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Comments: 583 +- Hardware: Who Installs the Most Crapware? on Thursday October 29, @01:00PM
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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."
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Lenovo (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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!
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Informative)
It would let you set up profiles to turn off your firewall on certain networks, start printer sharing, and start file sharing.
It also let you setup static IP's VPNs, etc on certain networks....
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Funny)
Adobe Reader, and Adobe FlashPlayer isn't crap where. It makes sure you can actually do things that for some reason windows doesn't do nativly. Such as Read PDF files and open Flash WebSites. Relatively common things.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Funny)
Adobe software = Defective by Design. Just ask anyone who has to use CS3 or CS4 for any length of time.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Insightful)
Or anyone in the security community. MS used to be the industries' vulnerable software whipping boy, but they've cleaned that up to a large degree and outsourced the job to Adobe...
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Interesting)
So you are saying the GIMP is superior to Photoshop.
I don't know what he's saying, but I'm saying PSP9 is superior to Photoshop.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Informative)
Foxit is evil with its crapware installer and explorer extensions. It's fat when running too. Try SumatraPDF.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Informative)
I love PDFs, but not so much Reader. It's more of a necessary evil... although for most purposes I could probably get away with using an alternative PDF viewer.
I always install a PDF printer (PDFCreator [sourceforge.net] is a nice one, but if you just want something vanilla then CutePDF Writer [cutepdf.com] usually does the job). Then I use it for anything that says "print this page for your records". Digital, indexable copy of whatever it is, arranged by the date I printed it, with no wasted paper or ink.
Short of PDF, I don't know what else you'd use... XPS? XPS is just as bad as PDF, except it's from Microsoft instead of Adobe. Wait... does that make it as bad, or worse? Nobody uses XPS.
What I do hate, with a fucking passion, are protected PDFs. Especially since CutePDF tends to crash (prints an error message document) when you try to print a protected PDF through it to remove the protection... this is, in fact, one of the only uses I've ever had for the MS XPS Document Writer (sometimes it'll succeed where CutePDF or PDFCreator fail, then I can reprint the XPS as a PDF).
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Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Interesting)
Compare the performance of something like FoxIt PDF Reader ( http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/ [foxitsoftware.com] ) against Adobe Reader, and then tell me with a straight face that Adobe's version is better. And if you leave Windows-land and get to Linux, then there's options like evince which are also significantly better than Adobe's offering.
And honestly, the only reason that Flash is installed on my computer at all is for YouTube. If I had a choice in the matter, I wouldn't have that load of crap at all... more often than not, it's used for intrusive ads on websites, not anything of actual value. (gawd, I hate surfing at work, where I am in serious hock if I'm caught using anything other than MSIE 6.0... *shudder*)
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason is mostly because the law says they can't.
Trust me, Microsoft wants nothing more than to bundle it's own version of just about every application you can think of. But, the legal system says they can't. They were declared a monopoly and part of that has limited their ability to include things you want into the OS.
I'm not 'Pro MS' or 'Pro Linux' or anything, I just don't care. But I do think that it's funny that, essentially, the same people who used to complain that Microsoft is an evil monopoly and is destroying small companies by bundling their own XYZ into the operating system are now the same people who still say MS is an evil monopoly but advocate Linux because it includes far more stuff you'll need than Windows.
But yeah, it's really not that MS doesn't want it - it's that it's hands are tied. At least, that's been my understanding of it.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Funny)
Why the hell is the parent modded as +5, Funny? I don't think it was meant as a joke and I was going to make the same comment myself.
Like it or not, most end users in the business world need to be able to open PDF files and use websites that have Flash interfaces, neither of which Windows will do on its own. Installing Acrobat Reader and updating Flash Player to the latest version is one of the main things I do on any office machine I hand out. Sure, they are minor security risks, but I don't understand why anyone would call them crapware, as opposed to all the bizarre manufacturer-specific pop-up control panels and buggy trial security software that is constantly running in the system tray. That's the stuff we're talking about as crapware, not common add-ons like PDF and Flash that are just applications that run when you need them. And like the parent said, PDF and Flash are pretty common things, regardless of anyone's opinions on the need for Flash for any specific purpose.
The modding of the parent as funny makes absolutely no sense to me.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Informative)
When I bought a Lenovo R-series computer with Vista Professional, I didn't notice a lot of crapware that they'd installed. Was it because it was a "professional" computer?
I installed Linux in a few days, so I might not have noticed everything that was there, but I actually liked some of the stuff they installed--like a driver for my hard drive's accelerometer (that would park the heads if needed) and a driver that let me configure Windows not to overcharge my battery.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh who am I kidding, it's because he flamed iApple iSoftware or whatever and the mods are furious.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Funny)
Actually he was flaming Abble products. A very reputable brand, just like Magetbox and Panaphonic.
Safary and iToons are great programs. I don't know what his problem is.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Funny)
He probably has popsi in his refrigerator...
"Where do these people do their shopping?!"
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Funny)
Well, gee, there's your problem!
