6 ms·

I'm surprised they're still going. I bought an Toshiba Tecra for work use about seven or eight years ago and the first boot took about two hours while it downlo

I'm surprised they're still going. I bought an Toshiba Tecra for work use about seven or eight years ago and the first boot took about two hours while it downloaded, installed and set up a mountain of crapware, hundreds of useless utilities and other junk. Luckily it was the only Windows boot and being all Intel it ran Linux flawlessly. Why is it so hard for a laptop maker to not completely fuck up software? Plain Windows with no OEM additions other than actual drivers would be welcome. No wonder Apple goes from strength to strength.

satsuma 8y ago
>Why is it so hard for a laptop maker to not completely fuck up software? the demand for $400 laptops means you gotta sell out somewhere, sadly. the first thing i always do when a family member gets a new laptop is ask to see it first thing so i can format and reinstall windows. some of those oem-added bloatwares are downright toxic
- ginko 8y ago
  Tecras definitely weren't $400 laptops. That was Toshiba's business line. Especially not 7-8 years ago.
  - zormino 8y ago
    There's no good excuse for it. Especially not in a business line. I bought a $200 laptop recently that came with very little bloatware, there is zero need ever to turn my laptop / phone into a swamp of poorly coded garbage. After replacing the 'fresh' Win10 install with Ubuntu, there was an extra 10 GB free on my 32 GB drive...
    - tomsmeding 8y ago
      I believe that even without all the crapware, a Windows installation with all bells ans whistles is still quite a bit bigger than your average Linux installation, even Ubuntu. Although I agree that 10 GB is really a lot.
      - mehrdadn 8y ago
        CompactOS can dramatically cut down space usage without any apparent (as far as I'm able to tell) slow-down.
    - wirrbel 8y ago
      The only explanation I can imagine in my mind is a pretty flawed incentive system with these OEMs. I guess some people are rewarded in some way, by bringing in some additional thing into the laptop's default installation that brings another dollar per piece.
      - acdha 8y ago
        That's exactly what happens: say profits are stable, as you'd expect in a mature, relatively efficient market. You're the product manager and can tell your boss that revenue is stable or that you're getting an extra $20/unit kickback from bundling adware like Superfish or a McAfee trial. Your annual bonus depends on whether that number moves up or down and you believe that most people decide what computer to buy by sorting by price. What do you do?
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  I'm a fan of the "Signature Edition" program that Microsoft leads that forces off-the-shelf clean Windows installs. (It's an official program at Microsoft's own Stores, applied to all their systems, but you can ask and/or secret handshake for one at other retailers like Best Buy and Staples.) OEMs mostly don't want you to do apples-to-apples comparisons of models between retail stores, but the last time I put the effort into the math it seemed like almost exactly a $50 premium from the bloatware model to the Signature Edition version of that same model.
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    the bad news is microsoft has begun bundling their own crapware and ads into windows installs.
    - acct1771 8y ago
      That's GREAT news. Destroys the illusion. Hello, open source citizen revolution.
      - crtasm 8y ago
        We can hope, but in my experience people are used to flashy adverts on websites and don't question their start menu joining in the party.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- xtian 8y ago
  Have you reinstalled Windows lately? A vanilla Windows 10 install comes preloaded with a dozen crappy third-party demo/F2P apps (including Candy Crush) which you have to remove one by one. The question is not why laptop makers bundle crapware, but why frivolous and user-hostile design decisions are considered acceptable in the Windows PC space as a whole.
  - mjevans 8y ago
    They don't //stay// removed and new crap is constantly pushed down the pipe. I've given up.
  - city41 8y ago
