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Conundrum

Sun Jul 04 2010, 05:39PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

Hi all.

Has anyone else experienced the ridiculous amount of bloatware on new laptops? this one has over 3GB (!!!) of garbage including a 360MB*3 "customer satisfaction package"... Huh??!

Seems to me that most if not all of the manufacturers do this, but 3GB takes the cake.

A lot of bloat could be saved by having them uninstall unused programs after say 28 days..

Comments?
-A

Hazmatt_(The Underdog)

Sun Jul 04 2010, 08:50PM

Registered Member #135 Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
Location: Anywhere is fine
Posts: 1735

You're just noticing the trend now?

This is nothing new, and one might argue that it IS the need for more powerful computers!

Maybe someone will mail you a copy of the latest Norton and you can post about how bloated that one is, hah.

Nik

Sun Jul 04 2010, 11:08PM

Registered Member #53 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:31AM
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 638

I have noticed this for years. HP, Dell, Compaq and Acer are all bad for it. I have a lenovo laptop and it wasnt as bad but it still had about a gig of junk that I didn't need.

...

Mon Jul 05 2010, 12:35AM

Registered Member #56 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:02AM
Location: Southern Califorina, USA
Posts: 2445

Personally what bothers me the most is the bloat that comes in drivers now. I decided to dual boot windows/linux on my laptop (switching from only linux) and I had to start installing all of the drivers, even for things such as an internal usb-serial adapter for the IRDA port which only needs a simple .inf file (aprox 4kb in size) to tell it to use the built in windows usb-serial driver I had to download a 48MB (a 10,000 times larger) suite. To connect to my brothers iphone (which again, needed only a simple .inf file to identify it as a generic usb network adapter and some configuration) I had to install over 250MB of software including itunes, quicktime, a connection manager, several updaters, and an 'apple utility'.

Of course both of these worked without any configuration ubuntu, which to give credit where credit is due has also become quite bloated requiring almost 5GB for a generic 'desktop' install with typical fixings (openoffice, firefox, gimp, etc)

Sometimes I wonder how it was ever possible to boot a functional operating system from a floppy disk....

Hon1nbo

Mon Jul 05 2010, 06:53PM

Registered Member #902 Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040

HP is the worst, they design mouse pad in their laptops to be a non-standard HID device so that their Imaging Software has to run in the background to manage the "graphics interface"

and many laptops as designed with hardware that is incompatible with XP on purpose to get people to use Windows 7/Vista (I had that happen with Vista, but linux as a second and third boot option works fine)

-Jimmy

rp181

Mon Jul 05 2010, 08:05PM

Registered Member #1062 Joined: Tue Oct 16 2007, 02:01AM
Location:
Posts: 1529

I use Arch linux, best non bloated system I have seen

quicksilver

Tue Jul 06 2010, 04:27PM

Registered Member #1408 Joined: Fri Mar 21 2008, 03:49PM
Location: Oracle, AZ
Posts: 679

You know that is a reality when terabyte drives become a standard. Since that is what roams the desktop today it's only natural that bloated garbage is the norm. For an OS to be 30gb simply so that visual "features" like "see-through" windows can be maintained, is a joke on the consumer.

Most people who remember when computing started to become a standard (the paper-less office concept of the early 1990's), remember that there really aren't too many "features" one really needs. It's mostly all "bells & whistles" hype.
Most of the things a graphics oriented office (architectural firm, etc) needed were supplied with a MAC sys 6-7 and a data-oriented office (law firm, etc) could get by fine with a 486pc and interface that topped at 10Mb. If you think about it we were SOLD the concept that we "needed" more processing power. Most of the real needs for processing power are in specific research applications; not the common day to day working agenda. What we were sold was more horse power to drive eye-candy "features" which were never really NEEDED.
This really goes without saying.

Hardware & software have a symbiosis that drives the market & bilks the consumer. The actual challenge is to make hardware elements that require a driver that can only be supported by a bloated OS. It's still a rip-off but I don't believe it's so easy.

Conundrum

Tue Jul 06 2010, 06:47PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

methinks its partially sabotage of Linux, designing "non standard" devices which only work on some variety of Windows.

Seen this with printers before, you can't even get the newer Epsons to work on Vista and that was made relatively recently.

quicksilver

Tue Jul 06 2010, 07:26PM

Registered Member #1408 Joined: Fri Mar 21 2008, 03:49PM
Location: Oracle, AZ
Posts: 679

Conundrum wrote ...

methinks its partially sabotage of Linux, designing "non standard" devices which only work on some variety of Windows.
Seen this with printers before, you can't even get the newer Epsons to work on Vista and that was made relatively recently.

That's an interesting take on it. I think a common corporate response to such a remark would be "oh, that's paranoia: we couldn't care less about free OS standards".....But I think that has more validity than any other reason ......except simple profit.

I also happen to know that printer driver issues are very real. I once worked for a software "giant" and know for a fact that standards are not released to competing companies unless serious money is there.

That was the story of Microsoft and HP printers. They (HP) paid out and Cannon didn't; so Cannon had a very tough time making their ink-jet printers function. The Pay-out method is often called getting "Microsoft certified", etc.

Arcstarter

Wed Jul 07 2010, 01:57AM

Registered Member #1225 Joined: Sat Jan 12 2008, 01:24AM
Location: Beaumont, Texas, USA
Posts: 2253

DaJJHman wrote ...

HP is the worst, they design mouse pad in their laptops to be a non-standard HID device so that their Imaging Software has to run in the background to manage the "graphics interface"

and many laptops as designed with hardware that is incompatible with XP on purpose to get people to use Windows 7/Vista (I had that happen with Vista, but linux as a second and third boot option works fine)

-Jimmy

I have seen so many thing run on this HP notebook's background, i just figured the last owner had a lot of stupid sh-crap. But it seems almost all of it is like the stupid mouse pad.

I am fairly pleased with my Asus Notebook though

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