A tale of two laptops - my OOBE experience with two new laptops
So recently I purchased two new laptops for my family. While both were from the same OEM and the same product line - the Out of Box Experience (OOBE) was night and day.
Both units were Dell Inspiron. The first was a 13" 7000 series - 7378 running a 7th Gen Core i7, 256Mb SSD with 8GB of RAM. It also supported Windows Hello, Touch, Pen and Ink capabilities. The second was a 15" 5000 series 5578 running a 7th Gen Core i5 - 1TB HDD, 8GB of RAM with Hello and Touch but not Pen support.
So you might ask - why would you even consider buying a laptop with a HDD versus an SSD ? The only reason I did was price - and the intent was to replace the drive immediately. So one could argue that why didn't I do that at purchase and again the driver was price & selection.
And the point above about making a drive change was one of the decision criteria for the Dell Inspiron line. I'm a little old school and like to be able to make easy changes to my hardware, like RAM, Disk or Wifi. Dell allows you to do that. Versus so many glued together non-serviceable machines out there today - I can remove a few small screws and have access to entire internals of the machine.
So now on the OOBE...
Let's start with the packaging. Both were extremely basic when compared to packaging of a few years ago. A flip top box with cardboard braces to suspend the laptop within the box then a simple top tray or side compartment for the Power cord and supply. That's it.
But that's where the similarities end.
The 7378 started into the Windows 10 OOBE Voice augmented wizard and in less than 10 minutes I was connected to WiFi, received updates, logged in with my MS account and was operational. Windows Hello set up was easy.
The Get Office app - allowed me to easily see my Office365 account and install - so no problem there.
There was a little cleanup of both OEM and MS bloatware. And even though it was a brand new machine - I had a BIOS update as well. But overall in about an hour I had configured the machine as I wanted and good to go.
The 5578 however was another story.
My goal with setup was to go through the initial OOBE with the 5400 RPM 1TB drive, to get the machine ID registered with MS and have Windows 10 activate then use Samsung's migration utility to move the content to the SSD, swap the drive and be done.
That approach didn't work..
First - from the moment I powered up, the 5578 was straining, the 1TB drive was pegged and stayed that way. That initial OOBE and clean-up of bloatware etc took over 4 hrs and the machine never felt right. It hung up on things like OneDrive Sync and Installing updates and downloading apps. In fact I'd launch Task Manager and watch the various processes, monitoring the disk waiting for it to come off 99% before I would launch another process.
Add to that the fact that so much content was delivered post OS desktop presentation and that you couldn't even launch some apps as the background processes were effectively consuming all machine resources was really disappointing. They might as well have put up a splash screen that said - Hi we need to download a bunch of stuff and it will take a while - so do not touch the machine tonight and it might be usable tomorrow morning..
I blame both Dell and MS for this. The combination of Dell Digital Delivery and then MS Store downloads crippled the machine. Add to that all the 3rd party apps that just keep downloading even though you didn't request them is just poor.
Bottom line was it was a really poor OOBE experience and I felt like it was 2001 and I was installing XP or something. If I was a novice user and was planning on living with what was provided I would have been really frustrated and disappointed.
So to add insult to injury - after finally getting machine somewhat stable and working - I attempted to use the Samsung Migration tool to migrate to the new EVO 850. And guess what the app failed - several times, even with patching, etc it just wouldn't work.
So plan B....
At each major release - I always use the Microsoft Media Creation tool and create a bootable USB of the production release. That was my savior.
I pulled out the 5400 RPM 1TB drive - installed the Evo 850 and then basically did a "clean" install of Windows 10 Creator Update 1703 from USB.
The difference was night & day. The 5578 suddenly came to life - once the new disk was prepared and base OS components install the OOBE was exactly the same as the 7378. In under an hour from inserting the USB and booting - I had the OS / Desktop configured, Office Installed and OneDrive sync'd, Store Apps Installed, etc.
It shows you how much a difference SSD makes. And even though this was still SATA vs M.2 the performance improvement was dramatic and suddenly the machine acted like a Windows 10 machine and not a Windows XP machine.
And that raises a question...
One the one side - I paid under $600 for the 5578 - so I got an inexpensive machine. On the other - why are vendors like Dell still offering machines with a mix of modern (7th Gen Core CPU) and 15 year old technologies (5400 RPM 2.5" drives) and expecting folks to have a good experience. Similarly, MS is offsetting some of Windows 10 costs, by adding all of these "sponsored" apps to a new OS install whether I want them or not. And they they just keep coming and you can't stop it.
As I mentioned above - I made a conscious decision to buy the machine with that old tech knowing that I was going to swap it. And the $100 I spent on the Samsung SSD was worth every penny. But the reality is there was not even an option when purchasing the 5578 to upgrade to SSD - so the level set was that if you bought that line you were going to have the experience I did. No wonder PCs are not selling well.
