Microsoft to Charge Customers $99 to Remove OEM ‘Crapware’
May 20th, 2012This issue is definitely becoming more ridiculous as the profit margins disappear in the commodity PC meat grinder. I spend about fifteen minutes removing crapware from each new Windows based machine (Dell and Lenovo) that I prepare for use by a small company here.
The good news is that uninstalling the stuff is simple using the control panel in Windows, but the fact that people have to do it at all is absurd.
Now, why not hang a $99 price tag out there to remove garbage that shouldn’t be on the machines in the first place?
Innovation!
Maybe Microsoft is trying to grow Apple’s market share.
Via: ZDnet:
Will people be willing to pay Microsoft to remove the crapware that the OEMs install on new PCs? Microsoft thinks they will.
For around two and a half years, Microsoft has been offering what it calls Signature editions of certain PCs. According to Microsoft, these PCs give you faster and easier access to “the applications you want right away without getting sidetracked talking to trialware or other sample software”.
In other words, when you boot up your new PC, instead of having to deal with a blizzard of pop-ups and dialog boxes related to trialware and demo software — collectively known as crapware — the system boots to a clean Windows desktop.
