I bought a desktop Gateway from BestBuy awhile back. It had Best Buy specific crapware and the "special edition" Dell was the same price from the MS store as it was from Dell's website.
Buying the business line from Dell gets you better local support and no crapware.
Sometimes Best Buy has exclusive models that have specific software put on there by the manufacturer. You can usually verify if you are getting one of those models by googling the full model number to see if there are other sellers than Best Buy out there.
They probably have slightly different hardware to keep a price edge. But anyway, to anyone on HN I'd think bundled software is pretty much a non-issue; I've always installed Windows fresh and I feel like doing that isn't a big deal if you are technical.
Well, I am an MSDN subscriber. But if you aren't, can't you get a "recovery disc" from Microsoft somewhere and then use the serial on the label? I can recall doing something like this in the past.
Not so much, but as recently as five years ago. They don't pre-image, but they open up the computer, and Geek Squad "optimizes" and "preps" it for you, including installing a bunch of crapware.
And then when you ask for one that hasn't been "prepared" they look at you like "why would you ever want that?" and when you insist, they'll apologize that they have none of that model in stock that haven't been prepared.
Buying the business line from Dell gets you better local support and no crapware.