Microsoft Signature Edition
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@garak0410 said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
But who supplies a clean build today?
Microsoft - Paul or Mary Jo Foley mentioned another vendor (maybe Amazon) was also a source for Signature machines.
Yeah I heard that...I think it was a case of someone buying a signature edition and then reselling on Amazon...
Aww.. that would make sense. It would be awesome if Signature Edition was some sort of signoff by MS that anyone could sell, even if it was 2% more expensive I'd gladly do it! I might be willing to go 5%.
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@scottalanmiller said:
As I've always promoted, everyone (IT pros, home users, etc.) should always reinstall their OS (and for servers, set up their own RAID) from scratch and never accept pre-installed systems. All Microsoft is doing is doing half of what I already consider a best practice and most people have always had at their disposal if they just bothered a little.
I agree with this completely. The problem is today many machines don't come with restore media, and even if it did, it would be on DVD and ultrabooks don't have CD-Roms anymore. Top this with people are just afraid of their computers because, let's face it, they don't understand how they work and don't care to either.
If the reinstall media had all the drivers included, then perhaps it would work, but generally that's not the case anymore. When you get reinstall media, you get a Windows disk and a separate drivers/junk install disk. -
@Dashrender said:
@garak0410 said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
But who supplies a clean build today?
Microsoft - Paul or Mary Jo Foley mentioned another vendor (maybe Amazon) was also a source for Signature machines.
Yeah I heard that...I think it was a case of someone buying a signature edition and then reselling on Amazon...
Aww.. that would make sense. It would be awesome if Signature Edition was some sort of signoff by MS that anyone could sell, even if it was 2% more expensive I'd gladly do it! I might be willing to go 5%.
I am glad to see this "Signature Edition." A "pure" Windows PC is one of the reasons my Surface Pro 3 consistently runs well. And I sort of like the Microsoft Store (Online)...their customer service is bad if only for the fact they are in India and don't know much beyond their "scripts" they have to follow...
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The signature editions are the ones you buy from the Microsoft store. Either the regional retail locations or the online one.
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I think this would benefit Mr. Average Joe.... a lot.
Better still, BAN THE CRAPWARE straight from the manufacturer. Want to sell PC's with Windows? Don't install anything other than drivers. The end. -
@Kelly said:
The signature editions are the ones you buy from the Microsoft store. Either the regional retail locations or the online one.
What devices will they be selling?
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I didn't know this, according to this article,, Signature started out as a service where you could bring your computer to MS and they would remove the crapware from it.
I happen to agree with the article - that was definitely the wrong way to go for MS. The new way of selling machines (Surface Pro line, HP Stream etc - here is a link to others on MS's site) is a lot better, though I would be happy if they required the vendors to offer this direct. -
@scottalanmiller They've been selling quite a range of OEM gear for quite a while. I first became familiar with the Microsoft Store when they released the original Surface Pro.
You want an inexpensive 13" HP Stream, they have it. You want one of those sharp, minimal bezel Dell XPS laptops, they have it. Their selection is pretty decent from low to high.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/home -
I get emails from the Microsoft store but I guess I have never logged into it to see what they actually offered there.
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@scottalanmiller said:
As I've always promoted, everyone (IT pros, home users, etc.) should always reinstall their OS (and for servers, set up their own RAID) from scratch and never accept pre-installed systems. All Microsoft is doing is doing half of what I already consider a best practice and most people have always had at their disposal if they just bothered a little.
I have never done this and never seen the point of doing it. What crapware do you lot get that is causing an issue? The most recent HP PCs that I've bought came with Foxit PDF and Norton Security Essentials. It was a two-minute job to uninstall them. There is also some HP software which some people may like (theft recovery, drive encryption, support assistant) - I wouldn't describe it as crapware, but again, it's a two-minute job to uninstall.
I find uninstalling software far easier that scratching around for the right drivers post re-install.
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@Carnival-Boy yep those are the crap we're talking about. Almost no one I know (and currently I can't think of a single person who does) uses any of that crap, Foxit has gone the way of Adobe adding other junk along with their PDF viewer, Norton was probably a 30 day trial - do you really recommend Norton? and the HP software - again, none I know uses any of it.
