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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."
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.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Apple.
Personally, I build my own and install vanilla Windows, but sh** has hit the fan long time ago.
This plus anti virus software resource hogs makes windows experience horrible on a brand new computer.
Not a single manufacturer offers option "windows and drivers only".
In other words, you need 4 core CPU and 2GB of RAM to open internet explorer.
This will get 100% of the crap off your system or your money back!
Boy, this is going to be a tough discussion. I wonder how many mod-points are going to be spent labeling items "flamebait" for talking about Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac..
:)
Anyway, I think Acer I got for my wife is the worst. I also recently purchased an HP, and it actually got a lot better in terms of less crapware. I was very surprised, although Vista disappeared ten minutes after I got it out of the box and Windows 7 magically appeared later..
Any geek worth his salt gets rid of the current OS installation anyway and installs their flavour of choice anyway
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.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The crapware installed on thses computers are advertisements. These computers would cost a lot more money if they didn't have all this preinstalled rubbish on the HDD, but I'd much rather take a couple minutes to remove Spore Creature Creator from my new HP than pay the extra money for buying an "ad-free" computer.
Maybe this is why Macs are so expensive for the same hardware.
Why yes, I am an apple fanboy. How did you guess?
By the way that you pretended to defer to Linux first.
Why yes, I am an apple fanboy. How did you guess?
You're a self-described bum.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
You can remove *all* your crapware just by installing Snow Leopard and logging in as guest!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
When you order a computer with OS installation media, do those CD's / DVD's install the crapware as well, or just the basic OS?
The best one is not mentioned in the crappy article: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Offer a service to REMOVE all that junk for you when you buy it, for almost $100. That's the crazy part.
We bought my dad a laptop at Circuit City a few years back for Christmas, and the Firedog(sic?) tech was very persistent that we purchase the removal plan from them, as it's hard to do ourselves. I asked him what they do, and he said they take a vanilla Vista install disc and reformat the HDD with it. For $100, no thank you.
As someone stated in an above thread, it's ads on the computer to lower the cost of it. If you buy off the shelf computers, it may be worth it. And with a laptop/netbook, you have no choice but to buy it off the shelf.
1. Install Linux and never worry about crapware again.
I dunno ... I installed Linux and ended up with two desktop environments, three word processors, four web browsers, and a whole bunch of image editors, system utilities, file managers, and other stuff.
;-)
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
FTA: tl;dr "with Acer, Sony and HP being the worst offenders."
1. Install Linux and never worry about crapware again.
And lose compatibility with many applications and newer peripherals, the majority of which are made for Windows and possibly Mac.
2. Buy a Mac and never worry about crapware again.
And lose compatibility with many applications, the majority of which are made for Windows. Sure, Adobe suite and some of Microsoft Office are ported, but some businesses depend on third-party apps that require Microsoft Access.
So there exists a tradeoff between compatibility and freedom from crapware. Was this your point?
I always use this first thing on new crap-loaded laptops that aren't going to get wiped with Linux.
http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/
Free as in beer for personal use.
It's not the installation that bothers me but the assumption by software vendors that their software is so important that it should auto-start.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
But in other areas the MacBook merely mimics Windows' offerings: media software offers little functionality that isn't available elsewhere, and Apple's office applications can't compete with even Microsoft Works.
I wonder if they've ever used the iWork suite? It can both read & save as MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint for the respective equivalent applications, which is something MS Works apparently can't do. I know this by the number of students I have to instruct to save their MS Works documents as RTFs so their instructors can view their papers.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
A shame I can't comment on the subject, I just install Ubuntu...
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
When you order a computer with OS installation media, do those CD's / DVD's install the crapware as well, or just the basic OS?
Some of them come with a "recovery" DVD that repartitions the hard drive and ghosts the preinstalled operating system and crapware back on. (In fact, that's how they're set up.)
> 2. Buy a Mac and never worry about crapware again.
Unfortunately, it does come with some crapware: iTunes
I just bought an HP laptop, and these are the observations I have to make.
Bundled software isn't entirely bad. Bundled software that runs automatically is. I will disable this, although even so I might not uninstall it. The first thing I did was make the HP toolbar not run every time the computer boots up.
