Killing the Crapware
April 26th, 2007 Posted in Blog PostIf you’ve bought a new Windows-based computer in the last 2 or 3 years you know that it came with a ton of applications and applets that you just don’t need. This slows down your computer and start-up seems to take forever.
George Ou over at Tech Republic posted this handy guide to killing crapware on your computer. It’s great and I recommend that everyone does this. Proceed with caution. Some computers (Thinkpads come to mind) need some proprietary services running in order to work correctly. Here’s an excerpt:
One of the things that bother me the most about the PC industry is the inclusion of all that crapware (or crapplets) PC makers put into their computers. The same thing extends to the software industry as a whole. Every time you download some software, you’re prompted (often the default setting) to install some kind of add-on for your Web Browser. By the time it’s all said and done, we’re looking at a computer that spends three to five minutes booting up and a Web Browser that’s so jacked up that half the screen real estate is taken up by utilities that people never use. Of course, this isn’t entirely unique to the PC industry, and I’ve seen Macs loaded with lots of junk during the startup process as well, but at least you don’t get all that crap in a brand new Mac.
