Digital Home Thoughts: Seth Goodin on Setting Up a New Computer

"I just set up a friend's PC. I haven't done that in a while. Wow. Apparently, a computer is now not a computer, it's an opportunity to upsell you. First, the setup insisted (for my own safety) that I sign up for an eternal subscription to Norton. Then it defaulted (opt out) to sending me promotional emails..."

Seth Goodin is a brilliant marketing/PR guy who somehow manages, every single day, to send out an email with meaningful thoughts about his industry. His email today struck a cord that I thought Digital Home Thoughts readers would be interested in - it was about his experience setting up a new PC. He's 100% right; setting up a new PC does feel like a carnival experience, with distractions and conflicting experiences as part of what customers have come to expect. So much of the new computer experience feels whorish; HP is the worst for this, with their co-branded HP/AOL home page, HP/AOL toolbar, eBay links on the desktop, etc.

HP should care about their brand, striving to present their product in the cleanest way possible. I laughed when I unboxed the HP dm3 - HP went through all this trouble to make this excellent-looking laptop, with a gorgeous brush-aluminum lid, and then they went and stuck a stupid Energy Star sticker on it, completely ruining the aesthetic. I've never heard why companies like HP and Dell do this - are they really so powerless as OEMs that they can't control the look and feel of their own product?

I know keeping prices low is important to the OEMs, but just once I'd like to set up a new computer and not feel assaulted by antivirus software warning me that I need to immediately pay in order to be protected. If you're an antivirus software company, why not give the customer at least 90 days of protection, completely silently without any scary "BUY NOW!" pop-ups, before you tell them their subscription is about to expire? Impress the customer with how non-intrusive you can be, silently protecting their computer, and when the time comes for them to reach for their credit card, I bet then won't mind paying for your service.