Angus Kidman27 June 2007, 7:59 AM
Dell has reacted to customer anger over pre-loaded bloatware on new PCs. The PC giant is promising customers the ability to opt-out.
 Dell's preloaded software: once fatboy, soon to be slim |
It's a familiar routine: you purchase a new PC, you plug it in, and you spend the next day uninstalling all those annoyingly tedious applications which the vendor has seen fit to sprinkle across your hard drive, slowing its boot time to a crawl and getting in the way of how you expect to do things.
Such pre-installed applications can be appealing to new computer users who haven't got a clue what they're doing, which is one reason vendors appear to remain committed to them.
But for huge PC companies like Dell, it's also a way of reducing the cost of the PC -- companies like McAfee and Symantec pay rich commissions to Dell for each PC their software is pre-loaded onto. (Such companies know that even though they're giving away 12-18 months of free anti-virus to each new Dell owner, there's a high chance they'll eventually convert that person into a paying customer.)
For experienced PC owners, however, bloatware, or "shovelware" is just a nuisance.
According to Dell, there might be an end in sight. In a posting on its Direct2Dell blog, Dell announced that it was trying to take steps to reduce the amount of "bloatware" found on its machines.
One option allows users to order machines with nothing but the OS and anti-virus components included.
Extremists can also order a machine without a hard drive, which pretty much guarantees you won't get any software you don't want.
"We also made significant changes to the way software is organized and discovered on all desktops and notebook PCs," worldwide client software manager Michelle Pearcy noted
The number of desktop icons on most machines has been reduced from 21 to 10, she noted. (Admittedly, this is something of a trick. The same software has been installed, but Dell has grouped it into so-called "buckets" based on function.)
Dell took pains to argue that adding software to its machines doesn't slow performance.
"We are also in the process of streamlining the system tray and quick launch sections of the desktop which will improve boot time and other performance metrics," Pearcy wrote.
"However, our performance tests in the lab have not found significant improvements by removing software trials and other executables -- most of our software sits quietly on the desktop until you launch it.
The two culprits we have highlighted in our labs include the OS and security applications -- both critical to using and maintaining the integrity of your PC."
A useful step forward would nonetheless be to offer the option of buying the machine without the security software. If you're an existing PC owner, chances are you'll want to transfer your existing security software subscription rather than succumbing to Dell's options (McAfee or Norton, depending what you buy).
Even that's hardly a universal solution, of course. Dell is just one player in the market, and HP -- which is currently outselling it on the global stage -- is also a familiar player on the bloatware scene.
We can't imagine that Dell will be including nothing on the machines it plans to sell direct through large chain stores. The fact that notebook sales are a growing proportion of the overall market also isn't much comfort to the anti-bloatware cause.
Because they tend to use specialised components, notebooks also tend to have a customised Windows installation with a plethora of special wireless utilities and other non-standard junk -- and once you've done that, why not customise it further and sell off some space to software manufacturers?
One vendor's bloatware is another vendor's selling point. Apple's endless Mac versus PC advertising campaign makes heavy play of its bundled iLife software -- extra software remains one of the few ways in which manufacturers can differentiate PCs built from essentially the same components.
At very least, there seems to be growing recognition in the PC industry that shoppers are starting to make clear that you can't polish a turd -- if the bundled software is rubbish, it's of no added value at all all.
We're not sure how far this trend will go. But frankly, it has to be encouraged.
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