anyone think dell are shipping laptops an pcs with too much cr@p on them?

[otispunkmeyer]

my m8 jus got his inspr0n latptop

it had AOL--- the full virus enducing spyware hacking works

it had the full monty of yahoo messenger....plus the ie6 search bar

and lots of other pointless trash that i cant bare to mention



i think this is a bit of a joke.....i was gonna give him my xp pro disc and jus get rid of it all. but i never

 

[Feneant2]

First thing I did when I got my Dell was format and install a fresh copy of XP leaving out all the crap they give- problem solved.

I also don't recommend any of the drivers that came with the laptop, check online and get them there, you can find newer version of most everything on their site. My wireless wouldn't even work with the drivers they provided, it said it was broken.

 

[Corporate Thug]

its just not dell, all laptops are coming pre-bloated

 

[eshtog]

I heard IBM wasnt to bad

 

[xcrunner51]

IBM is bloated out the ass, i had 50+ processes when i first got it. But the thing is that most of those processes are extremely useful. I kept a little more than half of them and had about 35+ processes before I started installing my own stuff. Crap like the blue access IBM button i ditched. Also i've seen a few new dells before and I noticed that the business line stuff (optiplex, latitude) tends not have a lot of bloatware. I reinstalled a copy of XP Pro over a copy of XP Home on a dell latitude D600 and only eliminated 3-5 processes/programs.

 

[vegetation]

Ugh, Dell's do come pretty bloated. Worst offenders are trialware programs. I didn't pay all that money just to get spammed and have my system take forever to load just because of it.

 

[skreet]

Companies pay them to do that, extra money for them = cheap computer. People dont want to SPEND MONEY to get a computer (god forbid) so they agree to load viruses and spyway (AOL and IE6 toolbars) so you can buy computers with monitors for 399$...

 

[Mermaidman]

n00b question: With the restore disks provided nowadays, is it possible to just do a reformat and fresh installation of the OS that came with the laptop? Or do those restore disks restore EVERYTHING, including the cr@p?

 

[kwo]

Succinctly, YES!

Like Feneant2, first thing I do is format and throw in my unattended XP Pro install disk....come back a couple hours later..and voila! now I have a nice *Behaving* system!

Case in point, a friend of mine from work got a 9100 same time I got my 8600. A week later, he was trying to network with our systems at work...NOTHING would work...why? Turns out he had that stupid Norton Security Center preconfigured to lock out things..and he had no clue........

Also, things like Real Player were trying to connect to the internet all the time, along with other Dell junk.....I hate things like that!

Anyway....... [/ranting]

 

[Kermy]

Originally posted by: xcrunner51
IBM is bloated out the ass, i had 50+ processes when i first got it. But the thing is that most of those processes are extremely useful. I kept a little more than half of them and had about 35+ processes before I started installing my own stuff. Crap like the blue access IBM button i ditched. Also i've seen a few new dells before and I noticed that the business line stuff (optiplex, latitude) tends not have a lot of bloatware. I reinstalled a copy of XP Pro over a copy of XP Home on a dell latitude D600 and only eliminated 3-5 processes/programs.

Yea for the most part they're all IBM programs and utilities, not like AOL, or other crap.

 

[zodder]

Format and reinstall.

 

[Jeff7]

Dell, Gateway, HP - they all seem to do it.
Someone's system I worked on, an HP, after we used the "system restore disc," on a fresh boot, it was out of memory and already grinding the hard drive. All these photo sorters/viewers, and other little "helper" programs were loading at startup, at least 10 of them, probably more, I can't remember exactly how many. Quite a lot though. Once they were cleaned out it booted a lot faster and had some memory to spare. Way too many useless apps.

 

[rky60]

49 processes when I booted up my i8600 last week :Q

 

[MazerRackham]

I reformatted and installed XP Pro fresh within 1 hour of getting my 700m

Clean that thing off!!

 

[Commodus]

At this point, I would note that Macs *never* come with more than Apple's software and a few (usually useful) 3rd-party apps in the Applications folder. No weird search bars or trial offer icons. And they actually ship you the OS CDs (or DVD) every time!

 

[MrAce72]

It sounds like a lot of the processes have utility though. I have 67 running on my Inspiron XPS at with the internet open at idle. I go into the task manager and half of them I cannot figure out what program they are related to and the other have I place some value on. The running processes don't appear to be taxing the CPU and I typically have about 700MB of RAM free out of my 1GB, so I am wondering if I shoud really be bothered by it.

I would like to keep the system as lean as possible, but it's a headache to go through...

 

[Abhi]

Just reformat ....

 

[ComputerWizKid]

My Toshiba Satellite Came with a ton of crap also. My mom was pissed that I formatted it though oh well My friend the Toshiba restore disc only restores there crap also. My friend gave me a copy of his XP Home CD so I used that but I used the key on the bottom of the computer so I'm fine

 

[toshgeek]

Question;

I am also trying to reformat and put a XP Pro (best byt edition) onto the dell 8600.
After that i install the drivers from the website driver CD.
But the hot keys like Alt F2, volume control etc dont work.
I realized they have a utility for installing, that would not run and tell me system unrecognized,

can we activate tghose keys like Aly F2 (battery charge remaining, switch wiress off/on with one button etc

BTW once we reformat and reinstall, can we run those diagnostics that Dell provided if we want to
test hard disk/memory etc or get separate diagnostics.

thanks

 

[frodrick]

Originally posted by: toshgeek
Question;

I am also trying to reformat and put a XP Pro (best byt edition) onto the dell 8600.
After that i install the drivers from the website driver CD.
But the hot keys like Alt F2, volume control etc dont work.
I realized they have a utility for installing, that would not run and tell me system unrecognized,

can we activate tghose keys like Aly F2 (battery charge remaining, switch wiress off/on with one button etc

BTW once we reformat and reinstall, can we run those diagnostics that Dell provided if we want to
test hard disk/memory etc or get separate diagnostics.

thanks

stuff like the fn+F2 are controlled by the program "Dell QuickSet". a download link is provided on the same page as all of your drivers.

I believe the diagnostics are run off the "hidden" dell partition. if you destroy the partition I believe the diag cds won't work. I'm not sure about this however.