Good job Microsoft.

Now all you need to do is get rid of that nasty marketing scheme you are planning to push on us and we will all be happy.....6-7 SKUs......FAIL!!

This could be a move just to ensure that the bloatware installed is MS bloatware. Unless MS puts more specifics this is more of a marketing tactic then anything else.

about %#$%^ time

woah, not microsofts place to tell OEM whta to do with the licences they and systems they build,if the manufacturer decides to add extra applications then they should do so, its up to the end user to decide which ones to keep, a lot of the bloatware is annoying but it is better deciding what you want to keep for free than never being given anything for free!

You never get it free. You pay it in terms of speed and experience.

no half to all of that useless software they put on there is trialware so while the software does have a use that use will be useless after a certian number of days. wish the OEMs allowed an option for us to install the OS ourselves. send me the pc with nothing on it and a copy of the OS and let me install it myself is all I wnat

It's VERY MUCH microsoft's place.

OEMs loading overly slow bloatware onto a PC with Windows 7 means that unexperienced users, likely most of the market, are going to have bad experiences with Windows. Again.

How about all that other crap that gets loaded after you install the OS? I can think of Java Updater, Adobe Updater, QuickTime and all sorts of other crap!

how many peple (typical users, not us) buy computers and think that "windows sucks, it's slow and takes forever to start" on brand new hardware?

many i know of. Usually because of bloatware. Just recently got to test out an XPS system. Fresh from Dell. Vista took nearly 5 minutes to load. the user thought it was broken when he got it,

Fresh install of vista later. the machine was quite fast and the user very very happy.

bloatware blows

brand new computer takes 5 minutes to start up and the user is bombarded with dozens of different prompts, retarded, get rid of that useless sh!t

We all know Vista is more than fast enough on a fresh install. I would love to see crap like the HP Customer Experience Program (aka, ad server) gone. As well as Snapfish, eBay, Acer eManagement, Vonage and the rest. Norton 360 finally got their act together but that's rare to see.

Finally! We all know those pre-installed applications that are good for nothing and are only demos or trial variants and slow the system down to a crawl. The worst thing is actually that manufacturers advertise the "software" bloat as a feature that is actually worth money. Well, it isn't. Most of it is just junk. I really appreciate that MS is taking this step. It's overdue.

This got me thinking ... why don't they just disallow OEM's to install bloatware all together ?

In my humble opinion some stuff that was on the last "bloat ware free" system i bought is evil like for instance Internet security software that takes half of my resources when idle or the many system tray items that come with drivers.

One obvious example would be the world of warcraft trial icon that ATI dumps on your desktop unless you specify you want to do an expert installation and deselect the installation.

Why i need to get a popup from some lame app telling me i unplugged my headset (warps me to desktop to shop me the pop) is still unclear.
And if you think there are plenty audio drivers without those uber panels think again.

The list with crapware that thinks its important enough to start up at boot or worse a service and sometimes even a gaurdian service for that service is endless.

Generally they should expect the user to install at least 10 programs and 3 games!
In my case I have installed about 90 programs total on my XP machine in the course of 3 years, it works slower, yes, but I also use all possible tools to make XP faster, like
-DISABLE automatic defrag! Unlike many suggestions, Defrag generally scatters small files across the disk instead of keeping all small files belonging to a directory written together on one part of the disk.
And keep defrag for a time when the disk starts to get full (say after 6 months), and you just backed up all data, and deleted all unnecessary data.
-Disable themes!! (something I'd no longer be able to do on 7 I fear).
-Disable automatic tasks, and background activity!
-Disable adobe/msoffice accelerators. I only use Ms office and adobe once a week.
-get rid of nearly 80% of the startup programs

So far, it looks like Windows 7 boots fine, but that will depend greatly on the amount of programs installed.
I dare to bet 7 will be below the user experience of XP as soon as more programs are installed!

Study for Start Menu speed??? Why?? Go into registry, change value to 0 instead of the 400 they ship it with and....tada!!! Instant start menu! Why do they put a delay into the start menu to begin with????!!

I think we all should go back to NT4.0, Win98 and winXP!

For those of you with OEM disks from Dell,etc that install the bloatware with every fresh install take a look at vLite (Vista) or nLite(XP/2000). They can remove the bloatware. Neat little tools. Lets you even slipstream Service packs.

Uh if they want to stop bloatware, how about they cut the price of Windows. The bloatware is on to actually turn a profit for the oems. Think about it.

Maybe the first thing I do with my next laptop wont be installing a new os. That would be nice. Almost makes up for the 3 program limit in starter.

