The Tekblog

It amazes me that the $399.00 computer is more prevalent than ever and as the PC price wars continue, large PC manufacturer’s take any means available to lower the cost of their PCs. One of the ways that manufacturers are lowering this cost is to sell what I can only refer to as "PC real estate" on new computers. What I mean by this is, have you ever noticed when you get a new computer it already has, in most cases, loads and loads of "Bonus" software pre-installed? Things like Google Desktop, Google Search bar, Search Assistant, Adobe Reader, Norton 360, AOL, Wild Tangent , McAfee and a seemingly limitless combination of others? Make no mistake, the manufacturer is getting paid to pre-install this software on the machine -which benefits the software manufacturer because it increases the likelihood that the user will utilize their software, when often times, the functionality is provided in Windows natively.

This is a frustrating phenomenon for IT people because it just adds to the time that it takes us to configure a new system. We end up taking a brand-new system and having to essentially clean it up when we are configuring it for a client. Most of our clients will never use any of this software and therefore it just sits there junking up the PC. Worse even, most of these softwares’ are trial versions and after 30, 60 or 90 days, it starts bugging you to register and purchase the full version -as well as the fact that many of these applications are resident, meaning that they are running all the time taking up PC resources, slowing your machine. If you have more than about 6 icons in the system tray (bottom-right by the time), you have resident applications running. This is the price we end up paying for a lower cost machine.

Some manufacturers are now offering the option to forgo this trial-ware at the time of purchase. I know that Dell is now doing this. When you buy a new machine either over the phone or on the web, be sure to check to see if the vendor allows you the option to not have any "bonus" software installed -you will be better off in the long run.