How Much Bloatware Does Dell Put on an e1405?

When I got my e1505 with a 100gig harddrive, I think I had 70~ gigs free. It's pretty disgusting. Even after formatting, its capacity is maxed at 91.7 gigs, due to media direct/whatever.
I wouldn't be suprised if he only had 60 gigs free if there were a lot of software/media options.......

40 Gigs of Dell's shit? Holy crap. I had no idea that it was that much. Good thing I went for the 100gig HD, but damn, I'll definitely need to reformat. Too bad I don't know how

Cheers,
Jarrod

The 40gb isn't all dell bloatware, about 12gb of it is a empty partition for the pc recovery thing (only get it if you dont choose the disk at time of order, but the partition is still there).

Also the XP install takes up a bit of space. My 60gb drive has a 37gb partition and a 12gb partition. I made use of the 12gb by installing Vista on it.

I had no where near 40GB of crap on my M140 when I received it back December.

that's because the XPS systems are free of bloatware to enhance performance. The only way to get a Dell without the America Online and other extra crap is to get the most high-end XPS system. Otherwise, it's not even an option. You get the bloatware, like it or not.

its a dell (baby): EXPECT LOTS!

I'm surprised no one mentioned this yet in this thread. The 100GB drive is probably partitioned into an approximately 5GB hidden partition for the Dell Restore area; a 65GB C: drive for Windows & programs; and a 22GB Backup partition for Norton Ghost to use. There might be some space for MediaDirect if the E1405 has that as well.

Lastly, note that most drive manufacturers define a Gigabyte as 1000 x 1000 x 1000 bytes, not 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes. This makes a sizeable difference in reported sizes; to see, just view "Properties" of the C: or D: drive. On my E1505 (also with a 100GB drive) the following sizes are the same:

70,005,354,496 bytes
65.1 Gigabytes (using Windows default 1024 x 1024 x 1024 method)
70.0 Gigabytes (using drive manufacturer's 1000 x 1000 x 1000 method)

The Dell "bloatware" (that allows you to have a laptop for hundreds of dollars less than would otherwise be possible) only accounts for a few hundred megabytes tops. Give your customer this information and I expect it will be a short-lived bit of upset. Especially if you help them understand what bits can be safely removed. IMHO, McAfee is a good start -- it slows down my system something awful. Got rid of it, now the system is much more responsive.

Hope this helps.

And BTW, you can safely remove that second partition if your customer doesn't plan to use it as a backup partition. Use a program like Partition Magic to delete it, then grow the Windows partition to reclaim the space. There may be free programs to do the same thing (there's QTPartEd under KDE in Linux) but it's the one I know and mostly trust for this kind of operation.

I can't wait until this term is done at school so that i can format this puppy and see what it's really capable of. McAffee and a few more gayware appz slowed it down a LOT.

Leo,
i was just going to post my original partitions until i got to your post
mine was the same
1+ gig "utility"
65 gig "system"
20 gig "backup"
5 gig "restore"

now it's 1.46 unallocated until i get media direct fixed and the remaining 90 gigs