now if they'd only offer a choice of operating systems....

Let's see where this puts Sony in the crapware free computer chart:

1. Apple
2. Lenovo
3. Sony
1098938. Dell

Well, there it is.

Its still not free. You have to choose Vista Business to enable the option, which is 100 bucks. So fuck that I'd rather get the bloatware and delete it myself.

Yeah, I don't think it was ever about the money, it was about the "VALUE" associated with having a clean system. SONY can use that as a free bargaining chip and a differentiation of their product in the marketplace.

It's kinda like those Disneyland ads from about five years ago when they portrayed Goofy as the "dummy" who decided to can the Main Street Electrical Parade in the Magic Kingdom: create an apparent lack of "supply" for an item and then you can apologize and "donate" it back for free. Classic. The parade got the chance to modernize (fiber optics, LEDs, etc.) and California Adventure got a cross-over attraction.

Meh, at least it's a start. One of the most frustrating things about buying a new laptop is removing all that crap. I recently purchased an HP laptop...spent about 2 hours cleaning it up, only to discover a fatal flaw with vista 64 (it doesn't work with my printer over the network) so I wound up returning it. Was totally my bad for not doing the basics before starting 'customization 101'...but I openly admit, one of the things I like most about the mac that I bought instead is that it came out of the box, ready to use. I didn't have to remove all the crap, I didn't have to remove their 'demo' shit (are you listening dell?), and overall it made me a happier customer.
And yes, choice of OS would be nice. I don't care how much SP1 has supposedly improved things, I hate vista. YOU LISTENING MICROSOFT? I HATE VISTA.
That is all.

Yay Sony! Now I can go buy more UMD movies with my $50...

@Monty: That assumes that Apple's own low-end, preloaded software isn't crap.

Don't even get me started on Microsoft crapware. (See, I can be unbiased.)

Lenovo does do a good job of clean systems, though, I agree.

I'd put HP in the top 3.

It's always been very easy for me to get the crapware off of new systems when I get them, but then I have no hesitation about taking them down to their shorts and socks, reinstalling XP from scratch, and then GHOSTing the baseline system in case one of my brood decides bigtittyspreadycheeky.com might be a great place to download a "game" from...

@Mitch: Yeah, like I said, I've had no problem de-crapping my HP laptops. And, no, Vista is not loaded on them. I tried. I went back to XP.

@1stage:

That assumes that Apple's own low-end, preloaded software isn't crap.

Hey, I am posting comments on Gizmodo. If I put Apple as #2 on the list, I might get banned.

@Monty: :)

And for those who missed my earlier reference...
B

I love they way took what was a shitty policy in the first place, turned it into a PR fuck up...and now they're making it look like a gift while STILL trying to bank on it by pushing a more expensive OS.

Nice Sony.

The charged you $50 because they were actually losing money with not putting the bloatware on your computer.
But im sure that if they give you a fresh start they'll send you news letters about programs and spam your e-mail address and sell your address to companies to send you spam snail mail.

@Monty:
HA!
I'm surprised I haven't been smashed flat by the ban-hammer for much more flagrant fruit-bashing than that.

Now can they provide a bloatware wipe for current owners?

[www.pcdecrapifier.com]

@1stage: "That assumes that Apple's own low-end, preloaded software isn't crap."

Difference being that I can drag-n-drop them out of existence in less than a minute, and for the most part, they don't run in the background without my approval.

@forcetrainer: lol!

Didn't I read on Gizmodo that the reason PC's are cheaper than Macs is not necessarily the hardware but that the bloat-ware makers actually pay the manufacturer to have it on the system, thereby lowering the price. (well the sticker price, the cost in human lives to bloat-ware is incalculable)

@Monty:

Let's see where this puts Sony in the crapware free computer chart:

1. Apple
2. Lenovo
3. Sony
1098938. Dell

i guess... if you say so. i've never got a single solitary bit of crapware on the tons of various Dells i have ordered over the years. maybe you don't know how to buy a computer correctly or misread your options during the purchasing process?

literally. not even one single piece of even the smallest crapware ever. on a single Dell ever purchased.

i'd say the multi-GB iWork "demo" and the Office 2004 Test Drive that all Macs get are more annoying to me than anything ever installed on a Dell.

