Last week I went to join a meeting with Teams and it ran an ad before it started the meeting. I was surprised.
It was brief but it was a popup that was an ad. I don’t remember the exact wording because I was trying to join the meeting, but this isn’t good. If MS thinks that people want ads in their software and especially when they urgently need to join a meeting that will cause resentment.
Why am I sharing this? I told you that I bought a Dell Snapdragon laptop that was very cheap. It came out with taxes to about $700. I wasn’t looking for specs, I was just looking for a backup computer that could work if my main computer fails.
In the process of setting it up it had plenty of advertisements. That is to be expected for a consumer computer. However what I didn’t like is that once it was setup, McAfee software popped up wanting attention. It was a system tray popup which wasn’t necessary to have that kind of integration. I uninstalled the two McAfee programs that were installed and the popups haven’t returned.
When the computer was purchased there wasn’t an option to not purchase McAfee and a Microsoft office license even though I already had one. If a vendor has to bundle their software and not let you remove it, its a sign its garbage.
I used my Microsoft license I already had and all of my documents came in. Unfortunately too often cheap computers come crammed with software that you don’t need or want. I hope I don’t have any further surprises. This is another reason why I love Linux. You don’t have to uninstall apps when you get a new computer because it won’t send you popup messages.
At some point we as a society have to say that life is more than just selling junk that people don’t need.