gram3000's Journal: Dell Experience

Two friends recently bought laptops independently from Dell, the Inspiron 1300. I was surprised when it arrived, a good looking robust machine with built in Wireless and a very fast delivery. Booting into XP home a lot of software was pre installed, Google Deskbar, several Mcafee products, Dell Support Assistant etc. After a minuter or so running, both laptops experienced the blue screen of death. I uninstalled all the software that wouldn't be used, my friends had bought these laptops for email, IM and word processing. They are both very stable now and run smoothly, I have installed MSN messenger, Firefox and AVG instead of Mcafee. Have other people experienced these problems with Dell laptops? Will they be stable now without so much pre installed?