Here is something to bear in mind:

The Crapware Con | Analysis | Features | PC Pro

This reviews a cross section of major manufacturers. If you are not technically proficient to the point of reinstalling your OS or selectively disabling startup programs, this is probably one of the most important, if not the most important, consideration. It reviews the amount of "crapware" installed from computer manufacturers. Crapware is third party software that the manufacturer gets paid to stick on there. Some is actually helpful and beneficial while some is simply annoying and useless. But, all of it slows you down.

Enough stuff on there that you don't need, and even a machine with good hardware will crawl along as you do things, causing a bad experience. According to the article, the brands that do well are Dell and Asus with HP, Sony, and Acer being at the other end of the spectrum (Apple has no crapware at all, but that's a bit of a misleading stat since Apple does the hardware and software, so, by definition, nothing they put on is "crapware").

This crapware can mean the difference between a 45 second and a 150 second boot time. It can mean the difference between slowdown (thrashing) with six open applications or only three.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

That is an important factor in the quality of enjoyment of your laptop or even desktop. Unfortunately the people who don't know much of anything about computers wind up buying the ultra-cheapest models which are often filled with crapware.

I have bought Dell for my last few laptops (my work paid for one of them) and they only have a couple of things I shut off, and one of those is windows messenger which isn't really Dells fault, its Microsoft's fault. I haven't owned an HP Asus or Acer, and the only Sony I owned I received used with a completely re-installed OS from the friend who sold it to me anyway, so there was no crapware on it (except windows itself ).

First thing i do with a laptop is wipe it and install my own OS.

Andrew

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“...corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have... .I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host.”

-- Derrick Jensen

My girlfriend has an Acer and it did come with loads of crapware. I hacked the game countdown in the registry (they had it in there as cleartext) so that she could play the games without the trial expiring, but that's it. She hasn't been bothered by performance issues, and removing crapware isn't exactly my idea of fun after a 10 hour day of coding.

And, I'm with you on MS Messenger. I hate that thing. And, if memory serves, it's a persistent little fucker. I think you have to nail it in the registry too, because if you remove it from msconfig, it just puts itself back.

If I buy a laptop at some point (doubtful, since the company provides them, but you never know) it will probably be a Netbook with Linux (I prefer desktops for "primary machine"). But, if I did get a windows one, I would make sure to get the OS CD and the first thing I would do would be to format the drive and install the OS. It's probably been 7 years since I fired up with anything but an OS that I've installed on any of my machines.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Good advice.
My daughter bought an HP laptop (her boyfriend's pick...NOT mine)...Jesus Christ..there was a gazillion useless crap apps on it.
Out of the box I swear it took 4-5 minutes to fully boot.
I uninstalled a truckload of crap, ran HiJackthis, uninstalled Norton - installed the "free" Mcaffee virus protection that comes with our DSL.
It boots in about a minute now...much faster. However for some reason it surfs the net slower than my 3 yo PC.

Anytime I buy a new PC that has an actual install CD (crock of shit many don't come with it) I format the drive and reinstall Windows..well spent 30 minutes or so.

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The government cannot give without first taking.

Not to sound all MS fan-boy or anything, but i installed Windows 7 on a 3 year old Dell laptop on the weekend. It took 15 minutes, including the windows update for the video card drivers, etc... I was impressed.

Andrew

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“...corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have... .I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host.”

-- Derrick Jensen

That could be a function of the browser and browsing itself. Check out this attachment.

I fired up internet explorer and firefox. They both started at around 35-40 meg. I then opened up three tabs in each, closed them, and took the snapshot. While both of them use threading to handle separate tabs (versus all those chrome processes), only firefox leaks memory. So, if her browsing consists of opening and closing a lot more tabs (more common among those of us too young to remember the days of separate windows for each url), that could explain it as compared to yours.

Attached Images

 

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Of course, it could also be that you manage open applications like a savvy user and don't clog up memory, and she doesn't...

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Well that's true.
My broadband pipe is probably much cleaner as I use the firewall to control what and when things get access. So while I am surfing, not much else is going through the pipe.

Curious...why do you like Chrome? What is different about it than firefox?

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The government cannot give without first taking.

Porn mode...I mean, Incognito mode.

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A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
- George Bernard Shaw

Well, it doesn't leak memory, for one...

Generally, I like the look and feel better. The firefox plugins are cool enough, but I don't really care about them - I like a stripped down browser. Chrome is exactly that. There is no toolbar at the top or anything like that. It's just a window and your tabs. It runs efficiently, never crashes, isn't bad in terms of memory, and breaks out your tabs into processes so that when things get sluggish, you can identify the one that's misbehaving and kill it without trashing your whole browsing session.

The down side is that it comes pre-loaded with google spyware for your ostensible convenience, comrade. So, I only use it at work, where google can only track me as a drone in the cube farm. There is a version called "Iron" with that stripped out, and if I'm so inclined, I might use that at home instead of Firefox.

Generally speaking, I run three or four browsers to test out any web apps that I'm working on, when applicable.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Internet explorer has that too, as of version 7 or 8. I imagine there's some firefox plugin for it too, but it's not something I make use of in any browser. And, with chrome, you're never incognito. Google logs each and every transaction you make, even if it doesn't show up in your cache or history.

(To be fair, Microsoft also does this in a sense. They just store your history in obscure files that involve a very, very convoluted process to delete. That is, you could delete your browsing history, cookies, cache, the whole works, and I could still log onto your Windows box and pull up any site that you've been to in recent memory)

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Wow, I figured Dell would be the worst offender. It seems that's not the case by far.

I'd like to see the same analysis of desktop manufacturers.

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The world could use more Stan Ovshinsky's

If I see it on slashdot, I'll post it here.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Firefox has a porn extension for pete's sake....not saying I use it, I don't.

The only extensions I use are "Stylish" - which allows you to have "alternate" home pages of popular sites. primarily to remove ads.
And of course "NoScript" - an awesome extension if there ever was one.

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The government cannot give without first taking.