We’ve received several emails in the last hour or so from our readers regarding Sony offering the “Fresh Start” bloatware-free option on one of their high-end laptops. The emails were not complaining about the $50 fee being charged to get a PC without the crapware, but instead they were all letting us know that Sony has changed their mind and will not be charging for it. Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
In the comments on the last article a lot of you said that you would not pay for such an option, and now you don’t have to worry. Personally I would have paid because even though you can uninstall the software there will always be a lot of things left behind. That’s just my opinion though, and one thing that I’ve come to accept is that the PC manufacturers are able to offer computers for less money because of the software bundles that ship with them. That’s why I wouldn’t mind paying a premium to have the software never installed on my system in the first place.
Expect to see the $50 price tag removed tomorrow, but you’ll still need to fork out the $100 to get Vista Business if you want the crapware-free computer. Not to mention that the computer itself will run you around $2,000.
See everyone! The people have the power. If only we realized that all of the time
Well in some cases that’s true. I don’t think we’re going to be able to persuade Sony to do this for any of their cheaper notebooks.
wait, so you gotta pay ($50) them not to install apps??? These days things just get weirder and weirder.
Companies pay them to install this software. That’s why Sony was trying to make up the difference by charging the user. Instead they will probably just build the cost into the overall cost and not tell us. With the power of the blogs making things much more visible and transparent than ever before trying what they were attempting to do would be commercial suicide. Hence they pulled the plug at least officially. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the long run.
[ubuntulinuxhelp.com]
This one makes for an interesting read. What about those people who do not need the biggest bloatware of ‘em all ‘Windows Vista’. Without an Operating system you would think the Laptop would be a lot cheaper. But imagine being asked to pay
70$ more for a removing windows.
Yeah, I thought about them doing that as well which means that they could make even more money overall since many users may never think to remove the software. So they’ll get the benefit of the markup in addition to the fees from the companies for installing the software.
That’s really nuts, but I’m sure Microsoft is giving the manufacturers an incentive for selling machines with Windows.