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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.
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."
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?
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
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.)
> 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.
Ubuntu comes with all kinds of shit that you don't want, but there's no other shit available, so you just use it.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Who installs the most crapware?
My mother does.
Sounds like you opted for the minimal install version
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.
With Gentoo on the other hand, the shit on your system is handpicked ;-)
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.