Over the weekend Sony floated a $50 charge for giving you a clean computer rather than one loaded with system-crippling junkware — then promptly made the "service" free of charge after the outcry. In typical Sony fashion, even when it’s doing something good it manages to turn it into a public relations catastrophe.
You, however, have an easy way out, no matter what you’ve bought: the PC Decrapifier, a freeware utility that removes typical bloatware.
Sony, it must be said, appears to be the only PC manufacturer to provide a simple "clean installation" checkbox at its online store, albeit just for specific configurations of its TZ subnotebook lineup. (It’s a great laptop, too, so that’s just another good reason to get one.) Most other big PC manufacturers still load their machines with trash and expect you to eat it.
How exactly do you tell if a notebook you’re about to buy will be clean? I’ve spent half my weekend tooling around the online stores, and none are candid about their sneakly little extras. Dell, at least, lets you deselect pre-activated antivirus trials. Perhaps the answer is to be that even they don’t know: marketing deals wax and wane fast, so there’s no telling what crap might come on the next billboard you buy. We do know one thing, though: customers hate being treated as eyeballs to be sold to AOL, Norton and other disreputables.
The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg railed against such practices in a 2007 column, saying he was "shocked at how long this machine took to restart and to do a cold start after being completely shut down."
Yeah, it was another Sony. But Sony isn’t the only culprit.
Michael Dell suggested at 2007’s Consumer Electronics Show that craplet-free machines would be worth paying extra for, but the Dell Online Store currently offers no explicit "clean system" option on its Inspiron, XPS and Gaming notebooks. Macs often come with limited-use software, such as trial editions of Microsoft Office and accounting software, but they do not load on startup by default.
Alienware gaming models and Lenovo’s Thinkpads are reported to be craplet free, but at least one blogger disagrees on the Lenovo. PC World found that models from Gateway and Polywell contained the least junk.
One company whose machines you should avoid is Toshiba: removing crapware from its machines voids the warranty.
If the Decrapifier isn’t good enough, there’s only one way to be sure: nuke the site from orbit with your own retail copy of Windows. Demand real OS disks, not "restore disks," when you buy computers. Either that, or get a Mac. And Linux is always there if your hobby is configuring computers.
