Feb 08 2007
Dell and the Invasion of the Craplets
My good friend Jason Dunn is annoyed with Dell because they insist on installing craplets on your computer before it gets to you. Everything from a trial version of Norton Internet Security (the worst program ever) to Google Desktop, to Dell’s Support client… Look at his tray! This is a brand new machine!
I have to say, this is one reason I prefer a Mac. They don’t have to sell desktop real estate to companies to recoup the costs of their way-too-underpriced PC’s. You buy a Mac, you get a computer ready to go with all the stuff you need and no craplets. The worst part of it is that you can’t buy a PC without the craplets. Dell won’t sell you a “clean install” of Vista, and they won’t send you only the CDs and let you do it yourself.
Jason puts it in perspective:
Can you imagine buying a brand new car and having bumper stickers from Subway, Coke, Cialis, and Jenny Craig on the back of it? “Oh, we put bumper stickers on there to subsidize the cost of the car” says the salesman. “You can just scrape those off”. We’d never accept that from a car dealership, yet it’s exactly what we get from the major OEMs like Dell and HP. I’d happily pay an extra $10 to Dell just to get a machine that had no software installed on it beyond their basic Dell support applications.
February 8th, 2007 at 11:32 am
I know how you feel. I picked up a new computer for the kids last week at Wal-Mart. Pretty sweet Compaq for $500 and change.
It took me over an hour just to clean all the shit off there before I could even start upgrading and installing things for them.
February 8th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Got a Dell laptop and had 15 programs in the tray. That’s what you get for going for the cheap. Didn’t take that long to get rid of the stuff. More like an annoyance if you know what you’re doing.
February 13th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
My name is John, and I work at Dell headquarters. I read your blog, and thought I’d fire off a comment.
In all fairness, a format/reinstall of Windows is just as easy with a pre-loaded hard drive as it is with a blank one. In fact, the steps are completely identical. Since we ship our systems with the reinstallation media, in effect, we DO send you the equivalent of “only the CDs” and let you do it yourself. We install everything as a courtesy, and customers are free to choose which programs they want to keep (it is after all, their computer), or they are free to choose to “do it themselves” by formatting the disk (just like they would were it completely blank) and installing an image of Windows Vista.
If Jason has any questions, feel free to point him to me. I’d be happy to help in any way I can.
customer_advocate@dell.com
ATTN: John
February 16th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
John,
Thanks for chiming in here, I appreciate the integrity it shows to come onto a blog and offer up a solution. I agree that by shipping the OS on a CD, and the drivers on a CD, you do give the customer everything they need to re-install the OS. The problem is that it takes hours to do so. What I would appreciate more is for Dell to respect me as a customer, and to respect my time. Give me an image of the laptop on a CD that has the OS + the drivers for the hardware, and NOTHING else (maybe the Dell support software as well). Making me jump through the hoops of installing every piece of hardware, one at a time, is just frustrating.
I’ll give Dell credit though: at least you give me the CDs I need to do this, even if it takes hours. That’s much better than some of the OEMs who don’t even give you CDs and instead use hidden partitions on the hard drive…
February 20th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Jason-
There was some discussion about this at CES with Michael this January ( http://whatsupdell.blogspot.com/2007/01/ces-roundtable-with-michael-dell.html ). In order to offer the low prices that we do, we receive payment from our sponsors to have these trial versions installed. Removal of this resource would effectively raise the cost of our machines across the board. It is important to note that this practice is not confined to Dell.
This may be an option we offer in the future, but it would be at a greater cost to the customer. If you’d like, feel free to submit your idea to our new feedback site, ideastorm: http://www.dellideastorm.com. We want you to know that it’s your ideas that shape the future of Dell, and so launched this website. As I understand it, there will be a feature on the site in the future to show which ideas were implemented.
Feel free to contact me if you need to.