Google investors conference call on Dell deal AKA more stuff to remove from new computers |
As I write this, the Google investors conference call is wrapping up. They talked about the Dell deal and “the comprehensiveness” specifically: Google desktop search, toolbar and “other things over time.”
Please keep your cliched Do No Evil handbook close by, Google. Yahoo has practically destroyed their software brand at least in our household by too many software installation shenanigans.
Now, I’ll make a mental not not to buy another Dell computer. I despise when hardware vendors cut these lucrative deals preloading with so much crap that it wastes hours of our time gutting Windows to put the programs we actually want, need and use. These efforts are always done as an alleged ‘convenience’ to us, but how often is this really so? What a load of garbage. Both on our shiny new machines and that they are trying to pitch us along with the computer.
Would I pay $50 more for a computer without the crap? Yes. $100 more? Probably not for desktops, so I guess that’s my price threshold in exchange for enduring the preloaded garbage. Considering one can just ghost over an image of the way I want it to be (desktop systems), $50 more seems to be a fair price to offer desktop consumers as an exchange to getting this stuff preinstalled. For laptops I would be willing to pay $100. My time is worth that much not to bother getting rid of the crap every time we need to go back to “factory [spammed] condition.”
Here’s a list of programs removed from a Compaq machine we bought back in September. Compaq Organize, now there’s a shiny turd. Are you using any third party non-standard programs regularly that came preinstalled with your computer? I can count the ones I’m using and have ever used: goose egg, bumpkis, nadda, zilch, zero.
I can see why Google wants to work over this market because default installs and configurations are a great place to be — for them. Just look at how they’ve worked several deals to make them the default search. Pot, kettle black on them calling out Microsoft for allegedly making IE7 “too hard” to change.
Hardware and software vendors please stop making up my mind for me. I can choose my own damn programs and defaults.
Did this post make you go hmm?
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I always purchase systems sans OS, if available. If not, the first piece of software I run on it is FDISK.
Comment by Sterling Camden — May 31, 2006 @ 3:07 pm PST
With desktops that works, but not such an easy thing to do on the Tablet PC
We like buying the cheap hardware since we replace it ever 12-18+ months anyway. The machine I’m using now I likely won’t be using next year at this time. So it will likely be replaced by something that is already Vista-powered.
Or maybe I’ll buy an intel-core Mac instead … they definitely are looking more attractive.
Comment by TDavid — May 31, 2006 @ 3:17 pm PST
I ALWAYS take the 2-3 hours to reformat and reinstall the software/drivers/OS/ and updates on every new PC I buy. Unless I’ve built it myself. I don’t trust ANY vendor. They all load their own junk on there. It’s also a quick way to discover if they shipped you the driver and software disks before end of warranty. Several times I’ve found missing disks. One of the most common programs bundled - Wild Tangent.
Comment by ^Lestat — May 31, 2006 @ 4:48 pm PST
At least with the GoogleJunk(tm) it actually is software that generally I would have installed anyway.
Unlike every other piece of preloaded cr*p that I’ve ever had.
Unfortunatly I’d be re-installing a fresh copy of the OS anyway ‘cos one thing vendors never get right is *any* kind of partitioning - and it just isn’t worth using Partition Magic etc on a new machine.
Not that I’ve bought a prebuilt in the last 7 years anyway…
Comment by iiq374 — May 31, 2006 @ 5:26 pm PST
[…] GOOGle stock had a nice bump today (disclaimer: I’m a shareholder) up 3.86% / +$14.96, no doubt helped by the Adobe bundling deal. This sounds similar to the recent deal with Dell which would bundle-in the Google Toolbar on Dell computers. So the next time we go to download Acrobat Reader we can probably expect to see Google Toolbar helpfully checked for us. Gee thanks, Google [heavy sarcasm]. Check out how Google plays this one on their blog: We’re excited to partner with Adobe to make these features available to their users, and look forward to finding other ways to work together. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » Google cuts bundling deal with Adobe, also rumor of having CPA network — June 21, 2006 @ 8:28 pm PST