I don’t watch a lot of TV, so this might be an old commercial, but I just saw a tv spot for Mac computers that had a young guy representing a Mac, and a middle aged business man representing Windows.

The gist of the ad was that Macs come bundled with all sorts of cool multimedia apps, while Windows comes with calculator and clock.

Have these people purchased a name brand computer with Windows pre-installed recently? You spend more time uninstalling bundled software than you’d expect. My last computer came complete with MSN, Napster, AOL, a million and a half Norton security apps, Microsoft Works AND a 90 day trial of MS Office 2003, MS Photo something or other, RealPlayer 8, and who knows what else. I spent over an hour uninstalling stuff I didn’t want or need.

When the start menu was down to a minimum, I installed Gimp, NVU, Open Office, Photoshop, Acrobat and a few other apps, and finally had the computer I wanted.

If Windows installations came only with Calculator and Clock… and maybe the Character Map for good measure, I’d be a happy camper. It would sure save a lot of time.