This is why I love buying my laptops from boutique shops. I was able to provide them with my own Windows key, which saved around $100 off the laptop price, and they installed a clean build of Windows, with nothing installed on it except for drivers. It also came with a folder on the desktop with neatly sorted driver installers (for future use), and also benchmark data that they ran on the computer.
The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
181–190 of 331 posts
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#182> The first step was getting rid of the usual pre-installed crap [...] It took me over an hour to go through all the uninstallers. I was at least three sentences into a long "Uninstallers? Seriously?" rant when I realized that this is exactly what the average poor bastard on the street would do if they wanted to get rid of the crapware that infests a new machine. [long thoughtful pause] Jesus. It really is that big o…
So where do you get a virgin copy of Windows without paying for it again?
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Too bad that of The Two Steves, Jobs gets the accolades and Wozniak gets ignored. Oh please, not this again. But OK, I'll bite: Wozniak was given plenty of recognition for his work at Apple. But he quit in 87, which was 25 years ago. What has he done since? Not that much, really. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, has brought tremendous contributions to a number of industries. In the light of this, it makes complete sen…
It's even worse than that, as Woz effectively left Apple after his plane crash in 1981. He continued to officially be an employee, but didn't contribute a whole lot after that point. Quitting in 1987 was more of a formality than anything. The last Apple computer Woz had a direct hand in designing was either the Apple II or the II+ (I can't quite figure out which), over three decades ago. Woz was a genius when it came…
Thanks to both you and the parent for thoughtfully laying out the history. Saying the "two Steves" as if they are parallel doesn't make sense.
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Installing part is easy, I agree but trying to uninstall either one of them leaves a mess behind. Configuration and other misc files are left behind so if your program does not start because the conf is corrupted, uninstalling and installing doesn't work. It seems though that Ubuntu never lets the program know that it is being uninstalled leaving behind a string of custom generated files.
Well that's what purge rather than uninstall is for, does it not reliably wipe out configs?
I did on some occasions but it too din't do the job. It couldn't recognize the custom generated log and config files. I was stuck tracing those files and removing them manually. If I remember correctly this was for postfix/dovecot installations.
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#185I bought a Vizio thin and light partially because it came with what Vizio and Microsoft dubbed "Windows Signature." Which is essentially marketing speak for "Windows. Just Windows. No crapware preinstalled."
It was almost weird to be able to take a PC out of the box and be able to immediately start using it.
Microsoft apparently worked pretty closely with Vizio on this, which suggests that Microsoft knows that the experience on most Windows PCs sucks.
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the reason Steve Jobs wouldn't license the Mac OS X operating system to other OEM vendors The reason Jobs didn't license out OS X is because the last time Apple did that it almost killed the company. One of the first things Jobs did on returning to Apple was end those agreements.
Do you have a source for that? My recollection was that Apple was in dire straits at the time anyhow, but that the clone makers were substantially increasing MacOS shipments at a time when Apple was threatened with irrelevancy. I thought Jobs killed the clones because he wanted absolute control, which he saw as necessary to pursue his goals for a high-end, seamless experience.
The explanation I have always heard is that the margin on the software license (for OS 7) was not high enough to make up for the loss in hardware profits. The problem was exacerbated because the clone makers were targeting the high-margin top-end of the Apple line. (In other words, pretty much what the parent comment said.)
E.g., this blog entry (skip down to "Amelio") --
http://blog.adamnash.com/2008/04/16/reminder-why-apple-kille...
Here's Jobs on the subject, indicating it was unwillingness of the clone makers to accept higher license fees:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maIgu_7oLm0
Of course, just because Jobs is saying it, you can't know if this is the whole story.
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#187This is one of the reasons I like running Linux, although this is really mainly a feature of having a smaller userbase and being mainly OSS so it is less of a target for this BS. The only alternative for the mainstream seems to be the sandboxed type approach of iOS/WinRT. Oh, some developers abuse browser toolbars? No browser toolbars period! Background processes can make your system slower? No background processes p…
Just wait until OEMs start shipping their own distributions...
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#188It sounds like you shouldn't use Comodo.
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#189This is a great reason to switch to Linux Mint.
Agreed. Just set up dual boot Linux/Windows. One great thing about Linux is you can tell kids "download whatever you want". For those few times you need Windows (TurboTax), you can boot it. Other than that the only good thing about Windows is Excel which is much better than OpenOrifice or gnumeric. I'll grant that the professional image editing software is better too, but Gimp is fine when you get used to it. For sur…
> "download whatever you want"
Sure, because it is always nice to expose $HOME to the world.
Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
#190The first thing to understand is that this isn't a problem with contemporary computing per se, it's a problem with Microsoft Windows and its software ecosystem.
Any ecosystem that has OEMs:
- Symbian
- Android
- Linux distributions on netbooks
- ...