    Because there isn't any competition. Your average user will never use Linux, and Apple will never sell $400 laptops.
- closeparen 8y ago
  >the first thing i always do when a family member gets a new laptop is ask to see it first thing so i can format and reinstall windows With what? If you use a standard Windows image, it won't activate. If you use the manufacturer's recovery procedure, all the crapware comes back.
  - crtasm 8y ago
    Why wouldn't it activate for you? There's a standard ISO download from MS and you don't even need to type in a product key now that's stored in the bios.
    - closeparen 8y ago
      Hmm, I last tried this in the Windows 7 days with one of those ISOs from MS. The license key on the sticker didn't work, and neither did punching it into the activation phone line.
      - crtasm 8y ago
        Yes I've run into that with 7, these days I've even managed to activate 10 with a win7 OEM key. The website refused it but it was accepted when booting the downloaded installer.
pjmlp 8y ago
Because of differentiation. On the old days we got bundles at the local shop, now you get them on the hard disk.
TheCoelacanth 8y ago
The OEM additions usually have negative cost (they get paid to include them). If you look for a more expensive model (try the small business section if the vendor has one), you can probably find one that doesn't have those additions, you will just have to pay for the true cost of the laptop and not the ad-subsidized cost.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- satsuma 8y ago
  yup, and it makes sense -- for each one of us that recoils in horror at the mcafee logo when we first boot a fresh laptop, there's two more who shrug and continue on with their lives and one who pays to upgrade to ultimate bad guy stopper pro (tm) edition
- r00fus 8y ago
  It's the Facebook "you don't get something of real value for free" but with say a $400 baseline cost. I hate this business model as I'm sure most other folks do as well - but it's instructive to understand that it's not just online services like FB that rely on it. It's infested hardware, media, pretty much all parts of our consumer life... give it time and the corporate adlords will infest government/city services as well. Ads everywhere, minority-report style.
ekianjo 8y ago
> Why is it so hard for a laptop maker to not completely fuck up software? No competition: Windows is the default in Japan, and they make the meat of their money there, by selling overprices laptops at 2-3 times the price they sell overseas. The typical electronic stores in Japan are full of japan-made computers and you only get a small Lenovo corner and that's more or less it. There must be either tariffs or import rules to protect domestic companies, so they have absolutely no incentive to serve the end user or to make anything remotely valuable. And the crapware installed by default is just another monetization strategy.
Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
Microsoft sells "Signature Edition" machines which are basically what you're looking for. A friend bought one and it was roughly as advertised. The only non-Windows things on it are the drivers and a handful of utilities that come with the drivers.
IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
Toshiba, 130 years down the drain. They did not adapt to the changing market and their internal culture was risk averse. Rot at the top (accounting corruption) and inability to compete in numerous market segments played into the company's rapid descent to obscurity. Given they invented flash storage and SSDs, perusing their online store gave zero options for BTO with different SSD storage options. Imagine that. They would build and launch devices without competitive analysis. Too much focus internally on "fortress japan" and cross selling to keiretsu cronies. Meanwhile, Chinese and Korean firms were eating their lunch.
munificent 8y ago
> No wonder Apple goes from strength to strength. I guess you haven't tried the keyboard on the latest MacBook Pros.
narrator 8y ago
I have a Toshiba laptop that runs linux very well. Everything works perfectly. Too bad they had to go out of that business. They got hit really hard recently by having to get out of the nuclear power business.

