Feeling heat from Macs, Microsoft sells PCs sans crapware

HP

I'm sure we used to get PCs at a previous job from HP (DC5100-7600s)) that just had a bare XP install on them.

Mind you, that might have been a Computacenter image.

Quite surprised it's taken MS/OEMs so long to take the corporate cock from their mouth and realise that there's actually a pretty large market for 'slimmed down' installs though.

Christ knows, having dealt with Acer towers, and their hour long, non-skippable 'value added' installation routines, I've seriously considered going back to my black art of making my own proper Sysprepped images and just ghosting the bastards straight out of the box...it'd probably have allowed me to earn more chargeable hours doing actual, real work over the last six months rather than charging for watching progress bars. Thankfully, the latest Acers seem much better for this, meaning I can do more work for more clients.

Thank christ....

Anon, as my bosses read this..

Firts of April

Is not yet.

saw the title

Wanted a bundled iscsi server, even if it doesn't have many features...

Only Microsoft...

Must have been part of Billy Gates original master plan right from the start..."Right no drm controls and let everyone copy windows ... we'll start gradually bringing in copy controls from 2000 onwards... xp activation... also add crapware as we go .. then we can come with a new version that is better as it won't have any!!"...

Actually this reminds me of Ken Livingstone and traffic lights / Congestion Charge of rephasing to silly timings prior CC then setting them back.. did MS have any involvement?? heh..

I've always had original discs for OEM installs or volume license discs and never use any media bundled with the machine as it's crapware/out of date... It's hilarious though.... heh..

Downloadable utility?

Maybe it would be grand were an OEM stripper utility made available?

I (slightly warily) await our glorious platform unification overlords

I personally cannot wait until things like WP and Windows proper are 'unified' - I'd like to see a 'minimum specification' for Windows PCs (like WinPho7 phones have - eg. 1GHz CPU, this res screen, this size camera), that each OEM has to meet. Might stop the godawful flood of cheap Acers which can barely run the Windows 7 Home Premium that is installed on it, and save us "extended-family tech support" types a bit of a headache.

A downside is that such a unification of Windows may bring along with it some of the lock-in and lock-downs of most phone OSs. But no matter, that's why we have Linux/BSD/Haiku/etc. :)

This just seems like a logical first step.

On topic of the article, I hope they roll this out to other countries (cough Australia cough) soon.

WOW

WOW. I mean WOW. And it only took them - what - 5 years to figure this out. That's how long I've been telling friends and relatives to buy Apple, so I didn't have to come to their house and spend an hour uninstalling cr@p. Microsoft is indeed listening! But they're listening from somewhere about 5 light-years away.

<rolls eyes>

"run faster and to be easier to set up and maintain."

"average boot 40 percent faster than the same piece of hardware"

"With Apple Macs in its sights"

Yeah, right. Apple, right. Because MacOS is well-known for being ressource-frugal, right.

I think someone in ElReg Towers fails to see the white penguin(s) in the room (hint: one of them is dressed as a 800-pounds Goooooooorilla).

Fast boot on shitty hardware: check

Fast operation on shitty hardware: check

Head in the clouds, so no user-serviceable parts inside: check

MacOS fails on *at least* 2 of these 3 points (not an attack against Apple, just not the same core target), so I find doubtful that MS has "Apple Macs in its sights" with this...

own medecine

>They also come with “just the software you need,” which is code for saying the machines don't contain crapware such as promotional versions of antivirus software that can drastically hamper performance.

No trial version of MS office then?

Competition Good

"With Apple Macs in its sights..."

Good to see competition is alive and well in the home computer arena, and working in the consumers interests. Long may it live.

Fast boot.

So... they tweak a windows for a specifically known hardware set and get fast boot. Naturally that's easily done with a linux install.

Tell you what M$, you give us:

1) source code. enough rights to use it (at least rebuild our own systems).

2) build tools.

3) documentation.

And we'll look after our fast boot ourselves.

Hell, I'm not even looking for a free handout. I'll pay for it. You're in it for the money, I understand, you have to eat. I'll pay US$500 for say a basic windows, $700-1000 for professional. I understand a server version will cost more.

IMHO, those prices aren't too unreasonable, but that's just my opinion. I would pay, I suspect so would quite a few people out there.

Actually, I already (probably, depending on what you are hiding) have all your build tools legally. So All I need are (1) and (3). Sounds reasonable?

But you won't will you?

I smell a troll

So Dan, where does the 'feeling the heat from Macs' come from? Of all the items you link only one mentions Apple and not as the motivation for Signature. You ignore totally the motivation laid out in the Paul Thurrott article* which looked at from an MS perspective is plausible. There's so much in signature you could criticise** yet instead you try to ignite another PC/MAC fanboi war. Do try to move on.

* The article does smell a bit ripe though.

**Signature is touted as 'just the software you need'*** but includes Zune? They *have* to be having a larf.

***Rip out Zune, Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery, Flash and silvershite; Upgrade W7 to XP Pro; Rip crappybat reader as Pro will go on; Install Terd, Excel and Visio (all 2003 natch); Install FF AdBlock & NoScript. Still a way short of just the software I need but a good baseline.