PC buyers aim to cut the 'crapware'

Not surprised that a recovery disk restores the system back to the original state of the machine (with EVERYTHING that was there from the beginning). They expect to give you the system back to the square one state. You don't the option to pick and choose.

 

My Packard Bell PC had this recovery partition on the hard disk, and I used it frequently when the crashes happened, because I toyed around with the Xp SP2 beta last time. But it would always give me back the crapware that came with my machine.

But PB also provided a master cd creator with an option to 'Install Windows Only'. I immediately knew what that meant. BUT they left two small pieces of junk behind. A prog called smart restore and their brand name inside the system properties inside control panel.

 

http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/home

I have not tried this so I cannot verify the accuracy of the claims.

 

Interesting reading here http://community.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/01/03/227237&from=rss regarding how to get a refund for unwanted MS OS.

 

Back in 1997 I bought my first computer. It was a Compaq with Win95. When you started it the first time you had to sit through an interactive video that walked you through setup with an actor making his way through a maze from one step to the next. The friggen thing took about 20 minutes. Back then they didn't include the crap on the disk, you got a fist full of CD-Roms from all kinds of vendors. Any way, I had to re-install the system via a recovery disk a few times during the time I had the computer, so I had to sit through most of that video each time. The few things I had to uninstall from my later computers weren't a real pain.