Now please enable Intel VT on your future Vaios or try to make an update to enable it on the current ones?

Oh why must you lock it off? There is absolutely no reason to! : (

I have a Vaio TZ, love it, I am a Sony/Playstation fanboy but yes, they are rather unfriendly to their own customers, have expensive accessories, poor support, DRM, etc.

I really like you Sony, you have some great stuff but please treat us better?

I can't wait for the replacement to the TZ, but please enable Intel VT and just be more friendly to us.

@x23:

i've never got a single solitary bit of crapware on the tons of various Dells i have ordered over the years

You need to make a YouTube video on how to order a Dell without crapware on it so I can have our staff watch it. Staff in our office order Dell's on a monthly basis, and the first thing they do is bring it into us to remove all of the crap.

Then again, it may be the definition of crapware that is at issue. To me, Google Toolbar is crapware. I suspect that is not the case to you.

@Monty:
Well apparently even though I'm A+, MCP, MCSE & CSNE certified I don't know how to order a Dell either, because last time I ordered a D-series LT for our staff, I didn't see any checkbox to remove Yahoo toolbar, Google desktop, Roxio media creator demo, or Photo Now! 1.0 trial.

I guess were just not PC savvy.
I'll just have to switch to ordering macs for our group.
I'll be following up that purchase by sticking my head in an industrial furnace.

Let er rip x! HA!

@x23: "i'd say the multi-GB iWork "demo" and the Office 2004 Test Drive that all Macs get are more annoying to me than anything ever installed on a Dell."

I have a question for you: If you've never gotten a single piece of superfluous crapware on the system, how can you determine that the test drive and demo software on Macs are more annoying?

Here's a novel idea.... why not just stop putting bloatware on new computers period.

What does bloatware afford you that a predefined link (to said bloatware) in a browser can't offer?

Whats that? You don't have an internet connection?

Take that labor money the PC vendor saved from not having to build custom bloatware OS OEM images and apply it to a bloatware CD that could be given away for free. That way the bloatware vendor still wins their bloatware bonus cash from the PC vendor still.

Win/win and no one suffers.

wow, I've seen these stories here on Giz, but haven't commented. It's actually a little sad seeing the spin put on this. Bottom line, PC's are cheaper with bloatware, since the manufacturers are paid to put it on, and thus can lower the price and still make money. If you don't like, just take it off. That they are giving the option to pay to not have it put on in the first place was a good idea, but many here said booo for putting it on in the first place. Fine, go buy a PC that doesn't include it. Alienware would be a good alternative, though you'd be paying thousands and thousands more. Just be realistic about this topic guy's.

You can buy PCs without bloatware, or even an OS... instead of the big shops, go to your local whitebox PC retailer.

But still, the amount of bloatware that gets preinstalled is annoying.

My Sony, for example, came with a 40GB hard disk (1.8" - it's a UMPC). On boot, you had around what, 8GB free. 80% of the capacity is used already?! Granted, another 8GB was used for the recovery partition, but still. It means you have to de-crapify before you can even install a single program and be left with some disk space.

Not to mention, you must create the recovery discs before you even begin - the reason why there was 8GB free was that was the minimum necessary to make the recovery discs. Install a program, and the recovery disc creator would fail.

Heck, even with Apple's bloatware install, it barely takes 10GB in total, and half that is the OS. And they rarely cause the bootup to take forever (my Sony's boot time is atrocious before I wiped it - we're talking a good 10 minutes to boot. Sure it got to the login screen in 3 minutes, but it churns away loading all that crap while you log in. So even with Apple's bloatware, your system starts up fast, and you're not inundated with a million popups or balloons asking you to do a half-trillion things ("Buy me now!", "Subscribe now!").