Tales from the trenches: Brand New Computers

I had a client today who bought a new Compaq and wanted the old hard disk installed as a second drive. The machine had never even been turned on, and I was stunned by a couple of things:

  1. how long it took to start up the very first time (At least 10 minutes of various Please Wait… screens)
  2. The ridiculous number of shortcuts for various services and offers on the desktop: AOL, Yahoo, RealOne, and half a dozen other free-for-now, pay-us-later jobbers.


Two days ago, after setting up my new eMac (which I’ll report on soon!), I felt like I would be so pissed off if I had bought a new computer that was so slow to startup and was already so filled with shit that I don’t need or want. I mean, my eMac came with some free bundled software… World Book, Quicken, AppleWorks, a couple games… but it didn’t beat me over the head with a stick about it.

Maybe as an advanced computer user I appreciate the freedom to explore, rather than to have things shoved down my throat, and maybe newbies need to be guided a bit, but it was overwhelming for even me, during the very first startup, to have to see all this crap.

One thought on “Tales from the trenches: Brand New Computers

  1. That is some very true sh_t been setting up computers for friends and about every system out there trys the same thing software overload was is up for these people who had never had a computer before it was very confusing if the computer retailers want to sell PCs I think they need to start making things easer not harder for newbiees just seems like the thing to do that my thought PEACE OUT

    Jonny

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