Comments on: On shovelware: A rant

HP and many other PC manufacturers preload largely useless apps on the systems they sell.

[guiri_too]

They should be flogged

for making our lives harder.

I have a pretty powerful workstation at home and when I work I usually keep 5-10 windows of Mozilla open, Photoshop, Corel and at least a few other programs at the same time.

WHen I work full speed, I usually don't go over 34 processes.

I just bought an HP laptop that came with Vista and this sonofabit*h boots up with 64 processes. I KNOW that laptops have a bunch of other shi* running like battery monitors and stuff but still, that's grounds for the firing squad.

I sent it to a buddy of mine to reinstall XP on it and make it as clean as he could and I think he said that with the same programs open, it's got under 30 processes running and that it's running like a champ.

I bought some Dell desktops for my former boss and when I ordered them, I asked if I could get a clean installation and he said no.

That's bullshi*! I don't want all this junk on my computer but the worst part is that you can't really remove it all cleanly. THere's always something left in the puter.

George

[bluarcher]

OMG!! HP Pavilion 2006

I had so much problems with all the crap installed on my new HP laptop, that I re-installed myself from scratch XP and Office. After a clean installation, everything works fine now. I have more ram and hard drive space as well.

[agreddon]

Reformat and reinstall

That's all I gotta say. Straight up, you have to wipe the slate clean. It's sad, but it has to be done.

[cdhanks]

Sorry to tmlra

Sorry Tmira, no cigar. The iMac DOES come with the same crap, maybe not as much but it is still there. Office trial and some other trial software.

[glezzery]

HP pffffffft.

A couple of years ago, my girlfriend wanted to by a cheap HP from Wal----. It came with a recovery partition but no disk.
It had an HP updater called Backweb lite that constantly tried to update drivers and such. It had Wild Tang--- games crap.
It was loaded with junk. And it wasn't working properly, crashing, slowing, hanging...

I spent hours, then days, on the phone with India. Nothing fixed it.
I demanded an OS disk and was told the OS was on the drive.
I told them it restored all the same crap.
They told me they would send the disk but never did.

I was so pissed i bought an OEM XP and reinstalled Works, which of course, was a disk i received but not the OS. Even this disk had- ready- Microsoft Software Jukebox! ugh.
The last time i spoke to them, i told them i would never be in contact again and never buy there products!

[psychoxl99]

why not? companies would look bad

The reason that we can't pay to get rid of the "shovelware" (which you seem to have given the same definition as "crapware") is that companies would look bad if they made the option available. It is a bit bold to ask consumers to pay *not* to be inconvenienced, so PC vendors pretend that it's actually a positive feature that customers should like.

More to the point, there is a difference between your perspective and the perspective of the average consumer. Most consumers would not think of paying to get rid of promoware as paying a normal price rather than a reduced price... they would think of it as paying an inflated price that they should not have to pay, for an unjustified reason. That is the difference between your perspective and the perspective of the average consumer on this issue, and that is why the option will not be directly offered.

That said, they do do this to an extent - Dell, for example, does not put promoware on its Small Business computers, and I would not be surprised if the prices are a bit higher (for that and other things like probably better customer service).

[goldengreeke]

It's not that big a deal

I just bought a laptop today, and yes, it came with 90 days Norton, 6 months of Microsoft Office, 6 months AOL, and a couple other trials, but only took me 10 minutes to uninstall all of it.I am sure that there are users out there that are happy to try some of these programs for free, and might even purchase them when the trial expires. Whats 10 minutes? Not that big a deal.

[Lumpy95]

crapware SUCKS

I bought a new HP laptop late last year and it was LOADED with crap. I also lost a third of the 80 gig HDD to the "restore" partition.
Luckily I spent the extra to get an XP Pro disk with it so I immediately ran the restore disks at startup so that if I had to send it back I could put it back to original configuration. I then copied the "SW" folder to a CD (that holds all the software/Hardware drivers for programs I wanted).
Since it was a SATA HDD and it didn't have a floppy drive installed, I bought an external USB floppy drive and installed XP Pro with the SATA drivers I had downloaded earlier, and have been a happy camper ever since.
Nice laptop once it was "de crappified" and un HPed.

[CSUjr]

"xvidcore.dll" missing on my new HP

A few weeks after I bought a new HP Media Center I tried to convert a video using 3rd party software and recieved an error message saying that the xvidcore.dll was not found.

After some research, I found out that this xvidcore.dll was imbedded in the DivX 'Trial' software that was 'shoveled' into my new PC.

In other words, if I didn't buy the DivX software and did not know of any other alternative, I would not be able to convert videos.

