Crapware, what is it? - ‘Ware Series #3
This is part three in a series of articles where I define different slang words used to describe different kinds of Hardware, or Software - often clumped together as ‘ware when talking about these terms.
Crapware is a term that has recently been popularized in the computing world. Crapware is basically a way of describing, in one word “All the crap that comes loaded on computers”.
Crapware describes the majority of the software that has been pre-installed on your computer without your asking for it. This is especially the case if you can’t think of why you would ever want it. Most of the computers you buy from an online retailer like Dell or a big box store like Best Buy is going to come with a large amount of software pre-installed on it, much of it trial or partial versions of that software that you’ll never actually use. This is Crapware.
These big name computer sellers are actually payed to include this software in your computer by the companies that produce the software.
The software companies are hoping that after trying out their trial you’ll want to keep the software so much you’ll pay for a full version of it, or they provide a partial version that gives you just enough functionality to use and get used to the software, until you have to pay to get an expanded list of features. But the majority of the time this software just sits there on your hard drive, taking up space, or worse, runs in the background on your computer, never actually used.
The majority of computer savvy people have a checklist of things they do when setting up a new computer for themselves and their friends. And after the basic setup and physical instillation is done, and any OS updates are installed, one of the first things most of these computer savvy people do is spend a fair amount of time scraping the Crapware out of the system.
But Crapware isn’t just confined to what comes already pre-installed on your computer by the manufacturer? How many times has AOL sent you a CD of their software, just hoping you’ll call in for that free trial period… which you have to cancel in order to avoid getting charges later on? How much pure flotsam is bundled as a part of the operating system it’s self that you can’t choose -not- to install even when you’re reinstalling the OS yourself from scratch?
I personally call all of this Crapware as well.
April 25th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
This is a new term for me. I have exactly one storebought PC — my laptop. There is a reason (actually many reasons) I don’t use it unless I absolutely have to.
My parents both have Dells and, well, some people swear by them, I hate ‘em.
April 25th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
OS crapware… another reason why i’m switching to linux.
April 26th, 2007 at 3:03 am
The term is still gaining popularity as a short hand for the type of software it replaces, but it is a term I have seen used.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
This is sometimes called bloatware as well. I find that if I buy a new system I’m often making sure that I have all the discs then reintalling from scratch. Now with Vista which unto itself is nearing the crapware/malware/spyware and so on I think I’m moving toward Linux more and more. There is just to much going on in the Open Source community right now. IF only they could get the game and driver support of Microsoft and I’d never need anything MS again.
April 26th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I’m currently looking at experimenting with Linux on a box I have in the basement and am using as a file server/extra storage.
And Bloatware is actually one of the terms on my list of terms to define.
April 30th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
[…] intersects with Crapware in the area of Operating Systems. Some Operating Systems (OSs) come bundled with an incredibly […]