Uninstalls for whatever reason never seem to be clean. Tons of junk gets left around, directories, registry entries, files, etc.
With HP (and Dell too), as long as you are installing the OS that came with the unit I've never had an issue getting all the driver from their website. Lenovo is a bit more of a pain, but I can generally find them there too. Now, once we leave these top three that's a whole different story. Had an Asus that I never did find a driver for one device or another.
Reinstalling Windows 8.1 from USB stick assuming I've already downloaded the drivers takes me about 20 mins from start to finish. Installing updates, well that depends on your internet connection.
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Those are good examples. I don't even fire up new machines until I've installed an OS so I am rarely aware of what would even be there anymore. But I'm sure Norton trials and Foxit and lots of tool bars and weird things that take over functions that otherwise already exist in the OS are the main things to be found.
Uninstalling was never reliable, especially with Norton. Problems often linger.
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I've never experienced any problems uninstalling this crap.
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I always reinstall new machines I buy for personal use with an OEM copy of Windows. When you buy business-grade equipment, it comes with a lot less bloatware than retail computers, but still. A vanilla copy of Windows is SOOOOOOO much better than retail copies...
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I've never experienced any problems uninstalling this crap.
I've had tons of issues, a few at home, mostly at clients. It takes quite some time, not just a few minutes, to uninstall that stuff. You have to do several reboots, you have to keep going into the Programs dialogue, you have to go through the list and make sure that you have gotten everything. It's typically close to a dozen things to remove and there are some that fall into a grey area and you aren't sure if you should remove them or not. I find that it typically takes thirty minutes or more (in consulting time, that's like a $60 charge just to clean up software!)
And then, even after being removed, problems remain. Common problems include buggy network stacks (generally caused by AV removal) or AV that can't actually be removed and blocks other AV from being installed later causing even more problems. Another problem I have seen is system settings not being restored leaving users with no zip or unzip capacity, for example (the option is just gone.) Lots of things that often are not found until much later.
Imaging is fast, easy and reliable.
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I have a couple of machine to setup this week - I might time both approaches and see which is quicker and most hassle free.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I have a couple of machine to setup this week - I might time both approaches and see which is quicker and most hassle free.
Of course if you can use an image to deploy the machines you'll save a ton of time. Create the first machine get all the windows updates on it (don't join it to a domain) then sysprep it, take an image, deploy to machine2, etc.. Even if you only install Office, often deploying an image takes less time than installing Office alone.
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@Dashrender said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
I have a couple of machine to setup this week - I might time both approaches and see which is quicker and most hassle free.
Of course if you can use an image to deploy the machines you'll save a ton of time. Create the first machine get all the windows updates on it (don't join it to a domain) then sysprep it, take an image, deploy to machine2, etc.. Even if you only install Office, often deploying an image takes less time than installing Office alone.
I was going to recommend this but you got to it before me. At my old location we would purchase 100 desktops at a time (a school) they always came with Dell's crapware installed. Spending the two hours to setup a good image and then deploying it with FOG saved me days of work. I could image an entire lab, 40-50 computers, in ~30 minutes if I had a good image already.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I have a couple of machine to setup this week - I might time both approaches and see which is quicker and most hassle free.
Are they the same machines? Do you have imaging rights?
Often just putting Windows installer onto a USB key is ideal. Once you take the few minutes to do that, installs are super fast and take little interaction. That's the best (that I've seen) for doing one off installs.
If you have imaging rights it takes more time to prep BUT you can automatically blast out builds and rebuilds anytime that you want. It's worth the investment.
What's really nice is that uninstalling apps is a "do it every time" activity. But imaging or having the USB key ready is a "prep it once, use it over and over" activity so when you need to do rebuilds of the machines down the road, you are all prepared for it.
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@Dashrender said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
I have a couple of machine to setup this week - I might time both approaches and see which is quicker and most hassle free.
Of course if you can use an image to deploy the machines you'll save a ton of time. Create the first machine get all the windows updates on it (don't join it to a domain) then sysprep it, take an image, deploy to machine2, etc.. Even if you only install Office, often deploying an image takes less time than installing Office alone.
Yeah, adding packages, customizations and whatever to a base image makes that process even more valuable as you can get a lot of other work done as a part of the process "for free."
