There’s a new class of Windows laptops out there. Powered by impressive Arm CPUs from Nvidia, packed with generous amounts of RAM and premium materials. And they damn well better be since they start at approximately double the price of a “nice” laptop and go up to $7,000 dollars.
But if you actually buy one, you’ll be getting an experience that is familiar in most ways. They boot up into Windows 11 and force you to log in, and try to upsell you on a bunch of services. They default to tons of cloud-based services, and Microsoft will act like you kicked a puppy if you download any browser except Edge.
And it still wants you to pay $3 a month to get rid of the advertising in the built-in solitaire game.
HP wants you to watch The People’s Court
Let’s set specific terms since I don’t want to throw shade where it may not be warranted. I got the HP Omnibook Ultra 16 in for review. It’s using the more premium 20-core RTX Spark setup, and 32GB of RAM. This is the “base” configuration of this particular laptop, and it costs $3,200. There are cheaper options for RTX Spark out there (the Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,600 with an 18-core/24GB configuration). But the maximum configuration for this one, with 128GB of RAM, costs over $6,000.
And it still comes pre-loaded with freakin’ McAfee. Which many consider to be akin to malware at this point, to say nothing of how it’s duplicating functions that are already present and perfectly serviceable within Windows 11.
It has “HP TV+,” something I wasn’t even aware of before now. It’s a free streaming TV thing like Crackle or Tubi. You can’t pick what you want to watch or even pause, it’s just a bunch of always-on channels. It’s full to bursting with advertising, of course. The ads are the point, trying to get HP users to watch a few commercials for gambling or insurance or prescription drugs, just to put another nickel in HP’s pocket after they’ve bought a laptop.
HP
I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Windows has bloatware, from both Microsoft and manufacturers. It’s infested with advertising. More or less every product and service that you pay for is trying to get even more money out of you at every turn.
Recently I was asked if I wanted to buy an extended warranty for a $20 Blu-Ray. This is the world we live in. I can’t reasonably object to advertising or subscriptions — I write on the internet for a living. But the general social contract at this point is that if you spend a bunch of money, you don’t have to deal with this sort of crap.
Also, brand new BMW owners were assaulted with treated to an in-car ad for Spider-Man. So I suppose that social contract has been ripped up and tossed out.
The Surface is only slightly better
As I was writing up this editorial, I asked Mark Hachman to look through the Surface Laptop Ultra for bloatware. (Go read the review here.) Microsoft tends to take a lighter touch to its own Surface brand. And, indeed, there was no McAfee or Norton. But it did have the frickin’ ad-infested solitaire game as well as LinkedIn in the Start menu. Both of those are Microsoft properties, so I guess Redmond just can’t help itself.
Mark Hachman / Foundry
One last interesting tidbit: The Surface Laptop Ultra did come with the Nvidia app pre-installed. You might think I’d object to that — it’s just more branding, after all. But no, Nvidia’s unified app is the quickest, easiest way to install the most recent GPU drivers, an essential aspect of the experience for any PC that leans on graphics. It’s an entirely reasonable thing to install on a laptop with an Nvidia chip as its most important selling point.
And, for some reason, HP decided not to pre-install the Nvidia app. Apparently getting users to watch The People’s Court with a banner ad for printers was more important.
I’ve never bought a $3,200 computer for myself. Not even half that. My home-built PC is now worth about that much, but only because I bought the parts before everything went insane. But if I spent that kind of money on a laptop, I’d expect a certain level of elevated experience that goes beyond the actual parts inside. And Nvidia and Microsoft would seem to agree, pushing these RTX Spark laptops as literally “A new beginning for Windows PCs,” according to this promotional page.
That new beginning apparently hangs on to McAfee bloatware and subscription solitaire.