Why do companies add so much bloatware?

[TheNewbiestONewbs]

Seriously. I. DO. NOT. NEED. HP PRINTER SETUP! Its worse with "Gaming" laptops too. So many company specific tools that just aren't worth the bother. Why do they do this.

 

TLDR- Too much bloatware on everything. Why?

[Lurick]

Money.

[Princess Luna]

Because to someone somehow it is profitable, every thing these companies do is only and solely driven by how much money they can grab from it.

 

But so true bloatware is the worse, try getting a brand new Acer notebook, it took me an entire day to clean the OS and configure it the way I like.

[TheNewbiestONewbs]

Just now, Princess Cadence said:

Because to someone somehow it is profitable, every thing these companies do is only and solely driven by how much money they can grab from it.

 

But so true bloatware is the worse, try getting a brand new Acer notebook, it took me an entire day to clean the OS and configure it the way I like.

It's a week in and I'm still finding HP crap. omen is a nice brand and all but I can't have this eating up all my memory and battery while I'm in class. Seriously CAD eats enough battery as is.

[dcb-z]

Because some users and dumb enough to think that they need it.

 

2 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Because to someone somehow it is profitable, every thing these companies do is only and solely driven by how much money they can grab from it.

 

But so true bloatware is the worse, try getting a brand new Acer notebook, it took me an entire day to clean the OS and configure it the way I like.

I'm lucky that my Dell laptop's bloatware only took me about 15 minutes to clear off.

[Cool Guy]

Because they can make a lot of money.  Mcafee for instance, when a user purchases the product from a bloatware installation the computer manufacturer gets a cut.   If you * that cut by 10,000.  That's quite the chunk of cash.   I can imagine a reason for companies to do it on very affordable computers, but not the high-end.  Seriously, that is a dick move to put it on a computer a company is already making a decent profit off. 

[dcb-z]

1 minute ago, Cool Guy said:

Because they can make a lot of money.  Mcafee for instance, when a user purchases the product from a bloatware installation the computer manufacturer gets a cut.   If you * that cut by 10,000.  That's quite the chunk of cash.   I can imagine a reason for companies to do it on very affordable computers, but not the high-end.  Seriously, that is a dick move to put it on a computer a company is already making a decent profit off. 

All about making maximum profits: if there's money to be made, they'll try to make it.

[Cool Guy]

3 minutes ago, TheNewbiestONewbs said:

It's a week in and I'm still finding HP crap. omen is a nice brand and all but I can't have this eating up all my memory and battery while I'm in class. Seriously CAD eats enough battery as is.

Use the built in Windows 10 PC refresh feature.  It will essentially be a reinstall, and you should still have the recovery partition in case you need it.  

Just now, dcb-z said:

All about making maximum profits: if there's money to be made, they'll try to make it.

Yep.  I would be interested to see what HP's manufacturing line is like.  Probably have some teenage college-failure building rigs as fast as he can, and having components assembled on an assembly-line insanely quick.  Making huge profits, working these college-grads to death and then they go ahead and determine that extra software needs to be bundled.  I'll admit, Mcafee sucks as software, but it's better than nothing and that could be explained in a way,  but as for all the other junk like those laptop games and shit.  Get that shit off, because most of it is just wildtagent scam bullshit. 

[Anjelllo]

13 minutes ago, TheNewbiestONewbs said:

It's a week in and I'm still finding HP crap. omen is a nice brand and all but I can't have this eating up all my memory and battery while I'm in class. Seriously CAD eats enough battery as is.

It's probably easier to back up what you need and reinstall windows... atleast that's what I always do if someone I know buys a laptop

[TheNewbiestONewbs]

8 minutes ago, Cool Guy said:

Use the built in Windows 10 PC refresh feature.  It will essentially be a reinstall, and you should still have the recovery partition in case you need it.  

Yep.  I would be interested to see what HP's manufacturing line is like.  Probably have some teenage college-failure building rigs as fast as he can, and having components assembled on an assembly-line insanely quick.  Making huge profits, working these college-grads to death and then they go ahead and determine that extra software needs to be bundled.  I'll admit, Mcafee sucks as software, but it's better than nothing and that could be explained in a way,  but as for all the other junk like those laptop games and shit.  Get that shit off, because most of it is just wildtagent scam bullshit. 

