Who Installs the Most Crapware?

Barence writes "PC Pro has done a thorough test of the software bundled by nine of the leading laptop manufacturers to find out who installs the most crapware on their PCs. Manufacturers such as Acer add as much as two minutes to their boot times by stuffing their machines full of bundled software, with own-brand proprietary software being the worst offender. HP's bundled apps, meanwhile, have a memory footprint of more than 1GB. PC Pro has also reviewed three pieces of software which promise to remove rubbish from your PC — with mixed results."

Comments

Lenovo

[El Lobo]

As a responsable IT person at my university, I buy a lot of different hardware (laptops, stationary, servers)...

I ALWAYS format the computer before giving it to the final user, but as a rule I can tell you that any "big" name out there installs a lot of crapware, but the winner is: LENOVO.

The last Dells I've got have:

1. Adobe reader
2. Google toolbar
3. Google Desktop (!!!! ahhhggg the pain)
4. Adobe Flash player
5. Lots of Dell crapware like Support center and so on..

Lenovo: 1. Adobe reader
2. MS Office 30 days trial (yes, trials ARE crapware in my book)
3. McAffee antivirus + Firewall + anything (60 days trial)
4. Google toolbar
5. Google Desktop
6. Google Chrome (AHHHHHHH MORE PAIN)
7. Adobe flash player
8. Skype (!!!)
10. Lots and I mean LOOOOTS of Lenovo panels, gadgets and stuff
HP 1. Adobe reader
2. Norton antivirus + Firewall + anything (60 days trial)
4. Google toolbar
5. Google Desktop
6. Lots of gadgets and added HP value"

On the bright side, Dell always gives you a new brand Windows CD and a CD with drivers so the re-installation is easy.

Lenovo? They give you a Restore CD that installs the system with all the crap from the beginning.

Oh well... At lest nobody else (that I know) is installing Abble crapware by default. The day some big name intalls iTunes, QuickTime, Safary or other Abble Supercrap, as default, that's the last day I buy such a brand for us.

Re:Lenovo

[BumbaCLot]

I can speak from experience that some of the Thinkpad software is not crap, but actually improves the operating of the computer.

Under IBM the battery and power scheme setups were a lot better at maintaining battery life. Some of these hardware manufacturers actually know what their hardware does and the best way to manage it!

Re:Lenovo

[Sperbels]

It's not crapware in the sense that it's extraneous crap you don't need. But it's crapware in the sense that you don't need to have all those EXEs in memory at startup. Windows is perfectly capable of loading the appropriate items into memory as they are needed.

Re:Lenovo

[AmiMoJo]

iTunes for Windows is by far the most bloated bit of software I have ever seen. The shear amount of crap it installs in unbeliveable:

        * iTunes itself
        * Quicktime
        * Apple Mobile Device service
        * Bonjour Service
        * iPod Service
        * iTunesHelper startup task
        * QTTask startup task
        * Firefox plugin
        * iPod Classic drivers
        * iPhone drivers
        * Apple Software Update

Grand Total: 276MB

Actually, they removed the DNS Resolver service from iTunes 8 (wtf - Windows can already resolve DNS).

On top of all that, iTunes itself contains half of MacOS. OSX font rendering and associated fonts, graphic rendering elements etc.

You also have every supported language installed, and support for every Apple device (iPod Classic, iPod Touch, iPhone, AppleTV), network sharing and streaming... The list goes on.

I could just about forgive all this if there was an alternative, but if you own an iPhone or an iPod Touch there isn't. Apple decided to encrypt the iTunes database and make it impossible for 3rd party software to work with their hardware.

Re:Lenovo

[Hognoxious]

You need to know which registry entries to delete. Generally crapware doesn't exactly volunteer that information.

Re:no wonder people are switching to Mac

[Machtyn]

Dell's business computers can be ordered plain vanilla or without the OS loaded, if you wish. I always recommend their business line, whether the person asking is a business or home user.

Good recent experience with Asus

[elrous0]

I bought an Asus EEE netbook a few months back and was surprised to see that Skype was basically the only app that was installed by default. It was otherwise a pretty clean install of XP. Considering the experience I've had with other notebooks in recent years, I was pleasantly surprised. Kudos to them.

Re:Even better

[DigitalSorceress]

Well played sir, well played.

I'm not a Mac, I'm not a PC... I own both, and I use Linux and Solaris for servers. I see my computers are tools, but I am not.

As for the crapware, I tend to agree with TFA: My Macbook Pro had little (though, I'm an amateur photographer so I kind of think of iPhoto as a crapware version of LightRoom and PhotoShop). Dells that I've ordered through Small Business division (both for work and personal) have been free of it. Sony Vaios, HP Pavillions have been kind of loaded with it, and my Samsung netbook really wasn't too bad.

Wow, I've got way too many computers.

What.. have... I ... said? That's just the crazy talk right there!