New laptop-preinstalled program removal

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Jimmy9190

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My girlfriend is buying a new Lenovo laptop today. The store wants to charge $69.95 to "remove all the pre-installed temporary trial software and make the computer faster". Seems to me this is something we could do ourselves through add/remove programs. Is this really a valuable service we should have the store do or am I right in thinking we can just do it ourselves?

Also, the new laptop will have a trial version of McAfee virus program on it, I would rather remove that one altogether and install Avast, which is free and so far for the last year has worked great for both mine and my gf's desktop computers. When you remove McAfee does it stay gone for good or can it try to reinstall itself?

Sorry for the dumb questions, you guys here have probably forgotten more than I will ever know about computers.

Thanks.
 
Can't you go in and use the uninstall tool to remove a lot of that stuff? That's how I always did it.

Id think you could also do a complete wipe of the computer, but you would then need to be sure to have all the latest drivers from lenovo. There may be newer ones on the website than on the provided CDs (if they even give CDs anymore).
 
Yes, remove the unwanted "[censored]" yourself, uninstall McAfee if you do not want it and install your anti virus of choice. The $69.95 "optimize" fee is just a way for the store to make extra profit.
 
Thanks for the info. I thought it sounded like just an add-on service that we don't really need.

One other question, is Lenovo a good brand of laptop to buy? It is model #GS650, has a 320 GB hard drive, 4G of memory, has Windows 7 Home premium edition and has a face recognition feature to stop unwanted use by other people. It's on sale until tomorrow, $429.99. What do you guys all think about that price?

Thanks again for the help here.
 
Originally Posted By: CivicFan
lenovos are very good laptops, I've never seen an unhappy Lenovo owner.
Mark me as your first-my ThinkPad G30 motherboard crashed @ roughly 5 years old, had to get a new Emachines.
 
Sounds scammy to me.

Does that laptop come with a Windows 7 DVD?

Sometimes you can just reinstall the operating system itself without everything else.

Other times they include all the bloatware in a "recovery" cd or worse a partition on the hard drive itself.
 
Originally Posted By: Nick R
Are you buying from Best Buy, by any chance?


No, it's at Office Depot. It's a good price, even less than Ebay. I don't know yet what CD's or software drivers it comes with. I would think they send a Windows 7 disc with it.
 
You can also go to the laptop review forums and they'll have tutorials or threads about what you can safely remove to optimize your machine. I have half the stuff on my laptop compared to when I first got it, and even with my CPU throttled down to 800 mghz, it's lighting fast.

After you decrapify the laptop, run CCleaner and defrag the hard drive and you should be good to go.
 
Very, very, very few computers come with Windows Reinstallation discs today. Why? Same reason they install all that bloatware- to make and save more money.
 
Originally Posted By: Jimmy9190
is Lenovo a good brand of laptop to buy?

Like CivicFan said, there are very few unhappy Lenovo customers.

I start a new job next week and got to order pretty much anything I wanted. I chose a Lenovo ThinkPad T410.
 
Originally Posted By: Drew99GT
After you decrapify the laptop, run CCleaner and defrag the hard drive and you should be good to go.

Listen to him. I uninstalled a lot of junk from my AcerOne netbook, ran CCleaner (including registry scan) and streamlined start-up sequences.
It runs like a champ now.
For defragging and general hard drive optimization I use Auslogic Disk Defrag. Nothing else comes close to its efficiency, speed and thoroughness, in my experience.
http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/download/
 
Last edited:
Thanks for all the replies. Gf has CCleaner on her desktop PC so she is familiar with it and how it works. We will also run the decrapify and defragging systems too.

I just think it's a shame they have to load all that unwanted and unneeded junk on a brand new computer so that we have to spend so much time and trouble to get the thing to work like we want it and only use the programs we need.

That's why I like Avast antivirus, my pc came with Norton, and I had a 1-year subscription and it really slowed my pc down. It's a lot faster since I got rid of Norton and installed Avast.

Thanks for the help here. Sounds like she made the right choice with the Lenovo.
 
Originally Posted By: Jimmy9190
I would think they send a Windows 7 disc with it.

Most of them don't come the the disc anymore. There is a hidden partition on your hard drive which can be used to reinstall the system if something goes wrong. You should also be able to create a recovery disk based on this hidden partition, and it's usually a wise thing to do, in case anything were to ever happen with the hard disk.
 
Originally Posted By: RTexasF
When you first turn on the machine it will offer you a chance to make back up discs......do it.

Lenovo laptops do this? Good to know, as I'll make sure I have some blank discs on hand when mine arrives.
 
They garbage up your computer from the factory and charge you to ungarbage it?

I would not buy any such model.

You should look @ some manufacturer's business lines. Most do not come with "try and buy" junk since companies don't want their employee's productivity to suffer.
 
That is true. The dell desktop I bought a couple months ago was a Optiplex business line.

It came with two windows 7 DVD's, and hardly any gunk on the computer.
 
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