Well, to resolve this I 'googled' "xvidcore.dll", found it and inserted it into my /System32 folder.

I really don't want to think that HP deliberately did not install this to help a SW Vendor sell their product(s), but I can't think of any other reason that my new PC did not contain this 'standard' .dll.

Golly, stuffing a bunch junk into their new systems is one thing, but to me - this is crossing the line.

[doodledog]

ATTENTION !!!!!!!! STOP RELYING ON NORTON!!!!!!!

Norton is not the be-all-end-all of security! It is a memory HOG, and is terrible at catching bugs AND spies alike!!! I have found MANY more FREEWARE programs that do a BETTER job AND take up less space, AND catch more problems (AVG, Spybot, Windows Defender etc., etc., etc......)!!!

[gbw]

new pc, no shovelware!

I recently bought a new computer, a Systemax Venture, nice computer, and two things installed from the factory: Windows XP Pro, and Cyberlink Power Starter (DVD/CD burning solution) and that's it. Nothing else! The only other computer I've ever had that clean, was my previous one, I built it! Very refreshing...

[snotfester]

It really sucks!!!!!

The last PC I purchased was a Sony Vaio VGC-RA710G. This is a mutimedia PC which I use for video and photo production (hobby).

It came with Adobe Premier Standard, Sonic Stage, DV Gate Plus and Click to DVD which are programs useful for video and audio production. I later upgraded Adobe Premier Standard to the Pro version. The main complaint: At $2800.00, I would have expected Adobe Premier Pro.

The computer also came with Adobe Photoshop Elements--the key word being elements. I later went to Photoshop 7.0. Again this was not a cheap computer. Why the cheap software?

While these programs were initially useful, I no longer use Photoshop Elements or Premier Standard. The other onew are useful, however. Oh yeh. Another problem with the software. Adobe Premier Standard recommends 1GB of RAM for best performance. The computer came with 512MB of RAM. I later had to upgrade to 2GB--the max for this mnachine.

In summary, I have helped many people with their new PC and lap top purchases. I probably have one of the few PC's that came with anything useful pre-installed. Most of my time spent with people on their new computers is removing the POO-POO WARE installed and installing useful programs.

[Ogee101]

Shovelware False

[knighteyres]

I can't stand that shovelware either

I can't stand that computers come with all that junk on them. Thats why I build my own computers. So I know what is in them.

[JohnSP]

I like shareware but only when I install it

I like shareware but only when I install it, I don't care for it being preinstalled, I can find what I want and download and install it myself to try it out.

[4limbs]

Time to Buy a Mac

People will eventually realise that there is a better option out there-both
software and hardware-wise. Buy a Mac! Even my PC-devoted Dad, who has
been using computers since the DOS days, told me that he would get an Apple if
he had it to do all over again. They just make sense.

[Ogee101]

Shovelware Crap

I am not a real computer whiz but when I buy a new computer and it has all the FREE ? programs installed only to find out that the program has to be purchased in a short period of time such as Norton. Norton is fine but don't tell me you are giving me a program just to get me to buy the computer. I bought a new Compaq that blows smoke. It's great but the junk I can do without. And WHY does AOL have to be on every computer I buy. I don't use AOL. Junk, Junk, Junk. Let me decide when I buy the computer what I want on it. Thanks for listening.

[ritespeed]

Shovelware and the idiots that think it is cool!

I love my father but dog gone it why the hell do yo buy a dell when I will build you an Asus system with the right stuff for cost and labor free (I LOVE BUILDING SYSTEMS) and you can get more? People are so ignorant to this crap ware used to the clutter your hard drive platter that they are deer in the headlights. Then the major insult an ignorant person accuses you of want to make some super computer by hacking into their system they think they have more security from hackers if they buy the system from the store. FOOLS! I don't have time to hack systems for fun. I love I lost my password could you help me get into my computer. Some major P.C. magazines are the worst sending bloat ware distros with their magazine and finding that 75% of the magazine is filler (ads) next time you pickup a computer magazine count the pages of articles or just rip out all the ads and see what you are left with. CRAP!

[prince10bee]

CyberPower = no shovelware

If your into gaming... CyberPower comes with no shovelware, crapware, or bloatware. Plus you still get a great deal on your computer. I have a CyberPower and I love it. Im not advertising but seriously get it.

[desirawson]

This is how your computer gets bogged down!

How come they never include anything that you cannot get for free anyway? How about including bonus programs that people could use, after we've already spent a ton of money on buying all these programs we have to have to make everything work with their software!!!!

If you've got kids or elderly parents, make sure to make them aware of this too, or you end up spending all day, getting unwanted programs uninstalled off their computers.