Another laptop question: how to get one without the crapware?

[tbone_ 14438]

This will be a work PC laptop. All I want is Windows, office suite, and whatever drivers I need.

 

The last lenovo I bought I took to a shop and had them wipe the whole hard drive including crappy windows 8, install win 7 pro and office. I could do that again I guess but I think this particular shop is no more.

 

So the question is, can I just get one already like this from the seller somehow? I'm not brand loyal, but my current HP elitebook is pretty nice (it has to go back to the company).

[kevwun 16437]

They pretty much all have some junk on them.  Even the business models.  If you get the reinstallation media with it, doing a clean install of windows  yourself is pretty simple.

[phdhorn 6225]

I just bought a little laptop a month or so ago.

One thing is to stay away from the Best Buy type of deals.  They sell them lower because Bloatco. paid them to put the shit on.  It might cost more but that's one solution.  Other than that, it's usually not too hard to uninstall the shit.  99% of it is in the "programs" list in Control Panel (PC - note:  Macs generally have less 3rd party bloatware because Apple has a lot of their own shit on there.. but you can also get rid of some of it, too).  A lot of the worst of it is easy to spot and remove, usually under the 3rd party company name.  Some of it you just have to check the Internetz (google) for a description of what it is and does.  I've always done this and it takes maybe a hour tops.  I know you want "open and go" but an hour isn't really that tough.

Another solution is to buy directly from the company or even Microsoft.  Again, these aren't immune to shit but usually you see less.  I can tell you that in the past 2-3 years, especially after the big Lenovo fiasco (storing really nasty almost virus-like tracking software, for which they were fined pretty heavily) that the amount of bloatware on laptops today say as compared to 10 years ago is a lot less. (I should note here that my laptop is - a Lenovo(!).  I figured that it's kind of the best time to get one now since they've been bitchslapped and now they put almost nothing on my laptop, just some utility that doesn't take much space, and DEFINITELY is not some type of spyware.  My logic was "this is the best time to buy a Lenovo, they're smarting from devious deeds, want to re-gain business, so their machines's prices are low now, and at this time they would NEVER load up a machine at least for a year or two with shit that cost them dearly in the profits ledger).  I was right, my Lenovo was very slim software wise, almost nothing.  Best Buy offered a free McAfee thing (for a year, then you pay) in a separate download, which I downloaded just to take a look at it, then I pretty much trashed it vs. install it.  Anyway...

Windows 10 has a "fresh start" feature that allows you to essentialy re-install it without much (not all) of the crap, but to me that's like killing an ant with a sledge hammer - overkill.  But it's there.  Just do it before you install your own preferred apps, or it might wipe them out, too.

Finally, this article is semi-useful but things have changed a lot in 3 years and the amount of shitware is declining.  Still, you might get something out of it:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2889905/if-you-hate-pc-bloatware-here-are-the-vendors-to-avoid.html