When buying a new computer, it shouldn't be too much to expect that your new PC, fresh out of the box, should be running as fast as it ever will. And yet, you won’t find a single computer that doesn’t have additional software installed on it. But, just how bad is the problem? To find out, we took a set of laptops off the shelf to find out how much software was preinstalled, how much disk space it took up, if any of it was dangerous and what, if any, impact on performance the bloatware had. Before we dive into the details of our testing, we’ll first take a look at why manufacturers pre-install software, the categories of software that are installed and what you can do about them.
Why is bloatware installed?
Manufacturers will tell you that they pre-load this software purely out of the goodness of their hearts, giving users "more choice" and a "better experience". This is a nice thing to imagine but is completely untrue in most cases. Much of the software pre-loaded comes as part of commercial agreements between software makers and laptop manufacturers. This can either be because the manufacturer is paid to put the software on, or because there’s a revenue sharing deal in place: sign up for some security software, for example, and your computer’s manufacturer will get a cut. In short, it’s a way for PC and laptop manufacturers to make a bit more cash.
While bloatware has largely been seen as an issue of annoyance, the Lenovo Superfish debacle also showed that pre-installed software could also pose a real security risk. Superfish is a crafty piece of software that would inject advertising into web searches and other pages. As well as the moral implications of stuffing its users’ laptops full of adverts, Superfish also made secure SSL web connections insecure due to a dodgy component that it installed.
^Superfish injects extra advertising content into web searches
In the end, the firm not only issued an apology but also provided users with a removal tool (see how to remove Superfish for more details) on how to remove the software, but the incident put bloatware into sharp focus.
Regardless of whether bloatware is actually dangerous, there’s no getting away from the fact that it is annoying and it does take up resources. We recommend that any new PC is cleared of useless software as the number-one job, but you have to know what’s safe to remove and what should be left alone. We’ve categorised bloatware into its main categories with advice for each type helping you clean down your computer.
Security software
Security software is one of the biggest culprits of bloatware, as laptop manufacturers can make good money if you convert the trial version of the software into a paid-for subscription. The warning in that statement is that manufacturers care more about how much money they can make then they do providing you with the best protection.
As such, it’s fair to see that the majority of free security software trials are not worth the bother. Aside from the poor protection they may actually offer, security software is also some of the most annoying.
You'll typically get a free trial of security software that activates when you first switch on your machine. You might appreciate the added security but, it can be extremely overbearing right from the off. Some software will create popups every time you insert a new USB storage device (until you turn the warnings off) and, in particularly extreme cases, you'll get a notification whenever it detects a new device connects to your network.
It can also cause problems with software, too. On several occasions, security software has interfered with the installation of our benchmarking software and games on Steam without any warning or explanation, leaving us to troubleshoot problems while simultaneously scratching our heads.
Unless you have an active subscription to the security suite that's been pre-installed on your laptop, you should make uninstalling it a top priority. First, you should download a more competent replacement, but do not install it at this point, as you can’t have two security packages running simultaneously. Our guide to internet security software lists all of the best paid-for and free software currently available.
Once you’ve got your new AV software downloaded, you can safely remove the old software. The best way to do this is to go through the Programs and Features function in Windows 8 and 8.1 or Add/Remove programs in Windows 7. Scroll down to the security software in question and double click, at which point you'll be given access to an uninstaller. You may have to uninstall several elements of the software to completely get rid of it.
Once the free software has been removed, you can run the installer for your new software. This will make sure that your computer is protected and can defend itself against internet attacks.
Modern UI/Start screen apps
If you're a regular visitor to Windows 8.1's controversial Modern UI Start screen, you'll probably find several applications here installed by your computer’s manufacturer. Due to their nature, these tend not to be so annoying (they can’t launch automatically, or interfere with the rest of your computer), but they do eat up disk space.
These don't appear in the traditional Add/Remove Programs or Programs and Features windows and instead must be removed from within the Start screen. It can be done simply by right-clicking on the offending item and selecting Uninstall. All of these apps are safe to remove.
Branded services and utilities
PC manufacturers will often load a computer up with dozens of additional utilities. Some are designed to make using your computer easier, others are designed to get you to sign up for premium services, such as cloud storage, with the manufacturer taking their cut. Other bits of software are slightly more nefarious, such as web toolbars that change your search engine and home page (again, the PC manufacturer gets paid for this).
The difficulty here is that in the midst of the annoying software, there are genuinely useful bits of software that you shouldn’t remove. The best thing to do is go to Programs and Features in Windows 8 or Add/Remove Programs in Windows 7. Sort the list of installed applications by Publisher and leave any bits of software alone created by your PC’s manufacturer, at least for now. It should be safe to remove all other applications from your computer, once you’ve read our advice on Drivers below.
It’s better to remove too little when you start. As you use your computer more and more, note down the name of any software that’s too annoying and displays too many pop-up messages. Once you’ve got a good list together you can find this software and uninstall it, regardless of who the publisher is.
Drivers
Driver software is genuinely very useful and will make your computer work properly, so don’t remove any of this. The most common drivers are branded Realtek, AMD, Nvidia, Intel, Qualcomm and Broadcom, but there may be others depending on the model of your laptop.
Also, look out for device-specific drivers, such as ones for your keyboard, which will make sure that all of the shortcut buttons are working properly. These include device-specific button mappings (such as alt-key commands) and audio software that might provide enhancements to sound designed for your device's speakers.
Finally, look out for any manufacturer-provided update software. This will download the latest driver and software updates for your computer automatically.
Links and uninstalled software
You’ll often find that a new computer has various bookmarks, desktop shortcuts and trial software installers on it. These generally can’t cause any harm, but they’re annoying and eat up disk space. Feel free to delete anything like this that you find.
