What is Bloatware?

Bloatware, Junkware, or Elephantware is any software that ships with a new computer system that you personally did not choose to order. These applications are usually portrayed in a very negative light because they soak up more system resources for the same or similar benefits of older applications and often are not perceived as useful to the customer.

Why did my system get Bloatware put on it if I didn’t order it or want it?

3rd party Bloatware is often placed on your system by system builders as a revenue generation model and often consists of “Trialware” or “30-day Freeware” or “Crapware” type applications. The concept behind some system builders placing this software on your system is to get you to try their programs (hook you), get you accustomed to using it, and then turn off the limited or full version after a certain amount of days and hope you’ll purchase the full version of the software (maybe you’ve now become quite dependent on it). If you did decide to purchase the full version of the application, the system builder will receive a cut from the Bloatware company for getting the sale.

Why is Bloatware bad for my system?

Well, besides the obvious fact of having no choice in the matter during your system purchase, Bloatware applications are often extremely resource constraining on your new system. Remember that awesome new processor that you spent extra bread on? Well now, because of your new system’s wonderful Bloatware, it’s performing like the processor three speeds down that you wanted to upgrade from in the first place! And remember that memory and hard disk drive space that you decided you did not want to upgrade on your system build? Yup, you guessed it; Bloatware is eating into them as well. In most cases hard drive and memory performance suffers even more than your processor’s. In some extreme cases, Bloatware can consume up to 25% of your new hard drive storage capacity!

Usually when system builders place Bloatware on your new computer they set them to auto-initialize on your operating system’s start, so boot times will suffer as well. A quick way to tell that a system is plagued with Bloatware is when too many background applications are opened on the right of your taskbar. Don’t be fooled by what’s just located in the taskbar though; sometimes you have to dig deep into your system’s task manager and manually sort out what’s good and what’s garbage. An even sneakier trick by Bloatware designers is to prompt you with “software updates” that do little to no update use. These “updates” hit you with popups during regular use, so you’ll notice their applications even more and hopefully purchase them.

The absolute worse case scenario of Bloatware is some system builders charging you at the system build level to remove Bloatware offerings from your new computer!!! This is by far the most ludicrous and insulting form of customer manipulation; anyone witnessing that first hand should RUN from that system purchase.

What about Alienware and Bloatware?

Instead of telling you about Alienware, I think PC World describes us best when they ranked the Alienware Area-51 desktop “The Most Junkware-Free System” in a recent head-to-head article in their November ‘07 issue against nine other major system builders. Check out the full article here.

Alienware does not bundle any Bloatware, Crapware, Elephentware, Trialware, or Junkware into our systems, not now, not ever. When you purchase a system from Alienware you get the system as it was intended to run, without any Bloatware choking up system resources.