This $3,200 RTX Spark laptop still wants me to pay for ad-free Solitaire

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.