This is repeatedly recommended, but I think it's overlooking that not all manufacturer customization is entirely evil. You then to hunt down all the drivers for bits of the motherboard. Are you sure your power consumption settings etc are optimal after you've done this? Have you installed all the drivers "manually" via their inf files? (e.g. Nvidia drivers come with their own pile of bloatware)
Lenovo does this for you with their system updater. It downloads and updates all drivers for your system, including bios updates and configuration tweaks that affect power and stability. It will install on a fresh install from Microsoft media - ie there is no need to keep what was preinstalled on the system. http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/ht080136
I don't use those because i don't trust the manufacturer-provided "system updater" to only download drivers. What's to prevent them from surreptitiously installing their add-on garbage.
Even if it currently does not do that, I just don't trust it to not do that in general.
The Lenovo one is a continuation of the IBM one. You get to tick what you want, they show what the existing installed version is, as well as changelogs. There has never been any misrepresentation. I believe corporate types use the system updater too, and pissing them off by installing garbage would quickly annoy valuable customers.
It does not let you install or update the crapware that comes with systems. It is actually quite difficult to get that stuff other than saving it when you get a new system. BTW IBM/Lenovo have historically had way less crapware than other vendors. I think Lenovo got complacent in this case, hearing "you guys do less crapware than the others" and confusing it with "you are doing a perfect job". Less worse is not the same as doing good.
Someone's useful add-on is someone else's garbage. They have some software called Access Connections which provides more gui and control over networking, such as which access points to connect to based on location profiles and who knows what else. I don't want that since I mostly use Linux, and Windows does a good enough job when I am using it. The system updater has never installed it, nor tricked me in any way.
Here's a fun surprise: Microsoft allows driver vendors to ship arbitrary programs in addition to drivers. They will download and install these programs automatically. For instance, I bought some "gamer" mouse because it was the closest thing to an Intellimouse 3 I could find. Suddenly I have a \Program Files\Razer directory, and a popup on install telling me to register and do all this other stuff.
So if Lenovo was evil, they can just ship shit in their drivers, get it certified by MS, and have it distributed automatically by Windows Update driver install.
For Lenovo you can download the SCCM package for the given model. Includes all necessary .inf files and does not install anything itself (designed for use in corporate deployments).
Yes, not all manufacturer customization is evil. But my point is that no one in my circle trusts the manufacturer enough to leave any of it on their machine.
