Seth Godin experiences the IT pro’s nightmare

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. Then there were the dozens (at least it felt like dozens) of buttons and searches I had to endure to switch the search box from Bing to Google. And the icons on the desktop that had been paid for by various partners and the this-comes-with-that of just about everything.

The digital world, even the high end brands, has become a sleazy carnival, complete with hawkers, barkers and a bearded lady. By the time someone actually gets to your site, they’ve been conned, popped up, popped under and upsold so many times they really have no choice but to be skeptical.

I passionately hate consumer-focused computers and even “small business” Dell machines. I have a standing order for my IT team to erase every hard drive that enters the building from Dell or anywhere else. We load Windows manually, load drivers manually, load our apps manually (well, not “manually,” but it’s all done in-house).

I cannot trust Dell. Or HP. Or Lenovo. Or Sony. They sold out long ago and they prey upon the ignorance and gullibility of average users. Sleazy doesn’t begin to describe their deals.