One more reason to build your own system

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19585433

One more reason to build your own system too true and provided the criminals have not infiltrated the HDD production line, otherwise we'll all be at their mercy!

Fdisk /mbr ought to keep the [censored] at bay.

Hardware as in CPU's RAM or HDD is just hardware how can that be infected with malware, the bbc report was assuming that that hardware would be used within a Microsoft environment at the stage of manufacture there is is no certainty of this being the case ,So that would go a long way in saying what a load of tripe /scaremongering but for what purpose ? windows 8 ? by chance i personally don't believe it
As for building my own system or recommending this ,then yes every time, as you can get so much better value for money and not only this but if you are reasonably clued up on hardware you will be easily able to upgrade the system in the coming years, something that could prove to be expensive or impossible if buying the likes of Dell to name only one

Or if you don't want to just buy a full copy of Windows, wipe the hard drive with something like KillDisk and then install the OS and drivers from scratch and get rid of all that preinstalled [censored]

I get my systems built as its just easier than messing about with deliveries and RMAs but I always do the above to get rid of the preinstalled image.

You don't have your own HDD factory in your shed?

In reply to a post by techguy:

Or if you don't want to just buy a full copy of Windows, wipe the hard drive with something like KillDisk and then install the OS and drivers from scratch and get rid of all that preinstalled [censored]

I get my systems built as its just easier than messing about with deliveries and RMAs but I always do the above to get rid of the preinstalled image.

Hdd with pre installed o/s, forget that, When you buy a HDD it's blank, no data written to it, but they get formatted anyway ,If i bought a laptop i would be tempted to re install the o/s or substitute it with the o/s of my choosing

Shh!

Not necessarily, just one more reason to wipe the factory pre-installed image

do some systems not come preinstalled and you have to create the backup media from the installed system. Nor sure if you then still have an embedded virus on that also.