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Once you've got the OS running, you still need a lot more: drivers and hardware-related software, some office suite, some e-mail program, some antivirus/security software, a better web browser, a better video player, and even basic tools such as a PDF reader.
That's definitely a lot of work, and very time consuming.

This kind of tools indeed ARE pre-installed by your OEM, because that's what the average user expects from a brand new computer, only in unlicensed crap-loaded obsolete or otherwise broken versions.

Yes, MS are in a large part responsible for this.
That's their OS, they get to decide what goes with it.
They define the rules, and OEMs can only comply.
Obviously, the current rules do not benefit the end-user.

It indeed seems as the rules Microsoft defines are not focused on the best end-user experience. It makes sense to deny for example changing bing to google in IE but cluttering IE with all kind of crapware icons and toolbars is even more worse. From the end-user perspective. From the Microsoft pov it's maybe irrelevant cause those crap doesn't compete with own products/services. And that is short minded. They, Microsoft, should have a focus on the best end-user experience possible. They don't cause they do not need to. Monopolists, pff.

Edited 2012-11-12 04:29 UTC

I install Windows 7 boxes frequently along with all or most of what you've listed. It never takes several hours, much less all night. That's completely ridiculous. If it's taking that long, you're doing something wrong.


Microsoft is not responsible for the crap OEMs install. It's the OEMs decision to load your new system with a bunch of garbage toolbars and stupid trial apps. Microsoft does not force any of this, it's 100% OEM decision to do so.

That's assuming you have an OS-image at hand. But what if you've just gotten the PC and you don't have an OS-image yet? Downloading and installing the several hundreds of megabytes of patches alone does indeed take around two hours. Of course, installing e.g. several years old version of Ubuntu and then proceeding to update it to the latest and greatest is also going to take a long time, so only complaining about Windows would be misleading.

There is something, however, about the way Windows applies certain patches that slows the whole process down without any seemingly good reason: the .NET patches. For some reason even on my quad-core system those patches can take over 25 minutes to apply, and I've had the patches actually get stuck in some sort of a never-ending loop several times where CPU-usage is at zero, and even after leaving the machine on for a whole night it still wasn't finished in the morning -- only a reboot or two and then trying to reinstall the patch fixed it.

That is because the .NET framework has to recompile all .NET executable and binaries that were deployed with NGEN on the system.

With an update, the code symbols might not longer be in the exact same positions, and the native code has to be regenerated.

I don't count ISO download time (whether it's Windows or linux) towards installation time because downloading what you need is pre-installation, not installation. None-the-less, the download time isn't that long for anyone with a decent internet connection. Also, 2 hours is a long way from an installation taking several hours to all night along. I stand by what I said -- if it's taking you all night long, or even several hours, then you're doing something wrong or are completely unprepared.


Another user already explained this so no need to do it again. Without question .NET can be the longest part, but it also has legitimate reason.