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Fuzzy Logic Sony charges, then retracts, a US $50 fee to deliver a ‘clean’ PC
Fuzzy Logic Sony charges, then retracts, a US $50 fee to deliver a ‘clean’ PC | Sony charges, then retracts, a US $50 fee to deliver a ‘clean’ PC |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Sunday, 23 March 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 2 What some commenters online at different articles have been wondering is if the system restore CDs or DVDs that come with the Sony Vaio TZ200 notebook will pre-load all the third party software you might have chosen not to have delivered to you, should the need for restoring the system ever arise. Actually some manufacturers have done just that, or at least they did, in the past. But others lump it all together. What it all comes down to is that users need to be given a choice. If a user gets a PC with stuff pre-loaded, they need to be able to click on an icon to have some, or all of it removed, both from the hard drive and the registry, if desired. Of course the best way of doing this is at the point of online sale, giving users the choice as Sony has done, but across the entire range and with all versions of an operating system, not just Vista Business. But this is harder in a retail situation where the box has left the factory weeks or months ago and is waiting to be sold in a Wal-Mart, Harvey Norman or other computer store. This is where users should have that icon to easily and reliably remove all they don’t want to have loaded on the computer. Alternatives would be to give users the choice to re-install from a ‘clean’ Windows DVD, or to additionally have a few gigabytes of the hard drive saved as a restore point, as seen on many Lenovo PCs, although with the choice to either install, or not install, any of the additional software. Sony have done the right thing by firstly offering users a ‘Fresh Start’ option, and then did the right thing again by removing the $49.95 cost to get this option. We now need this to be available across all PC manufacturers, for all versions of Windows, to put the power back into consumer’s hands, rather than being forced to accept whatever we get after handing over our hard earned money. Perhaps Sony’s moves will now motivate other PC manufacturers to do the same – and put their customers, and not just an uncaring focus on nothing else but the bottom line – first.
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