Most laptop computers these days come with a number of “features” that drive me completely insane. Bear with me – I’ll try to stay calm 
In particular – “preinstalled software” and “one button restore” are particularly egregious. My new Lenovo G555 is no exception.
The amount of preinstalled software was staggering. No, I don’t want to have facial recognition software protecting my computer from unauthorized logins. No, I don’t want identity theft protection management utilities from some software company I’ve never heard of. No, I don’t want silly wireless network control software that looks like it was written for a target audience of 6 year olds. No, I don’t want McAfee virus protection that only works for 30 days before it mercilessly hounds me with unending popups to pay for a subscription.
If the preinstalled pieces of software are not totally useless, they’re predatory. What’s the value in this from the consumer’s point of view? As a purchaser of a computer, I feel intense frustration with Lenovo for lessening the value of my purchase by installing a lot of things I don’t want, forcing me to spend my time cleaning things up to make my computer tolerable again. As for the predatory software, I feel “sold out” by Lenovo – they were probably able to “subsidize” the cost of my laptop hardware by letting 3rd-parties pay to install their programs on my machine. This is ridiculous!
As if this wasn’t bad enough, there is literally no way to remove all of the crapware to return to the original unmarred operating system. Sure, I could try to remove everything in the “Add/Remove Programs” dialog section of the Control Panel, but how could I be sure that the uninstallers actually removed everything? What if there are files and registry keys left – I don’t trust any of these software vendors (many of whom I’ve never even heard of) to do what I requested and not just leave backdoors behind.
After being foiled in that attempt, I tried to reinstall Windows 7. Oh wait, I can’t. I did not receive a Windows 7 DVD. My only option is to use the “one key recovery” button. What does this do? Oh, it just reverts the computer back to its original state, invasive crapware and all. No thanks.
My solution? Without any other options, the only workable solution is to go out and buy a brand new copy of Windows 7. This really irks me, seeing that I just paid for a perfectly good copy of Windows 7, but I can’t use it because Lenovo’s crappy “solutions” are getting in the way. Honestly? This is criminal, especially since there is no way to get a refund for the preinstalled copy of Windows 7.
So, after purchasing a new copy of Windows 7 (which wasn’t a total waste since I really want Ultimate instead of Home Premium), is it easy to install? No, of course not. The hard drive has special partitions to hold the one-key backup (in lieu of shipping the installation media). Really? Nothing on the website ever said “500GB* hard drive, * where you can’t use 25GB+ of the space because we’re too lazy to ship you installation media for the software you just purchased”. When did I give Lenovo permission to take some of the hard drive space that I just paid for to use for their misguided attempts in software distribution?
After blowing away these partitions (Shift+F10 during installation and diskpart overrides to the rescue) I was able to pave the machine and successfully install Windows 7 Ultimate.
What happened to the days where customers could buy hardware without all of this extra crap? Extra things (e.g. O/S, software, etc) should cost extra, and consumers should have a choice to purchase as little or as much as they need.
Sadly, this approach is not limited to Lenovo – I’ve had a similar experience with Dell and have heard horror stories from other consumers regarding other laptop vendors.
Has anyone else had a similarly frustrating experience?
