Responding to a tidal wave of outrage, Sony has reversed a plan to charge $50 to remove all the pre-installed applications — often derided as “bloatware” or “craplets” — from its high-end TZ-series notebooks.
Early Friday, PC World reported that Sony would charge $50 for a configuration option called “Fresh Start,” which would not include the bloatware. When contacted by Gadget Lab, a spokesperson for Sony said that the company will now remove that charge.
“There will be no charge for Fresh Start,” said the spokesman.
Like many notebook manufacturers, Sony preloads its notebooks with anti-virus, anti-spyware and other useful software. Problems arise when such applications swiftly expire, offer limited functionality, or result in poor system performance–or when there is simply so much of it that it cannot be easily removed.
Fresh Start will now be a no-cost option on Sony’s slick subnotebooks, – but – only for those who opt for Windows Vista Business Edition, a $100 upgrade.
Golly gee. That’s thoughtful of them.
How much of the Upgrade gets kicked back by Microsoft? Could it be – $50?
Sony loves screwing it’s customers. How else you could explain this, rootkits which install by force from music cd:s and thumbdrives etc?
I’d pay top dollar to once-and-for-all get MSN and Messenger the hell off my computer.
There’s a ridiculously easy solution for both Sony and customers.
Load up the machine with bloatware, BUT also include a program that deletes all traces of the crap at the click of an icon. Sony gets the money from their bloatware suppliers, customers get to kill it all if they want.
Sometimes there’s a very fine line between a sales technique and blatant criminal extortion, not to mention a ‘fraud’ and a ‘no-cost option’.
It appears Sony has no idea of the location of that line.
Sheesh. Sony Vaio laptops are so vastly overpriced, I wonder why anyone would purchase one.
I’ve avoided purchasing Sony products anyway, ever since the Rootkit scandal.
Are computer buyers and users so pressed for time that they can’t spend five minutes to remove the unwanted apps themselves?
Get a MAC instead.
I just bought a new Compaq notebook….
(Vista, naturally, AARGH…. Although I actually like it when it’s not behaving like a Beta.)
The only one in the store that I wanted was “set up” already – $179 add-on! The good news is that most of the bloatware is decent stuff, and it was easy to trash what I really didn’t want. (And they dropped a LOT of that $179 when it looked like I was going to go elsewhere.) (It also wasn’t “timed” stuff – I got a full year of Trend Micro’s AV software….)
Now, getting rid of the dreq that HP/Compaq pre-load is fun, and it only took me a week to figure out how to bypass their “you’ve got a problem and we’ll fix it now, whether you like it or not” add-on.
My favorite was on another HP/Compaq desktop I had. If you 404’d a web site (easy to mis-type things), instead of the usual 404 message, and a chance to just re-type, you ALWAYS got their “helper” that told you that you’d mis-typed it, etc., but then you had to re-type the whole URL…. Took a while to find that one….
‘Course, my favorite bloatware story, if you discount a machine I bought a client once that came with 150+MB worth of “stuff” on a 300MB HD (quite a while ago): I’d just bought two machines that were pre-loaded, and, in those days, only had to do a little work to clean ’em up. Then I bought a nice 486-33 tower for server use. I brought it to the office, installed the tape drive, and fired it up. POST ROM level error to the effect that “your ‘C’ drive is trash”….
Oh, great…. We want to use this thing on Monday, and it’s 1745 on Friday…. I called the store, and the tech started with “did you Format the HD and install DOS?”…. Right…. After buying all those pre-loaded machines, I’d managed to luck into a bare drive…. Five minutes later it was ready to install the tape software….
Non-bloatware, but in the same time frame, I installed some network software on a machine, and it refused to work. A little hair pulling until I figured out that the “Install” program didn’t understand WordStar’s EOF markers in things like AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS. It put the new stuff BELOW the markers…. DOS, sticking with it’s CP/M tradition, refused to read the new stuff. Didn’t take much – Norton, I think – to fix, but….
(I didn’t just walk out on the dealer, btw, because I intended to spend $50-$75 on the same stuff that was “set up” for me already, and I knew that the machine probably worked. No need to take it back when it didn’t – happened to me once…. My time’s worth the extra $50-ish….)
Regards,
Stu.
Stu.
I just bought a Sony TZ-150 because it’s the only powerful laptop that will fit inside all hotel safes I’ve run across (and I have the machine for travel).
It took me 10 (count-em 10) hours remove the crapwar e using the add/remove software system. Adobe Professional alone took 45 minutes to remove. I have no idea what was going on during that time. Reboots take geological time to complete.
This was the single worst new computer experience I ever had, although I knew that I would eventually get enough crap off the machine that it could be usable. I’d imagine that novice buyers would just toss the machine in the trash. Half the blame goes to Microsoft for Vista and half goes to Sony.
I’d love to get a Sony exec and a Microsoft exec in a room and force them to unbox this device and turn it on and see how much work they must do to make it usable.
The I reduced the size of the Vista partition and installed Fedora 8 Linux on it so I could do 64 bit application development. [where’s the outrage that all machines sold nowdays are 64 bit yet Microsoft has no good 64 bit solution out there so you get a lousy 32 bit OS when you buy a machine]
“How much of the Upgrade gets kicked back by Microsoft? Could it be – $50?” – Knowing Greedy Gate$ love of greenbacks, I wouldn’t be surprised if the split isn’t 99-1 in favor of you know who !!!
And isn’t the best way to get rid of “BloatWare and CrapWare” is to WipeDisk and install GNU/Linux ???
And one more piece of outrage about Sony’s TZ 150.
It comes with a 3GB Spiderman movie on it. If you want to see it you have to pay for it, so it’s just more crapware.
But to make things worse they have a “restore partition” on the disk so if you screw up your system you can restore the system from scratch without using the restore dvds (that you must create yourself!!!). Well that restore partition wastes 3gb storing that freaking Spiderman movie so it can be restored and then deleted again by me.!!! So I’ve only got a 100gb disk and I’m wasting 3gb of holding a spiderman movie which I don’t want and can’t watch unless I pay them money!!!!
Such arrogance on the part of Sony.
I can’t believe people buy anything from Sony! Some folks never learn. They deserve what they get!
I’m old enough to remember when Sony was a great and respected name, and made cool, must-have products like the original cassette Walkman. It’s been a long downhill slide.
I advise people to go to a local PC shop and buy an equivalent box for maybe $50 more – with an OS CD and withouth the cr@p.
I always format and reinstall Windows on new machines.
The real problem with Sony is drivers. Installing XP or Vista on my VAIO SZ 360P involves a gauntlet of 20 or so applications and drivers that have to be installed in the correct order or you end up with hangups, BSODs, and non-functioning FN buttons.