Posted on 03/06/2015 5:25:59 AM PST by george76
Many new devices are cluttered with programs that you never installed, never requested, and many not want.
There’s nothing like the fresh, clean feeling of unboxing a brand-new computer or smartphone. Too bad the feeling usually comes to an end the moment you hit the power button.
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Bloatware isn’t all bad — you might end up buying that antivirus program. But it can also slow down your machine and waste valuable storage space.
And every now and then, these unwanted programs will even threaten your privacy.
Late last month, the Chinese computer maker Lenovo admitted that a bit of bloatware preinstalled on its machines could have helped hackers steal users’ sensitive data.
For several months, new Lenovo laptops came with a program called Superfish, which would display advertisements inside the users’ Web browsers. But Superfish also broke the browser’s encryption system, which lets us safely pay our bills and do our banking online. Criminals could have set up fake websites masquerading as, say, Bank of America, and Lenovo users would never have known the difference, till their passwords were stolen and their bank accounts drained.
It has been a fiasco for Lenovo, but we may all benefit in the end.
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If you’ve recently bought a computer stuffed with annoying little programs, it’s not too difficult to clean it up, using Windows’ uninstall feature.
Better yet: Check out Should I Remove It? That is a free program that looks at all your PC’s applications, tells you what they do, and helps you pick off the useless stragglers.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonglobe.com ...
Yup—any flavor is better than the crap that comes with machines these days.
Not really. The included software is from the hardware manufacturer, provided so you have basic functionality available as soon as you turn the computer on. You can't exactly download Firefox if you don't have a web browser to download it with (and offhand I can't think of any way of obtaining Firefox et al on physical media without borrowing someone else's computer, downloading, copying the file onto some other media; stores don't sell it, and you can't order physical copies if you don't have a browser). There's a few other apps, but they're unobtrusive and easy to remove.
"Bloatware" is, generally speaking, content which other companies pay the computer manufacturer to include. Frequently this content is installed to automatically run, throw "give us money" ads in your face, and are a bear to uninstall (so bad that the usual recommendation is erase everything and reinstall the OS, a pretty d@mn drastic measure). It's bad enough that you actually have to PAY the manufacturer to NOT include that stuff.
I can't really imagine what apps are included out-of-the-box on a Mac that you could possibly object to. Contact list, calendar, todo list, notepad, document previewer, iTunes (central to the Apple ecosystem), and a browser (without which it's a serious pain to get anything else like Firefox, MS Office, etc). There's a difference between "minimum common functionality included so you can start using the machine out-of-the-box" vs "OMFG get this $#!^ off my system, I can't use this machine until I format main storage and find a copy of Windows to re-install from".
Thank you for posting this. I just received a new laptop for my birthday and it`s a Lenovo! My daughter`s friend helped set it up and quickly removed that fish thing.
Absolutely. Make an image copy right away after your own apps installation and you have an install image with whatever base software you know you'll be using. If you back up your personal data to an external device you can flush your system whenever you like. I do it just to keep teh cruft down.
How to remove the dangerous Superfish adware preinstalled on Lenovo PCs ... How do I know if my Lenovo PC has Superfish preinstalled?
Ditch that troublesome root certificate.
I use to recommend AVG anti-virus software but they now install the AVG toolbar which is impossible to remove without the program below. Sure AVG gives you instructions on how to remove but they do not actually remove the toolbar.
Use this program to get rid of it.
adwcleaner. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner
Use the free Avast antivirus antispyware.
Kind of difficult for your average Windows Luser. No CD to be had unless you know how to get one.
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