Posted on 01/10/2007 10:27:52 PM PST by HAL9000
Excerpt -
A senior Microsoft Corp. executive says the company is concerned that uncertified third-party software loaded onto new computers by manufacturers could hurt the launch of consumer versions of its Windows Vista operating system later this month.In a discussion Tuesday night at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Microsoft official told CBC News Online, on condition of anonymity, that the world's largest software maker is frustrated by legal shackles that prevent the company from restricting what kinds of software major computer makers install on new PCs.
"We can't do anything about it because it would be illegal," the executive said in reference to restrictions placed on the company following a U.S. federal anti-trust lawsuit against the company.
The concern arises from third-party software that hardware makers commonly install on new computers in exchange for a fee, many of which have not been tested and certified by Microsoft to work with Vista, the executive said. They include things such as links to online services, and demo versions of programs.
"We call them craplets," the official said. The term is a contraction of the words "crap" and "applet." An applet is a small computer program or application.
~ snip ~
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
Microsoft Windows Vista - Now With Extra Craplets!
Now Microsoft wants to totally control the non-MS software that computer makers put on PCs? What, does MS want license fees for non-MS software, too? And calling other software "craplets"! That's rich!! Pot, meet kettle...
If it was that big of a deal they could start building their own hardware like Apple.
"craplets" ping
I'd say the biggest craplet is Vista itself.
Blame it on the other guy...
I think the real problem is that VISTA hasn't been tested and certified to work with VISTA.
Microsoft wrecked the game years ago due to bad architecture.
They let various types of appls just go out and tweak critical parts of the registry to do "neat stuff".
Now if they really wanted to build a secure system, tons of off the shelf software would just stop working.
I can see their point, but unfortunately for Microsoft the business model that brought them their riches has this side effect. Microsoft's best course of action may be to actually deprecate the "Microsoft" mindshare and push some of it to the OEMs so that when Vista is broke a user will say "My Dell is broke" and "Dell screwed up Vista" instead of "Vista is broke."
Which could have the end effect of pushing Dell to pre-install Linux on their machines...or nothing at all... and tell MS to go stuff it.
Not that's there's anything wrong with that.
Good luck getting people to put the blame on anyone else. As evidenced by most of the tech pings, as soon as the word "Microsoft" is mentioned, you have a very vocal group of people who delight in a knee jerk reaction of slamming MS for everything real or imagined that's wrong with the world. No matter what the thread is about even if it's not even about a problem, there is always someone who says "The way to fix the problem is to use anything other than MS". Some even go so far as to bring MS into conversations just so they can have something to bash.
If pre-installing Linux was a profitable model for home PC's you can be sure that someone would be doing it.
Introducing the Dell De-Crapifier..
http://www.yorkspace.com/2006/04/38
It’s a sad state of affairs when you buy a new computer these days and it comes pre-loaded with a ton of garbage software that brings your new machine to a crawl. If anyone’s bought a Dell PC in the last few years, you probably know what I’m talking about. Just recently, I was helping a friend set up his brand new Inspiron 1300 and it took FOREVER for it to boot up. It’s a very dissatifiying experience to pull a brand new computer out of the box and be spammed with a bunch of trial software. After removing all of the crap, (wich took a significant amount of time) it booted much faster and performed like it should. I kept thinking it would be nice to have an automated way to remove all this stuff. Thus was born the Dell De-Crapifier script.
I've had it on a test box for a couple of months. My own experience combined with what I've read is enough for me. I'll never run that piece of bloatware on a production machine.
Yet you give Apple a pass? Hypocrite.
You ain't kidding. I buy OEM computers because I spend to much time on the road to build machines at home. The first thing I do when I get a new machine is pave it with my own image. Casual users would be shocked at how much better their computers run without the "value add" bundled crapware they install.
Translation: I don't have a clue.
Ditto for whenever I have to reinstall the original image.
reminds me of everyone trashing win98 and how bad it was. when in fact a "clean" copy ran VERY well. most peoples problems with win98 where in fact emachines, dell,..... and others fault.
i'm no saying i have done this but i'm not saying i haven't but some people have been know to place a pirated copy onto an xp machine just to get it to run faster then the stock dell or hp crapware.
Sure. But so far, no one has been subjected to being whipped with a stick by MS as 'LibFreeOrDie' alluded to.
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