On Bloatware, Caps Lock, and Dell being Morons
(needlessly long post, this - it was going to be a quick point about what is hardly a major issue, but... well, I got rambling)
This week, I took delivery of a new PC - a Dell Studio 15, a replacement for the netbook I'd been using for just over a year, which was itself a stop-gap solution after my previous machine, a ThinkPad (the last in a long line of machines passed down as unwanted spares from my Dad's work), had all but given up the ghost. I'm very happy to have it - it's got a nice big widescreen display, it's got enough grunt that I can get back to playing games that were released more recently than 2005, and it's got Windows 7, with which I'm pleasantly surprised so far. All in all, it's lovely and shiny and new, and it's great.
However, it's not without its annoyances - a major one being something I've discovered this evening, which has proven to be a classic example of the age-old trend for computer manufacturers to get ideas way above their station. I'm sure anyone who's ever bought a new PC has encountered this sort of thing - it's commonly known as "bloatware", and particularly bad offenders include Acer and Dell. If you've ever seen an annoying toolbar or set of "widgets" on your desktop that don't look like part of Windows, chances are your PC manufacturer put them there - it's their attempt at stamping their own company branding across your screen, even though it's already quite clearly all over the hardware itself.
I just don't understand why companies do this. I mean, Microsoft - for all their faults - have been making operating systems for quite a while now. The odd blip aside (*cough*Vista*cough*), they know what they're doing, and how to make them work - why do the likes of Acer and Dell think they know how to do it better? Why do they have to interfere? I had the same thing with a Nokia N70 I got on Orange some years back - lovely phone, and the Symbian operating system was at the time the best and most effective smartphone interface out there. But for some reason, Orange - a telecom provider by trade, remember - thought they knew better than Nokia how to run Nokia's own phones, and had added their own ghastly, clunky, cripplingly slow homescreen. I eventually got rid of it, but it was baffling that they thought anyone would prefer to use it.
So. I'd already dealt with Dell's attempts to force this stuff upon me within minutes of starting my machine for the first time - or so I thought. First offender was something called the "Dell Dock", a shameless attempt to ape the, er, Dock function of Mac OS (and one that was particularly superfluous on Windows 7, an OS that itself shifts towards a dock-style setup courtesy of the new taskbar). Off it went. I then spent some time trying to figure out how to change the utterly ludicrous setup that meant that in order to use the function keys for their original purpose, one had to hold down the Fn key (as the default keypress for each would provide the alternate functions - e.g. brightness/volume control, etc.) As someone who bashes F2 and F5 quite a lot in the general course of working (not to mention F6 when gaming), this was of course entirely unacceptable - and I eventually discovered that it was possible to switch off in the BIOS.1
Dell's software division, yesterday.
Anyway, with all of that dealt with, I was happily using the machine - until I started to notice another annoyance, this one worse than the others. With no LEDs anywhere on the machine itself to indicate the status of various key locks (most notably Caps), Dell instead employ a little notification icon that overlays onto the bottom right-hand corner of the screen whenever you turn Caps Lock on and off. Now, I've got a weird thing with Caps lock anyway - the way I have my hands on the keyboard for my fast (100wpm, people) typing, I have this odd little compulsion to frequently bash the lock on and off with my little finger, often at the end of sentences. No apparent reason for it, it's just a weird thing of mine. Anyway. Aside from that, though, I discovered while playing GTA: Vice City that when I tried to use the key for its assigned function in that game - looking over the character's shoulder in "on foot" mode2 - the act of bringing up the notification actually took focus away from the game, minimizing it. It didn't crash, but it did mean I had to Alt-Tab back in, where a pause menu was waiting for me. Further experimentation revealed an irritation that I hadn't even noticed in a couple of days' worth of working - that sometimes, switching the Caps Lock on or off actually took focus away from a word processor or web browser. Thus defeating the point of even using it in the first place. Utterly, utterly insane.
Online research eventually revealed that this behaviour was being caused by a background program called "quickset". Easy enough to kill from within Task Manager, and to locate in the registry and prevent from loading on startup. Except it wasn't even as simple as that. Because in another example of infinite-wisdomness, Dell decided that this PC shouldn't have a hard button for ejecting the DVD drive (it's not drawer-based - it's one of those annoying slot-based ones that you just know you're going to break one day by putting the disc in wrongly somehow). Instead, it's a key on the keyboard, inbetween the F keys and Print Screen. And guess what? If QuickSet isn't running... it doesn't work. In other words, by forcing this overlay into the same program that operates the control keys, Dell are forcing you into one of two equally undesirable options. One, lose the focus on your window every time you hit Caps Lock (and lose the ability to use the key in full-screen games that often require it). Or two, lose the ability to get your discs out of your drive (without having to browse to My Computer, right-click on the drive in question, wait for the menu to respond, and hit "Eject").
Still, eventually, I found a third option, and it's the one I've gone with - a registry hack changes the functionality of QuickSet, removing the keylock notifications while still allowing the control keys to work. But it also, oddly, changes the onscreen display for volume and brightness adjustment into the tackiest possible form - something that looks like it's come straight out of Windows 3.1 (right). So basically, Dell are making me choose between having stuff work properly, and having it look in any way sensible.
You have to admit, when it comes to sheer malevolent supervillainny, they could give Doctor Doom, Lex Luthor and Hank Scorpio a run for their money.
1Although, as I subsequently discovered when trying to change something else tonight, there is an option buried deep in Windows itself to change it back - evidently a new addition by Dell, as people on various support forums certainly weren't aware of it.
2When playing GTA, I use a joypad for driving, but switch to the classic FPS system of WASD+mouse when on foot.
Originally posted at seblog.co.uk. You can comment here or there.