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I'd say iTunes/Quicktime and Acrobat are, in fact, crap.
Depends.
iTunes and Quicktime are crap on Windows as Microsoft Office is crap on OS X.
Reverse the two and not so bad.
Of course Acrobat is crap on any OS.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Funny)
On top of all that, iTunes itself contains half of MacOS. OSX font rendering and associated fonts, graphic rendering elements etc.
So why is everyone so excited about installing Mac OS X on non-Mac computers? Just install iTunes and you're half way there.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's actually a secret plan to make people think Windows is slow. Look how much faster iTunes runs on MacOS!
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Informative)
Just in case anyone is actually curious, Apple was the top pick for the lowest memory usage, and it was crapware free. Not much of a surprise. I totally agree with the HP and Sony results. I own laptops from both and they are full to the rim with shovelware.
From TFA:
The Verdict: The Crapware Con
Posted on 29 Oct 2009 at 14:53
It looks like crapware is here to stay, so what’s the best way to deal with it?
Over the course of this feature, we’ve uncovered two important facts: first, no big-brand laptop (aside from Apple) is free from crapware, but it’s possible to buy a machine that’s noticeably faster and less cluttered than many of its competitors.
We also found that several manufacturers were more guilty than others when it came to adding unwanted software – with Acer, Sony and HP being the worst offenders.
The Acer, for instance, offered an unnecessary Windows Media Center clone and 19 games with only 60 minutes of play, while the Sony VAIO VGN-NS30E/S took more than three minutes to boot. HP’s Pavilion dv6 was little better, with a poor boot time, sluggish performance and flawed applications.
The Dell and Asus machines both included genuinely useful applications and also offered swift boot times and good performance elsewhere
Other machines, meanwhile, proved far more palatable, offering the holy grail of decent software that didn’t prove too taxing on hardware. The Dell and Asus machines both included genuinely useful applications and also offered swift boot times and good performance elsewhere.
Further analysis reveals that, when it comes to performance, it’s the proprietary software that does the most damage. McAfee Security Center, for instance, is present on five of the machines we’ve tested – and their boot times and performance figures spread the gamut from the Dell’s speed to the Sony’s sluggish excess.
Likewise, Norton products sit on both the quick Asus and slow HP machines, and Roxio Creator is present on the relatively nippy Lenovo as well as the Sony VAIO.
The three slowest systems on test are those that cram in proprietary software. The Acer was stuffed with games, media applications and other tools, and the HP system contained children’s desktop software, games and HP’s own Total Care Advisor.
The Sony VAIO, this month’s slowest laptop, boasted a desktop dock, VAIO-branded utilities and the all-encompassing Me & My VAIO media suite.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Informative)
Call me biased - I only work on machines that freinds, family and acquaintances bring me. I believe the summary, and TFA to be pretty much on target. IMHO - if the vendor won't include a clean MS installation disk with your purchase, there's a reason for that. Always insist on that clean installation disk, NOT a recovery disk. Dell, in general, is the cleanest machine to work on, and they don't install tons of crapware. Maybe half a ton, but not tons. There is no introductory software, or free software, or whatever else that is worth bothering with. Whatever it is that you want, you can download it straight from the source, without Lenovo, Compaq, or any of the others deciding what you need.
Crapware - anything on the system that I didn't specifically ask for and explicitly consent to.
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Lenovo (Score:5, Funny)
You know who installs the most crapware?"
Teenagers.
Parent
I know who has the least... (Score:4, Informative)
Apple.
Even better (Score:5, Funny)
You can remove *all* your crapware just by installing Snow Leopard and logging in as guest!
Parent
Re:Even better (Score:5, Informative)
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!
Parent
no wonder people are switching to Mac (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:no wonder people are switching to Mac (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Good recent experience with Asus (Score:5, Informative)
PC Decrapifier (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PC Decrapifier (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
In Store Techs (Score:5, Informative)
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.
installed versus auto-start (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I'll tell you who (Score:5, Insightful)
Who installs the most crapware?
My mother does.
Re:I'll tell you who (Score:5, Funny)
*cough* Er, sorry. I'm putting the chainsaw down now.
Parent
Download Microsoft "autorun" and turn stuff off (Score:5, Informative)
Autorun [microsoft.com], 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.
Re:2 Simple solutions (Score:5, Funny)
Why yes, I am an apple fanboy. How did you guess?
By the way that you pretended to defer to Linux first.
Parent
Re:2 Simple solutions (Score:5, Insightful)
Why yes, I am an apple fanboy. How did you guess?
You're a self-described bum.
Parent
Re:2 Simple solutions (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
;-)
Parent
Re:2 Simple solutions (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Apple crapware? (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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.
Parent
Recovery DVD (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org] the preinstalled operating system and crapware back on. (In fact, that's how they're set up.)
Parent
Re:Link to the latest crapware cleaner (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Link to the latest crapware cleaner (Score:5, Funny)
With Gentoo on the other hand, the shit on your system is handpicked ;-)
Parent