[Quote]You never get it free. You pay it in terms of speed and experience.[/Quote]And in the price of the hardware too!!

[Quote]Now all you need to do is get rid of that nasty marketing scheme you are planning to push on us and we will all be happy.....6-7 SKUs......FAIL!![/Quote]So MS should be remove the rest except Business & Home Premium which is what they call 'standard' then according to you?

If there is a time when MS can/should pressure OEMs, this is it. Not all setup can result in slow/unstable systems (or at least appear to be), but bloat really does sour things. It'll be up to the OEMs on how to take it. They can still capitalize it, but greed can easily ruin things for them.

You go ahead and do it. Me? I'd like to jump on the bandwagon to the future.

Anyway, it's a good move by MS to keep an eye of those bloatwares. They can't afford another Vista fiasco anyway, so i'm sure they'll bend over backwards to make sure Windows 7 goes smoothly as planned.

Glad to see everyone here is supporting the price hike for laptops that will occur when all that paid advertising (called bloatware or trial versions) is forcibly removed by Microsoft's OEM policy.

Yes, I am in the category that says the end manufacturer has a right to add advertisement for products in the laptop they manufacture. If you don't like it, then you go and buy a different product. We vote with our purchases.

If Microsoft wants to show how their OS can shine by creating an artificially clean system (OS only with no office apps, no antivirus, no games, and so forth), let them design it, manufacture it, and market it. I bet you'd see them throw on a bunch of bloatware to keep the cost down and compete in the market.

What good it will do if it only drags the system down to a crawl, hence the name "bloatware"? I don't want useless trial version of programs i never wanted in my laptop. It hurts the overall user experience, and then many people point their finger to Windows for such a slow system start up, when it's actually caused by those bloatwares cramping up the Start Up list. To remedy this is, user must go to MSCONFIG and disable all those bloatwares, or uninstall them alltogether.

If those manufacturers can just give me the laptop with clean installation of the OS (drivers etc. included) without the bloatwares, i'd be more than happy. I don't see why that justifies a price hike.

How about a list of approved programs that OEM's are allowed to install. If they break the contract, they pay. If dell...ect decides they don't like the rule, they don't make money, they will HAVE to agree if Microsoft makes it a law. ANYTHING to take away bloatware. I personally hate macs, and a big reason they have the "quality" reputation is because OEM's kill the windows reputation with this bloatware.

Make them pay for putting bloatware on please, make it in the OEM term's of use.

I recently bought a HP pavilion laptop, and started it, and windows got alot of time comming up! A LOT compared to my desktop vista pc, and I was like WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG? and I just un-installed all of the bloatwares and BOOM! everything went good after that!
yes, the bloatware kills the great user experience of windows with their resource eating and the services they require! I love using vista smoothly on my home built desktop cause it is fast [not as much as XP in THIS machine], and great!
so, MS must put pressure on OEM's to not blow the windows 7 speed and experience, because the computers OEMs sell, use MS's OS'es!
They ruin it, MS is blamed!
I'm with MS in this!

Exactly, and there are many applications installed by manufacturers that do have a place on the install, My dell studio 17 came with loads of extra "Bloatware" on Vista Home Premium and it never takes 5 minutes to start, more like 40 seconds from switch on and 5 seconds from standby ( as fast as I can type the password!) I have only removed one thing being Office 2007 60 day trail as I have Office Already to install, The rest is still on there and mostly used I am afraid. And I am glad it is because it represents good value and I can remove anything I dont want.

Besides, almost all people I know (That is everyone of my customers) can uninstall programmes easily enough, give people a little more credit, they are not as stupid as most people on here like to think.

HP does that. Whenever I get an HP laptop at work (in the IT dept of an accounting firm, so this happens a lot), it comes with a Windows install CD and key. The system is pre-installed with Windows and all the HP garbage utilities and other junk (Office 2007 trial edition), but I can reinstall off of the CD and have it clean. Best of both worlds. Heck, all the drivers are on one page on their website to reinstall those too.

Bloatware is added to a pc for two reason imo, one is advertising, these software companies pay the manufacturer to advertise on their machines and in return actually drops the price of you computer purchase. Basically "We will pick up some of the bill on the computer if you put our software on it."

Or the other reason being they put that crap on there so they can charge to take it off. good way to poke the eyes of the inexperienced but for those of us who know what they are doing it just takes up our time to remove it ourselves.

What are you talking about? The Public will only be able to see 2-3 version: Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. The Pro version will most likely only be available to businesses. I don't see the problem?