Dell is packaging software (arguably spyware) that forces users to go through Google for search especially for typos, with all above-the-fold results being ads. This software is separate from the Google Toolbar and more difficult to get rid of. Based solely on the post about this over at OpenDNS, I’m not very happy with this Dell/Google packaging deal. It appears to go well beyond reasonable packaging of software with a computer. This is the first I’ve heard of it, and I’m hoping I never get to see it in action.
David Szpunar: Owner, Servant 42 and Servant Voice
David's Church Information Technology
-
Recent Comments
- Scatterbrained | The Secret Life of Yarn on My Tasks, Projects and Stuff (now playing: Toodledo)
- David Szpunar on Exchange 2010: Moderation and Nested Bypass
- Rich on Exchange 2010: Moderation and Nested Bypass
- I Can Play The Merakis! on VisiWave Wireless Site Survey
- David Szpunar on Bye Meraki, Hello Open-Mesh: Revisiting the Campground WiFi!
- Matt Krapf on Bye Meraki, Hello Open-Mesh: Revisiting the Campground WiFi!
- David Szpunar on Unauthorized DHCP Servers: DENIED!
-
Odds and Ends
Categories
- Asides
- Backup
- Blogging
- Books
- Check-in
- Church IT Roundtable
- Companies
- Conference
- Content Filtering
- Cool Services
- Cool Tools
- Disaster Recovery
- Documentation
- General
- Hardware
- Help Desk
- Humor
- Inventory
- Mobile
- Networking
- News
- On The Road
- People
- Personal
- Printers and Copiers
- Quotes
- Rants
- Reading and Listening
- Remote Access
- School
- Security
- Servers
- Software
- Spam
- Storage
- Users
- Virtualization
- Web
- Websites
- Wireless
- WordPress
- Yikes!
-
Recent Posts
- State of the Blog
- Jimmy Wales & Nicholas Carr debate at DePauw University Live Blog
- Blog On The Run
- Church IT Roundtable Recap Spring 2010, Saddleback Church
- Changes – The Blog Falls Behind
- Old and New: Major Life Transition
- Deploying Microsoft Windows 7 with MDT 2010 and AIK 2010
- Exchange 2010: Yeah, we’ve got that!
- Exchange 2010: Moderation and Nested Bypass
- Adobe Changes Licensing, Causes Non-Profit Scare, Probably OK Though
-
Church IT Blogs
- Adventures in Network Plumbing
- Anchorite.org: Christianity, Orthodoxy & Technology
- Church IT Help
- Dave Mast – Geek At Large
- I push all the buttons around here.
- ITDiscuss.org Forum/List
- Jason Powell: Church IT and other musings
- Nick Nicholaou – Ministry IT
- Rich Text
- techlesia – Matthew Irvine
- The Appian Way
- The Open Source Ministry Blog
- the way i see IT
- Trace Pupke: Another Church IT Blog
- Travis Kensil – Church I.T.
-
Disclaimer
The thoughts, ideas and information on this blog are mine. They might sometimes be the same as those of my current or former employers, but being here doesn't guarantee that they are. This site is not intended to offer legal or professional advice; use of information provided is at your own risk. Correctness of information is not assured, but I'm obsessive-compulsive enough to strive for it anyway. Pointing out errors in spelling or technical details in the interest of correction are appreciated.
David's Church Information Technology is proudly powered by WordPress • Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS). • xMark Theme by: Lisa Sabin-Wilson
Actually, they aren’t hard to remove. There are two uninstalls in the Add/Remove Programs control panel that will remove these “features”. I don’t remember the names exactly, “URL Assist” & “Search Assist”, I think.
We remove them from our computers.
OpenDNS says they’re “Browser Address Error Redirector” and/or “GoogleAFE” which are both not something I would think the average user would know to look for or uninstall, if they even figured out what the problem was. I’ll agree that if un-installing those from Add/Remove Programs is all that is required, it’s not “more difficult” to remove necessarily. But it’s still not something the average user would know to do, and it appears to cause some strange problems right out of the box for some. I don’t like bundling but I understand why it’s done. But I think this goes too far, speaking even just as a tech guy that (even random) people ask “why doesn’t my computer work, I just bought it?” sometimes. Can I bill Dell and/or Google for my time if I end up troubleshooting this junk? Makes me want to…
I used Add/Remove Programs to remove them, but the process was so quick (less than 1/2 sec) that I’m suspicious that it removed them at all – maybe just removed them from the uninstall list!? Anyone know how to check for complete removal?
I don’t know how to check, but I seem to recall when I initially read about it that someone said the Add/Remove Programs removal worked. Can’t confirm, though.