Dell LOL

D

Decibel

2[H]4U
Joined
Nov 10, 2000
Messages
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I recently got a pretty smoking deal off of the Dell Outlet on a XPS M1210. We all know that Dell has an affinity for loading their systems down with bloat. I thought they were supposed to be cutting back on that. My new toy has, after doing the activate and update dance, 74 running processes. SEVENTY FOUR!

Just sitting there doing nothing it has more than double the number of processes running than my desktop has while I'm watching Top Gear, burning a DVD, downloading Ubuntu, and making this post. The poor thing takes forever to boot and the CPU usage chart looks like a picture of the Himalayas.

I feel for their less than savvy customers. Seriously, weren't they supposed to have fixed this?

For the specs whores => For less than $1400 I got a t7200, 2 gigs @ 667mhz of RAM, 7200rpm HD, bluetooth and the 7400go. Of course the part that really counts, in the sleeve I picked up for it (CasePC, extra small) it fits into my small tank bag. Nice.

(Technical note: This was primarily done for shits and grins. I expected it to be bad, but come on... I have every intention of not letting this install last the night. Mmmm... Linux.)
 
i just bought one from the dell outlet, it's a scratch and dent, hopefully it won't be in bad shape...

inspiron e1505, core duo 2.0, 1gb ddr2, 120gb sata 5400rpm, radeon mobility 128mb

$630
 
After running PC-Decrapifier, it's down to 57 processes. Still a silly amount... Dell has truly reached the point where the ONLY option with one of their systems is to nuke it from orbit (it's the only way to be sure) and reinstall your OS.

Exactly as tickle_me_emo said, it's a refurb. (And how exactly would you tickle someone who's emo? With a razor blade...)
 
tech savvy users should realize that bloatware is inevitable and that a reformat should always be the first thing done when you buy a computer from a company like dell. thats the first thing i ever did with my lappy [see sig]....i didnt even boot it up just to look at the crapware. I feel sorry for the rest of the world....i guess thats why it pays to learn something about your computer.
 
bl00d87 said:
i just bought one from the dell outlet, it's a scratch and dent, hopefully it won't be in bad shape...

inspiron e1505, core duo 2.0, 1gb ddr2, 120gb sata 5400rpm, radeon mobility 128mb

$630
Click to expand...

No worries, I recently bought a scratch & dent E1505 and it's spotless.
 
Decibel said:
I recently got a pretty smoking deal off of the Dell Outlet on a XPS M1210. We all know that Dell has an affinity for loading their systems down with bloat. I thought they were supposed to be cutting back on that. My new toy has, after doing the activate and update dance, 74 running processes. SEVENTY FOUR!
Click to expand...

Hmm. After a format I am running 53.

Mcafee, firefox, wireless, all I'm doing at the moment.
 
My E1405 that I bought new, had 512mb of ram, but when booted and nothing done other than open task manager, it had already went into VM by about 300mb!

That's ridiculous.....after trimming I got it down to 260mb, including uninstalling everything that was a trial (about 90% of the software).

Yeah dell is cheap, for a reason....it has windows, and MSWord...that's about it for non-demo software.
 
TrybalRage said:
Hmm. After a format I am running 53.

Mcafee, firefox, wireless, all I'm doing at the moment.
Click to expand...

Get rid of McAfee, it's total trash. (unless it's the corporate version, which for some reason sucks a lot less)

AVG Free + Zone alarm == fewer processes and less slowdowns. From my personal experience, anyway on rig in sig.
 
I haven't bought a prebuilt computer since 1997 until I picked up my Acer Aspire 5050. I was actually suprised at the lack of crapware on it.

The only thing Acer installed was it's own software for "empowering" stuff...power managemnet, security, etc. Also, installed was NTI's DVD maker for burning and NAV. Not bad. NAV is gone, and AOL's Active Shield by Kaspersky is in it's place and the Acer epowering stuff is gone and I use Notebook Hardware something or another for the power management.

At work, the depot buys hundereds of the same exact computers and as they hand them out, they get imaged. All the user has to do is boot it up, and log on and active directory takes care of the rest. Crapware free!
 
I agree with you 100% that the bloatware that Dell installs on ALL it's new PC's and laptops is horrid. But there is also a very good reason that it is there. Dell makes a good chunk of their profits from installing it on your system. These companies, such as Mcafee, AOL and all the others pay Dell to install this. Consider them the advertisement that pays for the shows you watch.

Every time we order a Dell for someone at our shop, very first thing... Format-Reinstall. The computer will run like it is supposed to run, and you still got a pretty descent deal on your rig.
 
I bought a new M1210 from the Small Business website and it came with 72 running processes. I then bought a refurb M1710 from the outlet and it had about 65 running processes. Despite the article a few months ago regarding Dell reducing the bloat on XPS's, looks like they are back to their same old tricks. :mad:
Thats OK. 1 reformat each and they are tip top. Easily 2 of the best PC's I have owned, ever. :p
 
In the last year or so I have convinced all of our clients to pay for us to format and reload any new machine they get in. The only dells I haven't seen a need for a full reformat on are some of the high end ones like the Precision line. They seem to be pretty clean.

Only issue I have had as of late is that the driver cd that dell ships with the new machines isn't up to date. The last few e520's I've gotten in have had drivers for the video and sound. O joy. No nic drivers or chipset drivers. Pissed me off.
 
