What happenned to useful software bundles for new PCs

While I've been at home I've had to use the recovery programs to restore both my mum's Medion Titanium PC that she bought from Aldi in April 2002 and my old Advent 7083 laptop which I passed on to my mum. The Medion PC, which originally cost £699 for just the base unit, and which was specified with a Pentium 4 2.0GHz CPU, 256MB DDR RAM, a Seagate 80GB HDD, a Sony 24x10x32 CD-Writer, DVD-ROM drive and an nVidia GeForce MX 460 graphics card with Dual VGA, came preinstalled with a healthy software bundle, of which none was bloatware. The PC came preinstalled with Microsoft Works Suite 2002, which at the time was an impressive software package, because the UK release included:
- Microsoft Works 6.0 - a cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office, which included a word processor, spreadsheet application, a database program, a calendar and Works Portfolio which kept your files together in a Microsoft Binder-esque sort of way.
- Microsoft Word 2002 - The full version of Microsoft Word from Office XP. This came with a plug-in so that Word would be integrated into the Microsoft Works Task Launcher
- Microsoft Encarta 2002 Standard - the 2002 version of the world's best selling encyclopaedia.
- Microsoft Money 2002 - a very good money management program that can import statements from online banks and help you keep track of your chequebook, and your income and expenditure.
- Microsoft Picture-It! Photo 2002 - a simple photo editing package which let you enhance photos and make them into calendars, greeting cards, postcards or other publications.
- Microsoft AutoRoute 2002 - A program that enabled you to look at maps of The UK and Western Europe. You can use AutoRoute to plan jouneys, using either the quickest or shortest route, and it would give you information about the journey, such as a schedule, the cost (including the cost of petrol, etc) and points of interest along the way. Microsoft AutoRoute 2002 comes with Pocket Streets 2002 which you can install on to your Microsoft Windows CE based PDA. You could then import maps into Pocket Streets from AutoRoute.

Also included on the Medion PC was a full version of Nero Burning ROM 5.5 and Cyberlink PowerCinema. Apart from AntiVirus software, this PC came with everything you need right out of the box to start being productive. You could buy the base-unit, but if you bought the monitor, printer, scanner and digital camera, you had a complete set up for under £1,000 which is very useful to anybody looking for a computer bundle.

The Advent laptop on the other hand came with very little useful software preinstalled. On booting up for the first time, the Advent laptop comes with Microsoft Works 8.5, Napster (now fully legal), NTI CD and DVD Maker 3, Intervideo WinDVD, an AOL demo and Windows Media Player 10. When I used the Advent, my first time with NTI CD and DVD Maker resulted in a coster (a corrupt CD), so that had to go. I replaced it with Nero 7.0 Premium, and Microsoft Works was replaced by Microsoft Office 2003 Professional.

Nowadays if you buy a new PC, you will have a lot of trialware that will not work after thirty days unless you pay for it. It has become common practice for new machines to come preinstalled with Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 - a sixty day trial. It would be nice to see computers come with fully featured productivity software that won't run out, and that isn't bloatware - and why do AOL insist on installing their demos onto every new PC. Most of us don't use AOL, and we're not going to start just because there's an icon on the desktop saying AOL 9.0 trial. I live in Hull were AOL demos are completely redundant because we can only use KC Broadband in Hull.

Apple know how to equip their computers with good software. Every new Mac comes preinstalled with the latest version of their iLife suite, which includes iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb and .Mac Photo Gallery. iLife '08 can be bought on it's own or it will come preinstalled on new Macs. Mac OS X Leopard comes preinstalled with a DVD player and decoder and Disk Utility, which will work with hard disks as well as burning data CDs and DVDs. iTunes will let you burn audo CDs, and iDVD will let you burn movie DVDs, and as i've found out, it does so very well. I was able to burn two one-hour long DivX Videos to DVD using iDVD's Professional Quality encoder, and they played back flawlessly in my parents' set-top Toshiba DVD/Video Recorder. The only thing that lets Macs down when it comes to preinstalled software is the fact that a full Office suite isn't included. There are thirty-day trial versions of iWork '08 and Microsoft Office 2004 included but none-of these are full versions.

On retrospect, I think that the reason you have such a poor and bloaty selection of software included with PCs is that people don't seem to want software bundles anymore. They complain about how sluggish new PCs are because of this software. I do think Aldi/Medion had the right idea though because all of the bundled software can have uses in modern home-life, from writing letters and e-mails to homework assignments and coursework, to editing photos and making multimedia presentations and slideshows, the 2002 Medion PC had it all. Even the new Medion machines don't come with half as good a software bundle. Come on PC manufacturers, give us something we'll like! or we'll all make like I did and buy Macs! oh yes and please please please, don't bundle Windows Vista with machines that are specified any less than Dual-Core 2.4GHz with 4GB of DDR-3 RAM because it just won't work fast enough because it is so sluggish!