If it doesn't run automatically, and it performs some useful feature (DVD burning, for instance) which I'll probably use in the future, I'll leave it installed unless or until such a time comes where I try to use it and discover it doesn't work very well or there are better free alternatives. It's just taking disk space. I'm more concerned with RAM and processor use.
If it's something I'll never use, yeah, just uninstall it now.
However, all in all, it's a new computer, and I'm not at all worried about disk space yet. So as long as it's not running, I'm not too worried about it. Sure, in a few years I may begin to run low on disk space, but at that point I'll be better able to determine whether or not I actually need the software anyway – did I use it between now and then?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Indeed. Dell's business stuff is great. In founding my current company, my partner and I actually purchased $10,000 worth of Serious-Business-Level rackmount equipment as individuals. Dell doesn't care, which is just the way it should be.
It can be said that Apples are among the smoothest running out of the box, but does that really mean there's no crap? This line of reasoning begs the definition of "crapware," and the #1 response would be "stuff you don't need on your computer." It doesn't have to slow it down, it doesn't have to have an enormous memory footprint when it's running or a huge disk footprint when it isn't, it just has to be stuff you don't need. And depending who you are, that can be quite a lot.
Have you ever used iWeb? iDVD? Some would consider the whole iLife to be crapware because they plan to get higher-end, more professional applications through which to vent their creativity. And if they're thinking about office use, they're likely to go the route of Microsoft Office / OpenOffice, so bang goes Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Do you ever plan to serve web pages up from your laptop? (Well, I do, but then again, look where I'm posting.) You probably don't need that install of Apache or PHP. Not planning on doing any software development? Yes, XCode is an optional install and not part of the standard kit, but you've still got perl, ruby, python, pico, vi, emacs, and more shells, libraries, and frameworks than you'll ever need nestled down in /usr/local. Have a digital music library already? Then you might also have a preferred player, and probably won't want iTunes to re-rip it into that silly AAC format. A lot of people despise Quicktime on general principle. And a lot of people still eschew Safari for Firefox despite its HTML5 support.
It all depends on your definition of "crapware." It's all assembled and designed by the mother company, so it's integrated so perfectly that you're never bothered by it if you never use it, but if you dig, you'll find something that'll fit the description.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
You fail to understand how cheap some businesses are.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I was standing in Best Buy line one day at the computer desk. They were buying a brand new laptop (forgot the brand), but they got the complete upsale from the Geek Squad guy. Basically he told them that yes they could buy the laptop for the listed price, but that it would be unusable because of all the junk on it. They would need to pay geek squad another $149 to take the computer and clean up all the junk that comes with it to make it usable. And the poor people had to do it... They had no idea what to do or uninstall, and were being told that if they didnt do it then the computer would be near unusable.
Sadly the geek squad guy was close to the truth. A new computer that isn't cleaned is booting slower, using more memory, and running slower than it should be. It just was wrong that it was necessary for the unskilled user to have to pay $149 on top of the cost of the device... I thought about jumping in and telling them it was a rip off, but then I'd have had to deal with it....
There's some irony in the fact that you have to hit this website over 20 times in order to read the article...
> And how exactly does iWork fail to compete with Microsoft Works?
By not being bug-for-bug identical (and if it was it would be dismissed as "a mere clone"). To these people to "compete" is do exactly the same thing in the same way. They'd claim Ford and Chevrolet don't compete because their cars have gas caps on opposite sides.
And the fact that there is a vast amount of software available for Linux and the Mac that is not available for Windows is irrelevant to them because they can't imagine anyone ever wanting to run any software not available for Windows.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
...and a partition in a shares tree...
It's true that most Linux disros come with a lot of excess apps, however, they are very rarely running by default, so its just using hard drive space, not much else.
Who installs the most crapware?
My mother does.
On Fedora core 8. I have installed so much crap I am afraid to upgrade my operating system!
Don't buy a Mac if you intend to play games
I thought that's what iTunes was for: loading games onto an iPodendo.
Sounds like you opted for the minimal install version
I think this thread really needs a geek version of the twelve days of Christmas. I'll start:
On the first screen of install Linux gave to me ...
