You must get the business version of Vista to qualify, which is $100 more than the home version. For that money, you might as well get a separate OEM version from Newegg for a lot less.

I find crapware simply appalling. I have spent countless hours (and earned myself a bit of money) cleaning the crap off of people's computers. Many people were willing to pay me $45 to clean up their computers (plus optimize their memory in the old himem.sys and EMM386 days), so I suppose $50 is about right, but companies should have no right to put it on there in the first place.

Besides the fact that I often can build a PC cheaper than the OEMs sell them for, the fact that my machines are 100% crap-free is the best incentive for building my own. There is nothing quite like seeing Windows XP boot in the blink of an eye, when it has absolutely nothing but itself to load.

Laptops are still almost exclusively OEM realm though, especially the thin/light ones, so building one yourself is not really possible. Plus, laptops have so many odd drivers (which are always proprietary), that you are forced to stay with the shipping boot-image, so doing a Format and starting over isn't much of an option either.

All that to say that IF I was actually looking at buying one of these Sony laptops, I think I WOULD cough up the $50 for the "Fresh Start", but I'd be cursing at Sony and myself the whole time.

Most PC makers usually only make about $5 per PC with all the crap ware they install.

I bought a MacBook Pro and installed Vista on it because I was uninterested in all of the crap the Windows OEMs put on their machines. The Mac runs Vista "well enough" and I know that all I have on it is Vista and whatever I installed (plus OSX). This pleases me.

It might be a good Idea for businessmen and people that only need pcs to check email and write word docs, but for someone that knows how things work more or less it's like stealing money since they can get all the trials and demos out fairly quikly

Once crappy software is installed, you computer is never the same. Just because you uninstall some software do you really thing your system is exactly the same as if it was never installed? Afraid not.

The uninstall process is only as good as the uninstaller and if the software is something so lame that you have to force users to try it to sell it, then how good do you think the uninstall is going to be?

The only way to have a clean install of an OS is to never install garbage software in the first place.

Told you so... Sony is the worst company in the history of companies when it comes to treating the customer well.

Couldn't the laptop be formatted immediately after purchase, and have a windows Xp/Vista put onto it immediately after again ? Using a free program like KillDisk is very simple, and takes about a half hour. I've done it a couple times to start fresh.

i just read on gizmodo that they will now make it free. check it for yourself

do you ever have anything constructive to say rockhop? these free trials and junk usually only take 30 minutes to get rid of. and why are u flaming at sony? go back to eating hotpockets in your mothers basement.

Sounds like a blackmail to me.

There is a program called PC Decrapifer (not too sure about the spelling) that is supposed to remove all that stuff.

A lot of the crapware that's put on PCs (ahem...HP....) is "value added" utilities by the system vendor, not just virtual adware.

The largest problem with a lot of the crapware is that in order to load quickly when you click the icon, it runs a service/systray/etc to preload the app. This really eats into your system performance. Unfortunately, a lot of other apps that you want to install also subscribe to this stupidity.

And then there's the registry rot of removing it...

Out of all those companies which make laptops, why bother and buy from Sony. It is more expensive and crapware loaded.
No thanks!

If they have done it properly, the crapwarelessness might be worth $150 (if, say, you can use the System Recovery feature to get back to a clean system with no crapware. I bought a Sony Vaio and it came loaded with a positively distasteful amount of junkware, some of which I cannot manage to remove (and I'm a software developer).

Of course, if you buy a Sony laptop in the first place you deserve to be punished. Not that I'm bitter about mine, of course... but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.

Well Sony has to make back the $400 million they bribed the entertainment industry to back the blu-ray HD DVD format.
I imagine they'll up the MSRP on everything they product to recoup the bribe payouts and fluff the profit margin to keep investors happy.

It is interesting to me that Sony chooses to say they are are selling the service of 'removing' the crapware. It calls up images in the mind of average users of techs actually going into the control panel and removing software. That to un-crap a PC is somehow more work, for Sony.These same people probably believe there is a guy actually running a windows install on their PC once it is physically built.

What an incredibly bold lie.

Operating systems are deployed by hard drive imaging tools over a network at a large OEM. Period. Someone took the time to build an un-crapped version of that model a single time, it was 'shrinkwrapped' (you run the sysprep tool microsoft supplies to OEMs so they get what MS calls the 'out of box experiece'. This also scrubs the key number so it must be re-entered by an end user. Required by the MS OEM license.) Then they made a hard drive image. OEM PCs dont have windows installed in the context og how we, as home users, do it. Really they tailor an OS to a system and squirt it in, so to speak.

I understand they lose revenue by not bloating a PC. But they are implying that the $50 is to have it 'removed'... when in reality, it was never there to begin with. This is the Sony I know... shady. Why I dont like them.

Having said that, as a response to WIsam:

Im A certified, been fixing PCs forever, so I am a pro. Ask anyone you know who does my job, running a repair shop- they dont often see certain computers: Viaos, Thinkpads, and Macs come to mind. You run into lots of dells, Dimensions and Inspirions especially. All laptops in the world are produced by something like four companies, no matter whose name is on it. Sony definately orders quality, hp and dell definately do not. If you were to buy a bunch of them in bulk, probably ten thousand or more, but this is a guess... A company like Quanta would work with you to design a custom case to wrap around a production laptop they already have designed, complete with your logo. This scheme is rather common in all of consumer electronics.

All you have to do like I do when I get a new laptop is run the restore. The restore a lease on the ones I have done does not have the crap on it. All the restore does is take a few hours at most of time.

Yes...I have a grudge against Sony.
I believe many of their products are overpriced. That is my personal opinion.
I also dislike Sony for purchasing CBS Records in 1988.
I have owned and own Sony products. I've never been satisfied with the quality of the Sony products I have owned. My opinion of Sony product quality is low/cheap.

As for accusing Sony of bribing the entertainment industry I should provide proof. I don't want to be perceived as a fanatic.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080109.wgtblu10/BNStory/Technology/home

There is evidence the HD DVD group tried to bribe the entertainment industry too. It appears Sony put out more money.

Chris aka I8Sony

50 dollars just to do something that I could do in 5 min.
wow. I'll just keep my 50 dollars to myself, but thanks for the offer

companies pay sony, dell, hp, apple to put their crap wares on their computers...that's how hp,apple,dell makes money....
and that's how you get your $400 laptop in such a low low price.
you can either re-install o/s yourself...or pay the difference
and get a computer with no junk ware.
You have to give sony credit for at least give you the option to
get a clean computer wihtout 2 hrs of windows re-install and tons of time to look for each driver.
You don't see apple, dell HP do that.

I mean just uninstall the bull software. and be oh look at me I have a laptop without bull software. or I could start the install of windows and walk away

To save me $150 i will take the crapware.