Clean install for Windows means nothing when you have shady vendors utilizing this mechanism.
I mean, come on, Microsoft, what were you thinking? Vendors gonna vend, so you had to know how this "feature" was going to be used.
Like
1. start with window pre-installed
2. install any linux distro, fully overwriting the OEM
3. re-install windows, from microsoft
will this method work to remove such bloatware?
Also, instead of step 2, it would make more sense to boot linux on a usb stick and use dd to erase the hard drive -- this is more complete than installing another OS... but still useless if the firmware is working against you.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Signatur...
Microsoft really needs to reel in the bad behaviour on the part of the OEMs.
It cost Microsoft many billions of dollars, almost had the company broken up, and put them under close Department of Justice supervision for a decade. I don't think Microsoft will risk anything like that again....
Microsoft was also prevented from charging the major OEMs different prices, which was its main way of rewarding OEMs for doing installations the way Microsoft wanted.
Microsoft had been forced to sign a consent decree in 1995, which prevented it from tying new products to the OS but specifically allowed it to add new features to the OS. It therefore didn't have much choice about its arguments, though (like every other OS supplier) it obviously wanted to include a browser. Equally obviously, delivering a free browser as part of the OS was good for consumers, which is why Microsoft won the browser bundling case on appeal.
Microsoft had also componentized the browser so that different functions could be used by other programs, which to some extent, did make it part of the OS. (Much of the anti-trust case argument on that topic was phenomenally stupid.)
>It was also forcing PC manufacturers to pay a royalty for every PC sold, whether or not it was bundled with DOS or Windows
Don't think so. That was a deal offered to some OEMs, but as far as I know, it was never forced on anybody. In any case, the US Justice Department banned the idea in 1994. I tend to think 21+ years is a bit of long time to hold a grudge about something that was killed before it took off.
> Digital Research -- the company Microsoft essentially stole DOS from, but that's another story
Well, DR screwed up massively by refusing to sign a deal with IBM, then by charging too much for DR DOS, and then Apple screwed it in a court case over the UI in DR GEM. Either way, DR was dead long before the Microsoft anti-trust suit.
Depends on what you mean by "forced", right? If a PC manufacturer's choice is between not selling PCs with Windows pre-installed and having to pay a per-PC license for Windows whether Windows is installed or not, then effectively it's forced. And this was likely in play for years, but covered by commercial in confidence.
> DR screwed up massively by refusing to sign a deal with IBM
Sure but that's a different issue entirely.
As a result of the litigation over 86-DOS/QDOS (which MS licensed from Seattle Computer Products) Seattle Computer Products, DR-DOS, IBM, and Microsoft ended up with the right to ship DOS. Microsoft acquired SCP's license for chump change via a dubious legal maneuver whereby it was forced to sell its license to MS rather than to anyone else for whatever they wanted to pay (I forget the detail, it's documented in one of the Gates biographies). DR and IBM continued to sell technically superior versions of DOS, but IBM's was bundled with IBM-branded hardware and DR was crippled by Microsoft's licensing contracts which became particularly effective once Windows 3.x came out.
> 21+ years is a bit of long time to hold a grudge
This is only the tip of the iceberg of things MS's anti-competitive behaviors. Probably its most pernicious behavior was "dumping" on rivals (cross-subsidizing products such as Access until rivals went out of business) and actively sabotaging third party software (e.g. -- allegedly -- deliberately breaking Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS 2.x and -- well-documented -- breaking Borland compilers in the Windows 95 betas (which might well have continued into the release version had it not been caught red-handed).
I have a HP laptop with a Windows 7 license key under the battery and I can only install Windows 7 from HP recovery disks.
Of course, I opted to say "fuck you" and torrented a Win7 installation disk and activator, but that is not an option most of the time.