Great Sony hardware ruined by excessive bloatware

I've just seen an example of how much garbage software Sony cram onto a new Vista laptop and it's beyond belief. This laptop had dozens of processes running that were add-ons and general crapola, and they had a major impact on performance as well as startup and shutdown times. What's worse is that Sony load this garbage on both their consumer and business laptops.

I have seen previous threads in this forum on the topic but it wasn't til I saw it for myself I actually realized how bad the problem is.

What can end users do to convince Sony to cut back on this stuff? I know AOL, Netscape etc pay to get loaded on PC's. Does Sony realize they are damaging their Vaio brand with this poor practice taken to such an extreme? The first impression of any new Vaio laptop running Vista is that it is as slow as molasses.

Dell started offering XPS systems with 'limited preinstalled software' over a year ago. When will Sony get the hint?

 

Did the Sony have Norton pre-installed?

 

Sadly yes. That is one of the WORST pieces of the bloatware. To the original poster it's actually quite easy to get rid of the bloatware, either via a clean install or what is being called a "semi-clean" install. There are threads here about both.

Gary

 

totally agree with the observation.

can you believe that, even after a successfull complete uninstall (which by itself is not a sure thing), you will still find some craps lying around in your "program file" folder, and, even worst, some norton crap process still active after rebooting?

one of the main reason i opted for a clean install.

peter norton should be turning in his grave ... if he's dead.

 

Why should that be necessary? When you bring your new car home from the dealership, do you expect to have to change the oil and rotate the tires? Although I understand that is a solution, it's certainly very poor. If I'm buying half a dozen Vaio's for the office, having to reinstall the OS and reload custom Sony drivers one by one means days of extra work. Most consumers are probably not proficient enough to do all the uninstalls and reinstalls necessary.

All the developers in my office use MacBooks. Apple have a smooth 'out of box' experience with a nice welcome, quick setup and minimal crapware. At least the third party apps that Apple do install don't launch processes left and right and litter your desktop and menu bars. Vista is bad enough on memory and performance and as others have noted, the Sony bloatware extravaganza tips it over into almost being useless.

I don't understand why some product manager at Sony is getting reamed over the crap out of box Vaio experience. Instead, it seems to get worse with every new model.

It's like the crapware vendors wrote a check and Sony just told them to back the truck up and dump all the junk they like on the standard Vaio install image, with zero regard for the customer.

 

Actually, that's exactly how it is...

 

See my signature for a semi-clean install, or if you want to go with a total clean install, see Gary's signature (assuming you have an FZ). If not, browse the forums and you're bound to find one of the other ones.

 

I hate to take the other approach, but my Vaio runs fine after uninstalling the bloatware. I uninstalled the bloatware I didn't want and removed the badness from the startup menu through Windows Defender. Of course, I had to physically delete the Spider-man files.
I have 65 processes running right now with programs running and all user processes showing. Norton was the first thing I uninstalled, and if anything remained of it, I don't see it.

 

I was at a SonyStyle a couple of days ago playing with a TZ notebook, what an amazing machine! I checked the task manager and there were 90 processes running!

 

So why is Apple and Dell getting smarter about bloatware and Sony isn't?

I know they've been losing money, but this is ridiculous.

 

the first thing i did on my lappy is delete Norton. after that i deleted some things and saw a difference .....

 

The Sony bloadware problem is because Sony has all sorts of proprietary DRM and AV formats they want to promote. So you get all the usual bloatware plus Sony's other stuff. There is a special remove program available to strip out Norton products.

 

On an FZ, the drm junk accounts for all of 2 applications. So it's not much additional baggage. There is just a lot of other baggage.

Gary

 

Sony should give all there crapware/trial software on a separate DVD to cutomers which they can install when they wish...

 

Good idea.

I wonder if any Sony product managers read this forum.

I wonder how many customer service calls the bloatware causes.

"Hello, I just bought a new Sony laptop and it's slow as molasses..."

 

Most people drink the kool-aid and accept that their computer is supposed to run like that and they are ignorant of what we mean by "bloatware". As long as people are ignorant and apathetic the percentage of users who actually care is a drop in the bucket compared to the revenues Sony generates from including it on their systems.
That's capitalism folks!

 

People notice if their cool new Sony runs slower than they expected, and maybe the next time they buy something else!

 

dell is mainly because they are fast loosing business and their position in the pc market share, pressure from their customer base is secondary.

as for apple, there aren't much software to talk about for the platform, let alone bloatware ...

 

I did the semi-clean to rid my sony of bloatware and it really helped the
boot times and increased HD space.

 

You read my post very narrowly. I recall many other items that were related to Sony media and content deals. That included several games, Napster and a proprietary video file or two and software related to the proprietary formats. It really falls into a lot of separate sub categories. The point is a lot of the extra stuff is related to Sony's media and software businesses. If you research it, you will find the connections. Beyond that there is the usual crap, Norton Internet Security, Office trial, Works.

Computer manufacturers are able to generate a secondary revenue stream by installing all this junk. I suppose it is easy to justify on a budget system where the margins are razor thin, but on premium hardware like the SZ, its plain wrong.

 

I read it as you wrote it. I commented on the SPECIFICS of the DRM and AV formats and indicated there was a lot of OTHER bloatware but that the DRM stuff was small by comparison, when I said:

As for "if you research it...", I did! I was the one who wrote the FZ clean install instructions, investigating and documenting what each piece of software did so folks could identify what was bloatware and what was not.

Gary

 

All the software developers in my company use Mac's. They think it's hilarious that we need to spend hours reloading Vista on brand new laptops because of all the junk crammed on there.

They certainly don't seem to have any problems finding lots of cool applications on the Macintosh. I'd consider switching myself if Microsoft made OneNote for Mac.

 

buy from portableone.com

I just received mine, no bloatware!

 

i totally agree with you. i recently purchased my sister a toshiba u series notebook (same size and weight and a lot cheaper) and was stunned by:

1. recovery cd
2. less bloat

it took no more than 20 minutes to get rid of all the junk whereas my sony came with norton (wouldn't let me remove it - had to go to the sysmantec site and use the norton remover program) and some microsoft trial software that won't uninstall without inserting the disk. that's just naming a few. other than that i'm quite satisfied by the looks and performance of the notebook

 

I removed all the crapware in my FZ with ease. I don't know what you did.
I just removed everything from the programs and features. No probs for me.
I don't know when sony will atleast learn some lesson from Dell in building a PC with zero trialware.

 

I just got a SZ650, and the amount of bloat is insane. What's worse, though, is that my screen sucks! It's like it's got yellow patches. I exchanged it at BB, and the new one is fine except at the lowest brightness there are some serious issues. The screen goes "green," like there are spotlights shooting up from the bottom of the screen.

I was trying to escape the misery of my M1330, but I guess that isn't happening...

 

Maybe I need to retract my statement about great hardware. ;-)

Seriously, send it back. It seems to be a common fault.