5 ms·

> As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the m

> As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. One of the greatest losses from the retail Microsoft Store shutdown was the loss of Microsoft's "Signature Edition" PC program. They only sold in their Stores PCs with clean Windows installs, which they labeled "Signature Edition". Many of the OEMS participated (Dell, Lenovo, others), and generally when you could directly compare Signature Edition models to their regular direct from the OEM counterparts (which the companies model naming/numbering schemes often intentionally tried to make hard to do) it was often about a $50 premium over the "full of junk installed" PC (showing about how much all that bloatware is valuable to the OEMs if it subsidizes machines by about $50). For a brief period it even looked like other retailers might adopt Signature Edition sales and you could even walk into a Staples or a Best Buy and find sales people that could source Signature Edition machines, for the people that still liked to try to deal shop between multiple retail stores. I miss being able to give the advice "buy whatever computer you want from Microsoft Store, or if you go to Staples/Best Buy keep asking sales people until you meet the person that knows what Signature Edition means and you generally won't have any problems with the machine". Now the advice is back to "buy a Surface from Microsoft or be prepared to spend a couple hours using the Windows Fresh Start tool from Microsoft first".

neves 6y ago
Nice, I never heard about Fresh Start Tool: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/give-your-pc-a-fresh-start-0ef73740-b927-549b-b7c9-e6f2b48d275e https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/give-your-pc-a-f... Would I miss the updated drivers from Dell or other vendor?
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  WHQL standards _should_ mean that for any PC purchase today (and many in the last decade or so) Windows Update will always have the most up-to-date "basic driver" on its servers. There's some controversy (linked elsewhere in this thread) that those basic drivers are allowed by Microsoft to advertise their "full bloat" versions in notifications and launch time popups. The flipside to that controversy is that if you want the "full bloat" versions (such as the Geforce Experience if you are a game player), that makes it easy to acquire them as it is general a case of go through the notifications and popups on first launch, from what I've seen.
- FooHentai 6y ago
  I don’t believe you would, drivers come in via windows update in modern windows. You should at worst miss cutting edge versions made available on the manufacturers website prior to arriving on windows update.
  - neves 6y ago
    My Dell periodically scans for drivers and bios updates, and asks me to update them if a newer version is available.
r00fus 6y ago
It seems that Microsoft learned that advertising (and crapware pre-installs) is so profitable, they just bake it right into the Start menu as of Windows 10. Oh and let's add telemetry as well.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  Telemetry in Windows has been out of the box since Windows XP. Whether you are correct or not to be antagonistic about it, that ship sailed a long time before Windows 10 and current HN hysteria about it is almost funny (especially given how often articles about telemetry driven development and A/B testing get upvoted on HN when a startup is doing it). You can turn off the advertising ("Suggestions") and as long as the bundled "crapware" remains UWP sandboxed, it is a far cry from most of what the OEMs have been accused of.
technofiend 6y ago
The best thing about Windows now is that once you've registered your machine via their online tool, reregistering after a clean install is the click of a button. They have a windows 10 builder tool that downloads the ISO and burns it to USB or DVD. So there's not much stopping a customer from registering and then doing a crapware-free clean install. The downside (besides needing the skill and time to do it) is you'll lose any baked in freeware but the line between freeware, trialware and crapware is so thin now I'm not sure that's a concern. Finally you can rein in the data collection and remove much of the microsoft freeware by using https://old.reddit.com/r/tronscript https://old.reddit.com/r/tronscript.
- reificator 6y ago
  > The best thing about Windows now is that once you've registered your machine via their online tool, reregistering after a clean install is the click of a button. > They have a windows 10 builder tool that downloads the ISO and burns it to USB or DVD. So there's not much stopping a customer from registering and then doing a crapware-free clean install. The downside (besides needing the skill and time to do it) is you'll lose any baked in freeware but the line between freeware, trialware and crapware is so thin now I'm not sure that's a concern. And the best thing about your computer is that it's so complicated that a determined manufacturer like Lenovo can hide their crapware installers in, say, the UEFI. Which will then automatically install them on a fresh OS install. You make the mistake of thinking that you own your computer. You do not. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870
  - andrewmackrodt 6y ago
    I found this out with my ASUS motherboard on my desktop. There's a UEFI option which bootstraps an automatic installation of their own software called Armory Crate which then invokes itself to install a load of "junk".
  - craftinator 6y ago
    Have you tried Linux?
tinus_hn 6y ago
Unfortunately many of the driver packages Microsoft itself distributes come with the worst bloatware imaginable. Quality control on Microsofts driver database is really poor.
bredren 6y ago
Was this the vision for Google’s pixel?
- tesseract 6y ago
  The "Google Play Edition" Android phones were probably closer in concept: standard OEM hardware, but sold through the OS vendor's retail channels with a 'clean' software configuration.
  - yagya 6y ago
    Then there's Android One, but that is an absolute disaster at this point, with unoptimized software and updates that brick phones. Google themselves haven't been doing too good on software reliability this year; just look at Android 11, especially on the Pixel 2 and 4a. Both have huge bugs and in the 2's case, they will never be fixed. And some Android 11 bugs won't be fixed until Android 12 comes out. I'm seriously considering a switch to iOS at this point.
    - deadbunny 6y ago
      I really like my Android One Nokia 6.1. It was a little rough for the first 6 months with random slowdowns and stuttering after being on for more than a few days (fixed with a reboot) but since then it has been great. Admittedly it has a rubbish camera but I don't really take pictures so that's fine with me. For a £200 phone it has been just as good for my needs as every flagship nexus/pixel I've owned asside from the crap camera. It's got to the point that it'll be out of support soon and I'm having a hard time finding a decent replacement for anything near a comparable price. Maybe it's time to try out LineageOS?
      - tryauuum 6y ago
        +1 for nokia 6.1! I really like the continuous stream of updates, unlike on my old phones with samsung flavor of Android
      - csharptwdec19 6y ago

