Free crapware removal from Support.com

If you get a new PC for a holiday gift this year, it's almost guaranteed it'll come filled to the brim with trialware. Knowing this, Support.com says it's got another present for you: free removal of the unwanted pre-loaded software.

The desktop of a brand-new PC and the crapware included.

(Credit: Ern)

The online tech support service has just begun offering the service for free. It works like this: Go to Support.com, or call them at 1-800-PC-Support. A customer service representative (from North America, they promise!) will remotely access your PC and blast away at the bloatware.

You can watch as they do it, Support.com says.

While crapware is still prevalent, many PC makers have begun allowing consumers to pay more to exclude it on a newly shipped PC.

[loose_screw]

Call me skeptical, but what's the catch?

[shydroxide]

Interestingly enough, I actually work for support.com. All our agents are legitimately in North America (I'm in Canada, in BC specifically), just as an aside.

As to what the catch with this service is, there really isn't one. I guess some of our more motivated agents might try to pitch some other stuff to you, but just say no and I'm sure they'll leave you alone. That's about it, really.

[loose_screw]

Ok, maybe I should have asked: "why is support.com doing this?" With the current state of the economy, can they really afford to be doing work for free, no strings attached?

On the other hand, maybe they were able to hire a bunch of unemployed, highly skilled IT people for peanuts...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGJq8wrw5I

[vistafun]

I assume the catch is like anything else - they are offering something for free to generate awareness. In my case I just bought a couple of notebook PCs on Black Friday and they are chock full of crapware. I'm thinking of getting them cleaned up with this offer.

[Dyscryption]

Yeah make sure an ask for a US rep if contacting support.com, the canadian remote at home workers are the worst employees we have and are very worthless for tech support

[Dyscryption]

The catch is they will always find "malware" or so they say and have a bunch of people gambling and playing around on your machine. Good luck there are only about 5 people worth a damn here.

[marcusdiddle]

It's a ridiculous practice that should not be allowed. I'm an IT Director, and I spend 30-45 minutes cleaning up brand new computers. Any idea how long that takes in "average-consumer" time, if they even have a clue where to start? And then companies like Sony actually tried charging consumers to NOT DO IT to them. A new computer should come with an operation system. That's. It. Let consumers decide which applications they want installed from that point on.

[theonlybuster]

I completely agree. I'm constantly being asked by friend to clean up their new or freshly reformatted computers and half the time I see where they attempted to get rid of the original store's programs, but leave behind mounds upon mounds of traces.
At the same time I do understand that the manufacturer does want more money seeing as the economy is at a low point right now, but $50 is a REALLY HIGH price to ask, excuse me, offer just to remove your own crap from a supposedly new computer. It's wrong and shouldn't be happening.

[ShootDawg1]

as an Network Admin, we could care less what the vendor puts on their machines when they ship them to us. As soon as we get them, we put down an image we made that us customized for our buildings/users. 15 minutes, and we have a pc setup with all our apps ready for the end user to start using.

[gggg sssss]

Dont they already have a deal with sony to INSTAL:L this crap? Every Viao I ever looked at has support.com crap on it teh I have to remove.

[superswiss]

I'm an IT Director as well and as such I have one question. Are you buying consumer PCs for your employees? We purchase Dell PCs (Desktop and Workstations) through the business channels and they don't come with all the crapware. Having said that, we still reimage every box with our own image, so we don't have to spend the time installing all of our applications. You must be working for a small company if this is a problem for you and you personally spend 30-45 minutes cleaning these machines.

HP, Dell, Sony, etc. are all paid by the "bloatware companies" to add their trial software. Without that added revenue you can be sure PC prices in general would go up. Imagine those "cheap" $400 dollar PC's we see all the time. They would most likely run $600 without bloatware and, to a lot of folks, $200 is a big difference in price.

We may hate it but it serves its purpose. If you don't like it, remove it yourself, pay extra to not have it, use a free service like the above mentioned, or build one yourself.

[Akiba]

A non-experienced user doesn't know how or what to remove. What happens is that they conclude that this is the natural performance of a Dell or Windows machine, then compare it to a Mac. In that case its not such a harmless $200 subsidy. It's a broken business model that is really hurting these companies reputations, and the less experienced consumer. Losing market share will also drive up the price. The benefit of that $200 is shrinking when you compare it to the damage its doing.

[gggg sssss]

To Akiba - D0ont Macs come preloaded with crap from Apple? Itunes? Quciktime? I whatever?

[Dalkorian]

by gggg sssss December 8, 2008 2:01 PM PST
To Akiba - D0ont Macs come preloaded with crap from Apple? Itunes? Quciktime? I whatever?

-------------------------------------------------------------

I thought we were talking about trial software, not software like winblows media in fista. So to answer the question for Akiba, no Macs don't come preloaded with crap from Apple anymore than winblows boxes come with preloaded crap from M$ (winblows media, internet exploder, whatever).

I've never seen a Mac preloaded with any trial software from 3rd party vendors (not saying it hasn't or won't ever happen, just that I haven't seen it) - and I've never seen a winblows box that wasn't preloaded with trial software from 3rd party vendors (unless I built the box and installed the system myself, of course). I wouldn't base the choice between platforms on this non-scientific observation, but it is what it is.