Beware of Factory reset
Most laptops have their bloatware built into the factory reset, so attempting to do this will simply reinstall all the apps you were hoping to get rid of. An alternative is to create a new image of your computer in its new pristine state, using an application such as Acronis TrueImage.
How to install clean software
Free software can be just as bad as the rubbish that PC manufacturers put on your computer, with many applications also installing addition toolbars and bits of bloatware. For that reason, when it comes to installing free software we recommend using Ninite. This clever utility automatically downloads and installs spyware-free software. Check out our guide on how to use Ninite for more information.
Performance testing
To see exactly what effect bloatware has on your system, we rounded up Windows 8 laptops from five of the world's most popular manufacturers to see which software they've snuck onto their machines. The laptops vary in specification and it's entirely possible that different models from the same manufacturer will have different levels of bloatware depending on the type of users they're targeting.
The impact on performance will vary, too. Cheaper laptops have a much smaller tolerance to bloatware because of their less powerful processors, smaller hard disks and small amounts of RAM.
First, we took a look at each laptop to find out what was installed and the impact it had on system resources. We noted down how many needless apps and web links were installed, and then we worked out how much disk space these took up. Next we used Task Manager to find out how much RAM the additional bits of software. To see how annoying each bloatware load was, we noted down the type of pop-ups and dialog boxes we encountered. The table below gives you the figures for each of the laptops.
| Acer E3-111 | Asus X555L | Dell XPS 13 | HP Stream 11 | Toshiba KIRA 107 | |
| Number of apps/web links | 38 | 28 | 19 | 19 | 29 |
| Hard disk space | 1.7GB | 1.1GB | 0.9GB | 0.8GB | 1.5GB |
| RAM | 102MB of 4GB | 190MB of 4GB | 301MB of 8GB | 143MB of 2GB | 227MB of 8GB |
| Popups | Acer registration, McAfee prompts, Pokki start menu updates | Occasional Asus cloud and McAfee prompts | Occasional backup reminders, McAfee prompts | McAfee prompts | McAfee prompts |
As this table shows, Acer's super cheap E3-111 from 2014 is worst affected by bloatware. It has a lot of additional software pre-installed, with 38 applications, Start screen items and web links pre-installed, all of which take up 1.7GB of disk specs.
The laptop also comes with some reasonably useful video and photo software from CyberLink, but they're old versions that were out of date before the laptop went on sale. The vast majority of applications are branded by Acer, but there are also links to LoveFilm and eBay, as well as a Netflix Start screen app for good measure.
Asus had pre-installed 28 items on its laptop, although most of them were Start screen apps, such as for Twitter and Netflix. As such, it was one of the least annoying computers to use out-of-the-box. Even so, cleaning up the laptop shaved three seconds off of its boot time.
The Dell XPS 13 was loaded with applications, but some of its software - such as Dell Backup and Recovery - should actually be useful to a lot of people. Toshiba's KIRA business ultrabook had was fairly light on unwanted extras, and while its McAfee installation and links to various web services including eBay and SkyScanner were par for the course, the Chroma Tuner software that runs on startup decided it was a good idea to give the screen a reddish tinge throughout our time testing the laptop. Bundling a piece of software that was so consistently irritating deserves some credit.
HP's Stream 11 has the smallest amount of storage space of any of the devices we tested, with just 32GB of eMMC storage. The 0.8GB of HP software that's been added could become very bothersome as you fill up the drive, so nipping the stuff you don't want early on is important.
With all of the laptops, a big issue was annoying pop-ups from software. McAfee’s software is the worst (which every laptop had pre-installed), but other utilities also let us know that they were there.
Performance
As well as being irritating, we wanted to know if bloatware could affect performance. To check this we ran our standard benchmarks on each laptop out-of-the-box, with the bloatware loaded. We then repeated the benchmarks after we’d cleaned each laptop and made it bloatware free. You can see the results in the graph below.
We also tested boot times using BootRacer. We measured start up speeds with the laptop running at factory defaults. We then cleaned each laptop and measured its startup times without any unnecessary software installed. You can see the results of this in the graph below.
Generally, bloatware didn’t make any difference to general performance with our laptops, bar a one-point increase for the Acer E3-111. However, it’s important to point out that in many cases this is because the pre-installed software sits their idle while the computer is busy, such as running benchmarks. As soon as the PC is idle, it gives the software an opportunity to run. We found that MacAfee LiveSafe was the worst of the bunch, taking up to 70% of CPU usage on one of our laptops, while it scanned for viruses.
Startup times are much more affected by this software, as lots of it loads in the background, eating up precious resources and wasting time. Cleaning out our computers generally improved matters. As we expected, the biggest improvement came from the slowest laptop, the Acer E3-111, as its slow processor can get overloaded by having to load all of the bloatware.
Conclusion
We didn’t detect any spyware or dubious software on any of our laptops, which is good news, but bloatware is still a big problem for Windows laptops. Generally, performance isn’t affected when you’re running processor-intensive tasks, but as soon as your computer goes idle, we noticed that some utilities started eating precious resources.
On top of that, we found gigabytes of software of some computers, which is a total waste of hard disk space; as is utilities wasting RAM. Startup times were also affected, with computers having to load bloatware while they startup. As we expected, the biggest impact comes on the slowest laptops. Their slow processors can’t cope with the additional software as well, making them feel a lot slower than they really are.
Regardless of how quick your computer is, bloatware is annoying and fills your computer full of rubbish. We recommend carefully cleaning out the unnecessary applications to free up disk space and RAM, before choosing which applications and utilities you want to install yourself. Our guide on how to install spyware-free software using Ninite is great for installing free software.