neves 6y ago

Nice, I never heard about Fresh Start Tool: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/give-your-pc-a-fresh-start-0ef73740-b927-549b-b7c9-e6f2b48d275e https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/give-your-pc-a-f... Would I miss the updated drivers from Dell or other vendor?

WorldMaker 6y ago
WHQL standards _should_ mean that for any PC purchase today (and many in the last decade or so) Windows Update will always have the most up-to-date "basic driver" on its servers. There's some controversy (linked elsewhere in this thread) that those basic drivers are allowed by Microsoft to advertise their "full bloat" versions in notifications and launch time popups. The flipside to that controversy is that if you want the "full bloat" versions (such as the Geforce Experience if you are a game player), that makes it easy to acquire them as it is general a case of go through the notifications and popups on first launch, from what I've seen.
FooHentai 6y ago
I don’t believe you would, drivers come in via windows update in modern windows. You should at worst miss cutting edge versions made available on the manufacturers website prior to arriving on windows update.
- neves 6y ago
  My Dell periodically scans for drivers and bios updates, and asks me to update them if a newer version is available.

r00fus 6y ago

It seems that Microsoft learned that advertising (and crapware pre-installs) is so profitable, they just bake it right into the Start menu as of Windows 10. Oh and let's add telemetry as well.

WorldMaker 6y ago
Telemetry in Windows has been out of the box since Windows XP. Whether you are correct or not to be antagonistic about it, that ship sailed a long time before Windows 10 and current HN hysteria about it is almost funny (especially given how often articles about telemetry driven development and A/B testing get upvoted on HN when a startup is doing it). You can turn off the advertising ("Suggestions") and as long as the bundled "crapware" remains UWP sandboxed, it is a far cry from most of what the OEMs have been accused of.

technofiend 6y ago

The best thing about Windows now is that once you've registered your machine via their online tool, reregistering after a clean install is the click of a button. They have a windows 10 builder tool that downloads the ISO and burns it to USB or DVD. So there's not much stopping a customer from registering and then doing a crapware-free clean install. The downside (besides needing the skill and time to do it) is you'll lose any baked in freeware but the line between freeware, trialware and crapware is so thin now I'm not sure that's a concern. Finally you can rein in the data collection and remove much of the microsoft freeware by using https://old.reddit.com/r/tronscript https://old.reddit.com/r/tronscript.

reificator 6y ago
> The best thing about Windows now is that once you've registered your machine via their online tool, reregistering after a clean install is the click of a button. > They have a windows 10 builder tool that downloads the ISO and burns it to USB or DVD. So there's not much stopping a customer from registering and then doing a crapware-free clean install. The downside (besides needing the skill and time to do it) is you'll lose any baked in freeware but the line between freeware, trialware and crapware is so thin now I'm not sure that's a concern. And the best thing about your computer is that it's so complicated that a determined manufacturer like Lenovo can hide their crapware installers in, say, the UEFI. Which will then automatically install them on a fresh OS install. You make the mistake of thinking that you own your computer. You do not. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10039870
- andrewmackrodt 6y ago
  I found this out with my ASUS motherboard on my desktop. There's a UEFI option which bootstraps an automatic installation of their own software called Armory Crate which then invokes itself to install a load of "junk".
- craftinator 6y ago
  Have you tried Linux?

tinus_hn 6y ago

Unfortunately many of the driver packages Microsoft itself distributes come with the worst bloatware imaginable. Quality control on Microsofts driver database is really poor.

bredren 6y ago

Was this the vision for Google’s pixel?

tesseract 6y ago
The "Google Play Edition" Android phones were probably closer in concept: standard OEM hardware, but sold through the OS vendor's retail channels with a 'clean' software configuration.
- yagya 6y ago
  Then there's Android One, but that is an absolute disaster at this point, with unoptimized software and updates that brick phones. Google themselves haven't been doing too good on software reliability this year; just look at Android 11, especially on the Pixel 2 and 4a. Both have huge bugs and in the 2's case, they will never be fixed. And some Android 11 bugs won't be fixed until Android 12 comes out. I'm seriously considering a switch to iOS at this point.
  - deadbunny 6y ago
    I really like my Android One Nokia 6.1. It was a little rough for the first 6 months with random slowdowns and stuttering after being on for more than a few days (fixed with a reboot) but since then it has been great. Admittedly it has a rubbish camera but I don't really take pictures so that's fine with me. For a £200 phone it has been just as good for my needs as every flagship nexus/pixel I've owned asside from the crap camera. It's got to the point that it'll be out of support soon and I'm having a hard time finding a decent replacement for anything near a comparable price. Maybe it's time to try out LineageOS?
    - tryauuum 6y ago
      +1 for nokia 6.1! I really like the continuous stream of updates, unlike on my old phones with samsung flavor of Android
    - csharptwdec19 6y ago