The ads pop up about once an hour, seemingly without regard to what other programs may be running, which sucks if you're in the middle of a presentation. Users have so far been unable to find a way to completely disable the various messages (the check box with "do not show this message again" doesn't always work). While the ThinkPad line has continued to be well engineered from a hardware standpoint, the packaged Thinkvantage software has gotten progressively worse with each new version. Utilities that were once useful, such as the back-up tool, have become bloated and dysfunctional. Hopefully Lenovo will take heed of customer complaints and discontinue the ads with the next update. [Slashdot]

Dell's reasoning is this: most people want anti-virus built in, Acrobat Reader doesn't count as trialware (it's free), and Google tools is fine because it's from Google. You do have the option of declining the EULA for the antivirus on first boot to have it automatically uninstall, and Acrobat and Google Tools can be removed using Dell's new uninstall utility.

Although we would have liked for the machine to be completely empty when shipped—we've never had a use for Google Tools, and we like AVG's free antivirus just fine—we can live with this. [Dell]