. I think they still do that on their business computer side.

It doesn't take long to dump the stuff you don't want, but then I know I can do that. What I've found in my own personal experience in helping family members with their computers, is that many users (maybe most) don't know that they can delete those trials and dump those offers and get rid of that awful AOL toolbar.

[alanjrobertson]

I certainly agree with the problem - my solution (with pretty much every new machine I've had recently) has been to wipe the HDD and reinstall vanilla Windows fresh onto the machine. Where possible I've gone with the standard Windows drivers, only installing the manufacturer-specific ones where necessary. I've found it leads to a much more streamlined machine that boots nice and quickly without having to load all the bloatware! :)

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

I got a Lenovo Y450 recently. Thankfully there weren't as many rubbish addons. I counted 4 at most. As for stickers, well, the nvidia one is a pain to remove...

[NeilE]

Microsoft's been working with hardware manufacturers to solve some of this. I forget the name of the program, but there are a bunch of Windows 7 PCs out now that MS worked directly with the OEMs on and are crapware free.

Neil

[Eriq Cook]

I completely agree. I still setup new computers for customers often, and although I like the HP brand, they are one of the worst offenders of this now (it used to be Sony IMO until they "cleaned up").

Being Christmas time, I've been busy setting up new gift computers and many of them have been HP. Depending on the time I have with each machine, I'll either reformat the hard drive and clean install Windows, or I'll bypass the "Welcome" screen by doing the 3 finger salute, then using task manager to force close the welcome screen and manually launch explorer.exe to get straight to Windows. That gets me past the relentless Norton page and other advertising before it loads Windows. Then I use PC Decrapifier (http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/) to get rid of Norton and the other junk before loading my own.

I just hate the entire process if you let it run all the way through. It'd be nice to just turn on a computer, boot straight into Windows and at most have a registration screen appear. HP's current method keeps Windows from loading first until you're done seeing all the advertisements and paying for Norton.
Not to mention all the other crapware that HP loads onto their machines; Power management utilities (while Windows already does a good job on its own) and countless multimedia related junk software that mimics Windows Media Center (while Media Center is also present).

Anyway, enough ranting. As crazy as it sounds HP is still my preferred brand due to the build quality & hardware. With the most recent HP computer I purchased I just plugged in my Windows 7 install disc (on USB) before I even turned it on. I still wish HP would scale back on the forced advertising.

[crimsonsky]

Back in my PC days, I always built my machines because it was cheaper, customised exactly the way I wanted it and I didn't have to put up with crapware. One of the nice things about Macs is the total absence of crapware.

This summer I bought a netbook (Lenovo S10) and was pleasantly surprised that the only crapware on it was Norton, which I immediately (and with no problem) uninstalled. Given how cheap the machine was (I paid $325) I expected tons of junk. Kudos to Lenovo for resisting the urge on this netbook at least. (It's running a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium now).

Eventually, I'll probably buy a full-sized Windows laptop and I suspect the first thing I'll do after booting up is wipe it and do a clean install of Windows 7. I'm glad to see that the MS Stores are offering clean PCs and this is a trend I'd like to see continue.

[Janak Parekh]

This summer I bought a netbook (Lenovo S10) and was pleasantly surprised that the only crapware on it was Norton, which I immediately (and with no problem) uninstalled. Given how cheap the machine was (I paid $325) I expected tons of junk. Kudos to Lenovo for resisting the urge on this netbook at least. (It's running a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium now). I think Lenovo is generally amongst the better of the PC vendors about not bundling lots of crapware. Perhaps they inherit the better behavior from the IBM days of the product lineup.

--janak

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Indeed. I'm very happy with the Lenovo I've got. Cheap, fast, decent design. Not much more I can ask for.