Un-Dell-ifying your new computer
When I bought a new laptop last April I was pleasantly surprised that Dell was willing to clean off all the preloaded stuff. Recently, however, I made another purchase (for Vizad) of 2 desktops and one laptop.
They did the same sort of sanitization for the laptop (though there are still things I wish I hadn’t been bundled), but said they wouldn’t do anything for the desktops - I had to get them preloaded with a million things that make them run slow - I even talked to one Dell rep who suggested if I was worried about the speed I should consider hardware upgrades - hardware upgrades to run a bunch of software I don’t want? I don’t think so.
So last night I simply put in the Windows XP OEM CD (always get the media included when you get a dell - it usually doesn’t cost extra). I reinstalled the whole OS and then put in the resource CD and just installed the drivers I needed. Everything works about 2 times faster without a popup window every couple of minutes - well worth doing with any new Dell you get.
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One of the double edges involved with better hardware is that people assume they don’t need to code efficiently or build software packages efficiently.
Oh your computer isn’t fast enough to run all the spyware on it without getting bogged down? Sounds like you need an upgrade!
Comment by Dan — February 4, 2007 @ 6:23 pm
You erased your 6 month free trial to AOL dial up?
Shame….
-Jon Sandy
Comment by Jon — February 4, 2007 @ 9:59 pm
I hope you didn’t get rid of the fun games (i.e. solitare)…what else would you do with a computer?
Comment by Jen — February 6, 2007 @ 10:17 am
Well, one thing comes to mind…puzzles…
Comment by admin — February 6, 2007 @ 10:18 am
Puzzles? You mean like trying to undo all the damage Dell did their computer before selling it to you?
It’s always amazing to me that Dells and HPs come with so much crap they run slowly on perfectly decent hardware. Why would they do that?
Comment by Sam — February 6, 2007 @ 12:28 pm
Good thing Macs don’t come with anything preloaded…
Comment by imamac — February 7, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
Yeah, though I’m not sure it’s worth the pricetag. I would have paid $500 more for a comparable Mac in order to save 30 minutes of work - I value my time, but not at $1K/hour, which is unfortunate because that would mean I make $1M/year…
Comment by admin — February 8, 2007 @ 9:16 am