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True enough. I fully agreed with you about those PC manufacturer provided softwares. Where I disagree is that you say it is a Dell thing. They all put that garbage on home PC's and they all suck for the most part. That is why, as I said above, that I scratch the PC and put the OS on naked or at the very least uninstall as much garbage as I can.

But I have some old-fashioned ideas, one of which is that when I pay for something it is my absolute property.

However: Every single piece of software ever published plainly states in the EULA that the software and/or OS do not belong to the computer owner.

And that is essentially what some of these "Helpful" programs, like support.exe do, not to mention some of the things lurking in XP.

There is stuff lurking everywhere. Even OUTSIDE the Windows world. There is really nowhere to hide regardless of what the Pinguified guys say about their SECURE OS.

But I have some old-fashioned ideas, one of which is that when I pay for something it is my absolute property. However: Every single piece of software ever published plainly states in the EULA that the software and/or OS do not belong to the computer owner.

Well, I may as well fess up:

I REMOVED THE TAG FROM MY MATTRESS, TOO! :-)

Anything I do to activate that agreement, such as opening a package, etc, I am certain I did under a condition of Diminished Capacity. Because a person who feels as I do about ownership and control of private property obviously would agree to no such thing unless they were drunk or huffing ether. I do not care how many erotic fantasies MS and others have about "rented" software, I flatly refuse to accept the concept because it is absurd. If I pay $250 for Win2000, if I feel like decompiling it, or using the CD as an ashtray, I shall. *IF* if did not really own it, then it makes sense for me to pay a monthly bill and pay fifty cents for the CD. They are not going to have it both ways, at least here. Not while I have a network of a half dozen happy machines running 98SE.

Oh, BTW, Yes, the first thing I did when I got the machine was to neuter and gut it pretty thoroughly. An old rule of mine from DOS (TSR's)days is "Nothing runs unless I tell it to." Amazing how well machines will run on W98 if that rule is followed.

But so far the Linux people have not converted me, either, though I am weakening.