I'm just opening up my M1710 right now (this thing is a BEAST compared to my previous thinkpad!) and I'm in the process of removing the bloat. I've got it down to 49 / 240mb but I think I can find some more crap on here. I was about to just reformat from scratch but I don't know if I might need some of these Dell apps. Are any of these absolutely necessary?
 
dose said:
I'm just opening up my M1710 right now (this thing is a BEAST compared to my previous thinkpad!) and I'm in the process of removing the bloat. I've got it down to 49 / 240mb but I think I can find some more crap on here. I was about to just reformat from scratch but I don't know if I might need some of these Dell apps. Are any of these absolutely necessary?
Click to expand...

You should be able to download anything needed off dells site. Only thing I can think of would be like the blue ray software which you should have on disk if you bought it with that drive and the software that controls the lights.
 
Are you guys using you're own Windows cd's to do your formats and re-installs?

If you use the disks that come with the system doesn't it just re-install all of the crap as well?
 
It only instatlled windows for me when I used the dell disk, none of the other stuff.
 
Timbowens said:
Are you guys using you're own Windows cd's to do your formats and re-installs?

If you use the disks that come with the system doesn't it just re-install all of the crap as well?
Click to expand...

Dell's XPS's come with both a restore partition (with all the bloat) and Dell branded OEM windows disks (for when you want that fresh feeling.)
 
Rube said:
Dell's XPS's come with both a restore partition (with all the bloat) and Dell branded OEM windows disks (for when you want that fresh feeling.)
Click to expand...


Well I've already ripped everything out that I thought was junk, but should I do the wipe too just in case?
 
Well, it depends. If you are technically comfortable doing it, Its better to install from scratch than use an oem image install. That said, I left my M1210 with the original install for a few months with no problems.
 
Watch out, if you have Mediadirect you will lose it if you delete partitions and format. Mediadirect needs its own partition separate from the main one you run windows on.

Oh, and I took someones advice here, ditched McAfee and tried avg/zonealarm, zonealarm gave me some massive lag spikes while gaming - replaced it with Comodo. Liking it so far.

Went with AVG on the desktop and Avast! on the laptop - down to 44 processes the lappy now.
 
Rube said:
Dell's XPS's come with both a restore partition (with all the bloat) and Dell branded OEM windows disks (for when you want that fresh feeling.)
Click to expand...


the xps does not come with a restore partition.



oh and unless dell has changed things in the past few months since i purchased my m1210, good luck getting the media direct feature to work properly after you do your reinstall. mine still doesn't work. fortunately i don't really care because i wouldn't use it anyway....other than that i love my lappy:D
 
KaReeM oF WHeat said:
the xps does not come with a restore partition.
Click to expand...

Hmm. . .Mine did. . .



KaReeM oF WHeat said:
oh and unless dell has changed things in the past few months since i purchased my m1210, good luck getting the media direct feature to work properly after you do your reinstall. mine still doesn't work. fortunately i don't really care because i wouldn't use it anyway....other than that i love my lappy:D
Click to expand...

I guess I should have specified that I didn't re-partition my drive, just wiped out the 75GB partition holding my OS. The other 2 were left intact.
 
Since I really don't care about most features (I just want a fast and reliable PC), what does MediaDirect even do?

I know QuickSet gives me my on-screen dialogs for pressing the media buttons on the front of my Inspiron, but that's about as far as I know....that and the non-PCMCIA card slots piss me off.
 
Media Direct is a special partition on your hard drive that has a slimmed down version of windows (I think) that only runs a special app that will play music & DVD's. Its a media player, separate from windows. You press the MediaDirect button and the PC will boot off that partition instead of C:

If you completely wipe your hard drive and lose that media direct partition, it can be a pain in the ass to get it back.

Most people don't use it anyway so they are happy to reclaim the 4GB or so of space it uses.
 
Over on the notebook forums, they claim it's more around 1GB, but I don't know. Mine is gone, and Dell never sent me a mediadirect disc. I'm too lazy to ask for one.

Seriously, how long does it really take just to boot the damn thing?
 
hmm in that case I say it's time to get out partition magic and nuke that partition and get my GB back....I need it anyways......40GB is just not big enough.

Next upgrade to my home network, 1.5TB NAS. Screw having big drives in all my computers, when I can store all my crap on the network.
 
Can't you custom order it without an OS? I'm eying the XPS 1210, but I was hoping the price would come down. It was starting at $1199 when I first saw it, then it went up to $1299 and is still there. Now I wish I'd ordered it before Vista came out because now the only OS choices are Vista or Vista. :rolleyes:

One thing I have noticed is that there are appears to be less bundlware if you order it from the Dell business site instead of home/home office. Its also cheaper when configuring exactly the same options.
 
Rather than ordering new, I camped the outlet for a few days until a system I liked popped up... My system would have likely been pushing $3k if I'd bought it new.

As far as I know the only Dells offered without an OS are a few certain desktop XPS's.
 
Not surprised. When I got my Refurb XPS M140, the first thing I did was blow everything away, including the MediaDirect BS. Nice fresh XP Pro install.

For the spec whores:

Pentium M 2.0GHz, 1GB DDR2, 60GB 7200rpm hard drive, DVDRW
 
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