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
My Samsung netbook is the only computer I've ever purchased which did not compel me to reinstall Windows due to pre-loaded crapware.
The only stuff that runs by default is useful power-management software and a trial of VirusScan. I really hope Samsung continues to make netbooks and other mobile devices. They are a breath of fresh air.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
A bare Windows install isn't like Ubuntu or a Mac. It comes with only one browser, no way to play DVD's, no audio editor, no productivity applications. It doesn't even have an antivirus that we need Windows users to have from the start so as to delay their inevitable pwndom. It doesn't have shared repositories with thousands of free applications for every need. The poor users need some help bootstrapping from that to a useful platform, and the OEMs are driven to serve that need.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
HP installs so much crap our machines often stop booting entirely, take well over 5 minutes to reach a desktop, and perform poorly once they are up. And they install so much junk it's almost impossible to properly remove and clean it out. I've stopped buying *anything* HP because of that. It just isn't worth the frustration.
-Matt
Autorun, by Mark Russinovich at Microsoft, gives you a complete checklist of everything that's started at bootup or login. With checkboxes that turn it off. This is worth running just to see what's in there. You may turn too much off and break something, but you can run Autorun again and turn it back on.
There's plenty of stuff worth turning off, like those useless programs that keep polling to see if Adobe Acrobat or Sun Java came out with a new version. Some of those programs are too aggressive, too. Adobe's poller seems to try to re-associate PDF files with Acrobat, after I'd changed the ".pdf" association to launch Sumatra PDF.
It's annoying that even legitimate updaters seldom schedule themselves as periodic tasks, which Windows does well and which have no overhead when they're not running. No, they have to have their own little executable in memory.
Masonux is a Ubuntu mod with minimal stuff - but has Synaptic on it so guys like me can install just what they want. Small image, small HD footprint. Crap free!
BIGstan!
The Acer Aspire One I got recently was loaded with crap, but the biggest source of problems came from Google and especially McAfee. Every time I started that thing up from hibernate mode I had to wait for the Google apps and sidebar to load. Then McAfee anti-virus starts grinding away trying to scan the entire system. Even when I thought I had disabled automatic scanning I still found it cranking away.
So every time I started it I'd spend a minute or so in the OS just waiting for it to be responsive. Eventually I'd get something like a browser open and would spend several more minutes for the computer to perform at a speed that was even remotely functional. The best part was how McAfee was only available for a 60 day trial.
So I went through and uninstalled every last unnecessary bit of garbage and performance improved dramatically. In place of McAfee I installed AVG which doesn't seem to be nearly as taxing.
It would be nice if the OS prioritized apps on start up, giving priority to the user, instead of this apparent mad dash to see who can get started first. And even better, it would be nice if these computer companies stopped cramming all this crap on these machines and at least paid some amount of attention to the performance capabilities of the machine. I realize this stuff helps subsidize some of the cost of these computers, but at least offer the option to get a machine with a clean OS.
Although having a PDF reader on any platform is a good idea. Having one that is removable is a good Idea. Personally I want the real option for IE and WMP.
This is why I love my LG laptop & netbook. 0 crapware. Heck, if you want the LG utilities beyond the basic drivers you have to load them yourself.
RoundTop
My Dell Mini 10v came preinstalled with Dell crapware including the yahoo toolbar for use inside of Firefox. Firefox includes a search bar with Yahoo as an optional search provider. Simply chaning the default search on their config would have been fine and gotten them cash from Yahoo, but NOOOOO, they installed the whole toobar. On a netbook, an additional toolbar is pretty irritating. I wiped the whole system and installed a clean Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it. Now I am happy again.
I don't mind the installs, disk space is cheap, but it wants to start a bunch of crap processes on boot up, and good luck killing them without mucking about in the registry. Slower boot times and a performance hit, thanks a lot, Apple!
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I'm surprised the PC Decrapfier didn't make it on their list of cleanup apps. I haven't used it in a while (haven't had the money to buy a new computer), but it has served me well in the past.
On the first screen of install Linux gave to me,
a download link in FTP.
On the second screen of install Linux gave to me,
two swap partitions,
and a download link in FTP.
On the third screen of install Linux gave to me,
three net configs,
two swap partitions,
and a download link in FTP.