This weekend, my fiancee and I got new computers. My Lenovo was starting to cut out on the speakers and the touchpad was going wonky, and she’s had an Acer netbook approaching three years of service that was probably going to explode soon.
And where I live it was a tax holiday this weekend, so, hey, shop local, dodge shipping costs. We get home, free our new computers from their cardboard confines and…discover that our new laptops are freighted down with huge piles of crap software we didn’t ask for, don’t want and dear God do we ever not need.
It’s the second decade of the twenty-first century… why are we still dealing with this crap?
It’s especially baffling because computer manufacturers are faced with a problem: Nobody wants to buy their products anymore. They’re snapping up iPads at the rates they used to buy laptops, and it’s not hard to see why.
It’s true that the iPad comes with preloaded software, and so does the Nexus 7, but the difference is largely that of design. The software on both are tightly integrated into the OS and designed to work with buttery smoothness.
Compare this to your average OEM laptop. At the very least they come with some form of virus software, which will prompt you endlessly to pay for it. Then there are the Centers and the Managers and the Assistants, all these programs named to seem like they help you when there are other, better programs that you already use.
That’s the problem: None of these programs actually help. They’re just obstacles that tech-savvy consumers remove and your parents put up with. It’s so annoying that there are sections of the market that demand Apple-grade prices just to not have to deal with it.
So listen to your consumers, guys… ditch the bloatware for good.
image courtesy Jonathan Rothwell on Flickr