Bottom line - regardless of all the new features and capabilities that Windows 10 provides, if your OOBE is as poor as my was with mid-range gear, then why go there.
Both units were Dell Inspiron. The first was a 13" 7000 series - 7378 running a 7th Gen Core i7, 256Mb SSD with 8GB of RAM. It also supported Windows Hello, Touch, Pen and Ink capabilities. The second was a 15" 5000 series 5578 running a 7th Gen Core i5 - 1TB HDD, 8GB of RAM with Hello and Touch but not Pen support.
So you might ask - why would you even consider buying a laptop with a HDD versus an SSD ? The only reason I did was price - and the intent was to replace the drive immediately. So one could argue that why didn't I do that at purchase and again the driver was price & selection.
And the point above about making a drive change was one of the decision criteria for the Dell Inspiron line. I'm a little old school and like to be able to make easy changes to my hardware, like RAM, Disk or Wifi. Dell allows you to do that. Versus so many glued together non-serviceable machines out there today - I can remove a few small screws and have access to entire internals of the machine.
So now on the OOBE...
Let's start with the packaging. Both were extremely basic when compared to packaging of a few years ago. A flip top box with cardboard braces to suspend the laptop within the box then a simple top tray or side compartment for the Power cord and supply. That's it.
But that's where the similarities end.
The 7378 started into the Windows 10 OOBE Voice augmented wizard and in less than 10 minutes I was connected to WiFi, received updates, logged in with my MS account and was operational. Windows Hello set up was easy.
The Get Office app - allowed me to easily see my Office365 account and install - so no problem there.
There was a little cleanup of both OEM and MS bloatware. And even though it was a brand new machine - I had a BIOS update as well. But overall in about an hour I had configured the machine as I wanted and good to go.
The 5578 however was another story.
My goal with setup was to go through the initial OOBE with the 5400 RPM 1TB drive, to get the machine ID registered with MS and have Windows 10 activate then use Samsung's migration utility to move the content to the SSD, swap the drive and be done.
That approach didn't work..
First - from the moment I powered up, the 5578 was straining, the 1TB drive was pegged and stayed that way. That initial OOBE and clean-up of bloatware etc took over 4 hrs and the machine never felt right. It hung up on things like OneDrive Sync and Installing updates and downloading apps. In fact I'd launch Task Manager and watch the various processes, monitoring the disk waiting for it to come off 99% before I would launch another process.
Add to that the fact that so much content was delivered post OS desktop presentation and that you couldn't even launch some apps as the background processes were effectively consuming all machine resources was really disappointing. They might as well have put up a splash screen that said - Hi we need to download a bunch of stuff and it will take a while - so do not touch the machine tonight and it might be usable tomorrow morning..
I blame both Dell and MS for this. The combination of Dell Digital Delivery and then MS Store downloads crippled the machine. Add to that all the 3rd party apps that just keep downloading even though you didn't request them is just poor.
Bottom line was it was a really poor OOBE experience and I felt like it was 2001 and I was installing XP or something. If I was a novice user and was planning on living with what was provided I would have been really frustrated and disappointed.
So to add insult to injury - after finally getting machine somewhat stable and working - I attempted to use the Samsung Migration tool to migrate to the new EVO 850. And guess what the app failed - several times, even with patching, etc it just wouldn't work.
So plan B....
At each major release - I always use the Microsoft Media Creation tool and create a bootable USB of the production release. That was my savior.
I pulled out the 5400 RPM 1TB drive - installed the Evo 850 and then basically did a "clean" install of Windows 10 Creator Update 1703 from USB.
The difference was night & day. The 5578 suddenly came to life - once the new disk was prepared and base OS components install the OOBE was exactly the same as the 7378. In under an hour from inserting the USB and booting - I had the OS / Desktop configured, Office Installed and OneDrive sync'd, Store Apps Installed, etc.
It shows you how much a difference SSD makes. And even though this was still SATA vs M.2 the performance improvement was dramatic and suddenly the machine acted like a Windows 10 machine and not a Windows XP machine.
And that raises a question...
One the one side - I paid under $600 for the 5578 - so I got an inexpensive machine. On the other - why are vendors like Dell still offering machines with a mix of modern (7th Gen Core CPU) and 15 year old technologies (5400 RPM 2.5" drives) and expecting folks to have a good experience. Similarly, MS is offsetting some of Windows 10 costs, by adding all of these "sponsored" apps to a new OS install whether I want them or not. And they they just keep coming and you can't stop it.
As I mentioned above - I made a conscious decision to buy the machine with that old tech knowing that I was going to swap it. And the $100 I spent on the Samsung SSD was worth every penny. But the reality is there was not even an option when purchasing the 5578 to upgrade to SSD - so the level set was that if you bought that line you were going to have the experience I did. No wonder PCs are not selling well.
Bottom line - regardless of all the new features and capabilities that Windows 10 provides, if your OOBE is as poor as my was with mid-range gear, then why go there.
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