[wango2007]

Akiba. there just isn't that much software that works on the Mac OS compared to Windows. The market share of Mac OS is so small, it isn't worth the effort of those who do make Mac software to try to get screen attention on new machines.

The world is wide open for Windows software. It is no wonder software vendors try to get attention on Windows screens. There is gold there.

[thelemurking]

Now now Dalkorian... no need for fanboy hoopla with your overuse of "winblows" I'm sure you wouldn't like it if every other sentence I wrote contained Crapple or OSuX in it. Let's try and keep this on topic.

[Ziggy49]

I've been using www.pcdecrapifier.com/ for years and always recomended it to my customers when I used to run a Dell kiosk. They've always done it for free.

[tjdouglas]

You beat me to it. I second this opinion.

[hjecompany]

We are a small company and buy our computers at box stores (Staples). We have found that if you demand that they remove all the freebies and unwanted stuff they will-but only if you threaten to not buy the computer. This practice has saved us an awful lot of headaches. It also saves them as the last 3 computer purchases had warranty work directly related to this unwanted and sometimes invasive software. I suggest using the purchase-or-not-purchase argument as a lever to get the vendor to remove the added software.

[sbsbt]

I get so sick of it and it takes so much time that we usually just re-image machines as they arrive. I have disks with all the MS updates on it so it also takes less time downloading and installing 100 or so updates.
It is such a waste of time getting rid of NetZero and google desktop

[Crunchy Doodle]

I guess I'm just a tinkerer. For as often as I have to do it - once or twice a year - no big deal with the crapware. A few times I've actually kept one, and in one case bought the full version. It takes way longer to get all the OS updates with a new PC. Even with my new netbook that came with XP SP3, I spent more time running Windows Update than removing the crapware, which was somewhat limited.

[techpack]

My last new windows computer was so loaded with crapware, bloated junk and especially invasive Norton AV, I just went with Ubuntu Linux. I know it's not for everyone but uninstalling bloatware, crapware and then adding spyware or tracking cookies from another company is too much trouble anymore. I installed Ubuntu and never looked back. But it doesn't take fifteen minutes to boot up and install updates I don't need or want. Everything works! I'm a dedicated Apple user but if Apple begins a similar strategy I'll drop it and rely on Ubuntu exclusively. I have more important things to do than mess with excess programs I don't want.

[loose_screw]

I started building my own PCs for this reason, and also run ThinkPads which come pretty pristine. I guess this service is ok for the normal consumer though.

[fdunn3]

Amen to that. When you build your own you know exactly what you are getting and how far it can be expanded before having to change out the Motherboard, Memory (sometimes) and Processor.

Also your system never becomes obsolete as you can ALWAYS upgrade it.

Having said that the biggest hassle of building your own is getting the updated drivers as the ones that come with the components are usually out of date.

I am in the process of bukding an i7 920 system with dual monitors, RAID 10 (HARDWARE) PCIe card and enterprise hard drives.

to fdunn3: Eventually your system can (will) become obsolete as form factors change. Your CPU will hit the upper limit of the mother board, the RAM will be the wrong type for the new mother board, etc. But you do get a longer life out of most of your components that way and you certainly do cut down on the garbage you get bundled. Over the years I know I've put together multiple computers mostly from the parts that were replaced in my main one (my mom and sister surely didn't need new hardware, right? ;-) )

[kdrobb2k]

Forget this mess. Just download PC decrapifier and ccleaner. Select and use all aspects of these apps and your system will be crap free. Be sure to use the registry cleaner in ccleaner. These are free applications and work great.

[oldgeeser]

I just bought an HP from Office Depot and there was almost no crapware on it. No AOL fortunately (one of the worst to remove). A few internet shortcuts to delete. Uninstalled Norton 2009 suite and downloaded and ran the removal tool and everything removed flawlessly. Everyone even told me HP's recovery disk creation tool didn't work. Worked for me. I think there was another program or two that I didn't find useful and uninstalled, but no big deal.

[Dyscryption]

I work for support.com and officedepot.support.com. This is not a free service they will charge you for removing crapware, all they do is follow a stupid guideline after they charge you for a service. In fact you can download a free years worth of mcafee and all the tools they use from their own website. This makes me ashamed to work for them

[CNET editors' note: Prohibited content deleted.]

[heatheratsupport]

My name is Heather Hawkins and I am director of PR for support.com. I assure you that whomever posted the above comment claiming this is "not a free service" is being intentionally deceitful and we are working to identify whether the poster still is or ever was an employee at all.

Anyone with questions about validity of this offer are welcomed to pull my contact info off any of a myriad of press releases and contact me directly.

Thanks.

[docchuck07]

I'm sorry, but as an old-timer (67 years old -- LOL), I have learned that NOTHING in life is free, and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Also, I have serious reservations about an anonymous stranger mucking around in my computer.

But, thanks for the offer anywhoo!

[jsjohnson]

I have posted instructions for installing vanilla Vista from HP recovery CD's here....personally (and no offense to support.com) I would prefer not to have someone remote accessing my machine.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/message?board.id=OSandSW&message.id=5493