satsuma 8y ago

>Why is it so hard for a laptop maker to not completely fuck up software? the demand for $400 laptops means you gotta sell out somewhere, sadly. the first thing i always do when a family member gets a new laptop is ask to see it first thing so i can format and reinstall windows. some of those oem-added bloatwares are downright toxic

ginko 8y ago
Tecras definitely weren't $400 laptops. That was Toshiba's business line. Especially not 7-8 years ago.
- zormino 8y ago
  There's no good excuse for it. Especially not in a business line. I bought a $200 laptop recently that came with very little bloatware, there is zero need ever to turn my laptop / phone into a swamp of poorly coded garbage. After replacing the 'fresh' Win10 install with Ubuntu, there was an extra 10 GB free on my 32 GB drive...
  - tomsmeding 8y ago
    I believe that even without all the crapware, a Windows installation with all bells ans whistles is still quite a bit bigger than your average Linux installation, even Ubuntu. Although I agree that 10 GB is really a lot.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      CompactOS can dramatically cut down space usage without any apparent (as far as I'm able to tell) slow-down.
  - wirrbel 8y ago
    The only explanation I can imagine in my mind is a pretty flawed incentive system with these OEMs. I guess some people are rewarded in some way, by bringing in some additional thing into the laptop's default installation that brings another dollar per piece.
    - acdha 8y ago
      That's exactly what happens: say profits are stable, as you'd expect in a mature, relatively efficient market. You're the product manager and can tell your boss that revenue is stable or that you're getting an extra $20/unit kickback from bundling adware like Superfish or a McAfee trial. Your annual bonus depends on whether that number moves up or down and you believe that most people decide what computer to buy by sorting by price. What do you do?
WorldMaker 8y ago
I'm a fan of the "Signature Edition" program that Microsoft leads that forces off-the-shelf clean Windows installs. (It's an official program at Microsoft's own Stores, applied to all their systems, but you can ask and/or secret handshake for one at other retailers like Best Buy and Staples.) OEMs mostly don't want you to do apples-to-apples comparisons of models between retail stores, but the last time I put the effort into the math it seemed like almost exactly a $50 premium from the bloatware model to the Signature Edition version of that same model.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  the bad news is microsoft has begun bundling their own crapware and ads into windows installs.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    That's GREAT news. Destroys the illusion. Hello, open source citizen revolution.
    - crtasm 8y ago
      We can hope, but in my experience people are used to flashy adverts on websites and don't question their start menu joining in the party.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
xtian 8y ago
Have you reinstalled Windows lately? A vanilla Windows 10 install comes preloaded with a dozen crappy third-party demo/F2P apps (including Candy Crush) which you have to remove one by one. The question is not why laptop makers bundle crapware, but why frivolous and user-hostile design decisions are considered acceptable in the Windows PC space as a whole.
- mjevans 8y ago
  They don't //stay// removed and new crap is constantly pushed down the pipe. I've given up.
- city41 8y ago
  Because there isn't any competition. Your average user will never use Linux, and Apple will never sell $400 laptops.
closeparen 8y ago
>the first thing i always do when a family member gets a new laptop is ask to see it first thing so i can format and reinstall windows With what? If you use a standard Windows image, it won't activate. If you use the manufacturer's recovery procedure, all the crapware comes back.
- crtasm 8y ago
  Why wouldn't it activate for you? There's a standard ISO download from MS and you don't even need to type in a product key now that's stored in the bios.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    Hmm, I last tried this in the Windows 7 days with one of those ISOs from MS. The license key on the sticker didn't work, and neither did punching it into the activation phone line.
    - crtasm 8y ago
      Yes I've run into that with 7, these days I've even managed to activate 10 with a win7 OEM key. The website refused it but it was accepted when booting the downloaded installer.

pjmlp 8y ago

Because of differentiation. On the old days we got bundles at the local shop, now you get them on the hard disk.

TheCoelacanth 8y ago

The OEM additions usually have negative cost (they get paid to include them). If you look for a more expensive model (try the small business section if the vendor has one), you can probably find one that doesn't have those additions, you will just have to pay for the true cost of the laptop and not the ad-subsidized cost.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
satsuma 8y ago
yup, and it makes sense -- for each one of us that recoils in horror at the mcafee logo when we first boot a fresh laptop, there's two more who shrug and continue on with their lives and one who pays to upgrade to ultimate bad guy stopper pro (tm) edition
r00fus 8y ago
It's the Facebook "you don't get something of real value for free" but with say a $400 baseline cost. I hate this business model as I'm sure most other folks do as well - but it's instructive to understand that it's not just online services like FB that rely on it. It's infested hardware, media, pretty much all parts of our consumer life... give it time and the corporate adlords will infest government/city services as well. Ads everywhere, minority-report style.

ekianjo 8y ago

> Why is it so hard for a laptop maker to not completely fuck up software? No competition: Windows is the default in Japan, and they make the meat of their money there, by selling overprices laptops at 2-3 times the price they sell overseas. The typical electronic stores in Japan are full of japan-made computers and you only get a small Lenovo corner and that's more or less it. There must be either tariffs or import rules to protect domestic companies, so they have absolutely no incentive to serve the end user or to make anything remotely valuable. And the crapware installed by default is just another monetization strategy.

Mister_Snuggles 8y ago

Microsoft sells "Signature Edition" machines which are basically what you're looking for. A friend bought one and it was roughly as advertised. The only non-Windows things on it are the drivers and a handful of utilities that come with the drivers.

IOT_Apprentice 8y ago

Toshiba, 130 years down the drain. They did not adapt to the changing market and their internal culture was risk averse. Rot at the top (accounting corruption) and inability to compete in numerous market segments played into the company's rapid descent to obscurity. Given they invented flash storage and SSDs, perusing their online store gave zero options for BTO with different SSD storage options. Imagine that. They would build and launch devices without competitive analysis. Too much focus internally on "fortress japan" and cross selling to keiretsu cronies. Meanwhile, Chinese and Korean firms were eating their lunch.

munificent 8y ago

> No wonder Apple goes from strength to strength. I guess you haven't tried the keyboard on the latest MacBook Pros.

narrator 8y ago

I have a Toshiba laptop that runs linux very well. Everything works perfectly. Too bad they had to go out of that business. They got hit really hard recently by having to get out of the nuclear power business.