Why didn't Michael Dell replace Kevin Rollins six months or a year ago as the chief executive of the company that bears his name?

Somewhere along the line Dell lost its way. Maybe Michael Dell can restore it to its former glory but it won't be easy. Its accounting is under investigation by both the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and the Justice Department. Wall Street is still seething that the computer maker has missed profit forecasts including the one for the fourth quarter.

I'd like to focus on one particular thing that Dell could do to stop losing customers at an epic rate.

For the love of god, stop loading up PCs with useless bloatware.

I've actually been buying Dells for a couple of yeaes now. My laptop and my last two desktops have both come from them. Since my student days ended and I got a job, I've found myself relatively cash rich but time poor. As a result of this, I've lost the patience I used to have for building my own PCs and ironing out the kinks and have come to appreciate the option of paying a little more to have somebody do it for me, while still being able to pick which components I want. I take it for granted that when I buy a new PC from Dell, it will, out of box, be slow, unstable and full of 30 day trials for software that only a gibbering moron could ever want to use. I therefore backup the drivers folder, format the hard disk and reinstall XP (I find that the amount of crap Dell are bundling is growing so fast that even the decrappifier doesn't cut it any more).

However, this is not the experience that a lot of people are looking for when they buy a new PC and many people don't have a clue how to go about reinstalling an operating system. All they know is that their new Dell PC, which they've probably paid slightly over the going rate for, is slow as hell, to the point of being painful to use. The further from the cutting edge the system you buy, the worse the problem seems to be, as Dell give no thought to performance in deciding which particular crap to inflict - they just pile it all on.