I'll check into that refresh feature funnily enough they even got steelseries software installed. maybe they were hoping I had a pair of Arctic 3s.

[Spork829]

Because they know that consumers might complain about it, but since it's not that huge of a deal and everyone does it, it won't hurt their product sales at all. My rule with prebuilts and laptops is to just always format and reinstall Windows before using it.

[GoodBytes]

2 hours ago, TheNewbiestONewbs said:

Seriously. I. DO. NOT. NEED. HP PRINTER SETUP! Its worse with "Gaming" laptops too. So many company specific tools that just aren't worth the bother. Why do they do this.

 

TLDR- Too much bloatware on everything. Why?

2 main reasons:

1.  All these trial software are there because they help drop the price of the system. The market have shown that consumers don't consider junk level in their price. They want the cheapest price for the specs. And we see this behavior time and time again. Heck, just say Alienware, and you have an army of people telling you how overpriced they are, even taught they are limited in junk compared to other brands. Sony, when they used to make PCs, used to have an option to get a system junk free, but you had to pay 50$, and sadly that was not popular. People basically said "I'll remove it myself, and save 50$ (if I recall correctly)" (although, one can argue that they probably spent 2h doing this, assuming they do it, and the time and energy spent is just not worth the 50$ saved). For Dell, if you order through the small business section, you have (sorry, my experience is from 2009, I don't know how it is today) junk free, with even the OS disk (no recovery image) included (and superior warranty service, where they listen to what you say on what you tried, and local during office hours). But of course, you pay a premium over this, but that bring little to no interest. People prefer the lower price.
    
2. "Value-added software". For most consumers, benchmark and overall performance is not in their mind. All they want is a better system than what they have (which also have junk), so they get a nice, newer and therefore faster system. But what they care, and part of their decision making is having that "nice" looking utility to control the RGB LEDs, or this cool touch screen interface they saw at the store, etc. And consumers will pick a system over another one for this. We tech, we know it is all rubbish. As doing IT services, I cannot count the number of times where I help install their printer drivers, where I install JUST the driver, and they ask some  poorly coded utility that they REALLY want to do silly stuff with their printer, that most likely they'll use once in their lifetime, but they got sold by it. IE: This is why they got printer A over B.

 

What are some options for PCs?

• See if you order a pre-build system over the small business section of the manufacture website (you don't need to be an official business. They don't ask, and they don't say no to money), and see if you can call to order to do a request of having a pre-build system junk free. They might even do it for free.
   
• Get your laptop from Microsoft online/offline store. Look for "Signature Edition" systems. These are systems where you'll still have the manufacture utilities and stuff, but Microsoft make an arrangement with the manufacture to not have the junk. MS pays the difference. So the system price is the same, but without the junk. Now, you just have the OEM software to deal with, and now you can pick what you care or not about (for example, say you have RGB keyboard, remove everything but utility to control the RGB keyboard lights)
   
• Surface. Those are super clean... to clean in my opinion, where you don't even have the driver control panels. So any changes is through the registry. Sucks for the non tech guy. And of course, Surface line is definitely not affordable.

How about printers?

• Get office focused brands, like Brother. Junk free drivers.. well, you have the option in the installation what to install, and even the junk is fairly light.  Easy to service, no tricks with toners, even have an override mode where you can print regardless of the empty state of the ink, to get the last drop, ink is cheap, and you can refill easily (although they don't recommend it of course), solid build quality, not too expensive, small in form factor which makes it acceptable for home use. You have brands that don't enforce their junk with their drivers either.
   
• Anther way, is to use Windows drivers, this way you have just the drivers. Success rate is higher on more simpler printers, especially non USB ones. But many times you can find printer drivers built-in Windows that might not the exact same model, but the model is for the same CPU and protocol that the printer use, and you'll have just the drivers installed, and no junk, and it will fully function. (Might need the junk if you have a printer+scanner system to get that scanner utility)

 

[[BP] Sir. Regretti]

They add bloat ware as a user feature also for money on third party programs 

[Arika]

[removed]

[yathis]

W10 will open up all your bolted down security. Billy Boy is smiling.