Crapware makes PCs take more than twice as long to boot up.

This study has put nine machines from the major manufacturers through a battery of tests designed to highlight where they’re being run ragged by unwanted trial software or crapware. Acer, Sony and HP are the worst offenders, as far as installing crapware on laptops/PC’s is concerned!

The Acer, for instance, offered an unnecessary Windows Media Center clone and 19 games with only 60 minutes of play, while the Sony VAIO VGN-NS30E/S took more than three minutes to boot. HP’s Pavilion dv6 was little better, with a poor boot time, sluggish performance and flawed applications.

The Dell and Asus machines both included genuinely useful applications and also offered swift boot times and good performance elsewhere.

Further analysis reveals that, when it comes to performance, it’s the proprietary software that does the most damage. McAfee Security Center, for instance, is present on five of the machines we’ve tested – and their boot times and performance figures spread the gamut from the Dell’s speed to the Sony’s sluggish excess.

Likewise, Norton products sit on both the quick Asus and slow HP machines, and Roxio Creator is present on the relatively nippy Lenovo as well as the Sony VAIO.

While crapware may be the scourge of modern laptops, its economic benefits mean that it probably isn’t going anywhere soon – especially since third-party companies are willing to pay big money to have their software installed on thousands of laptops.

Full read : PCPro.

Against this backdrop, it is heartneing to know that Microsoft will be selling crapware-free PCs.

You can also take the help of a freeware program called PC DeCrapifier to remove crapware from your PC or laptop!