Sat 18 May 2013 | tags: bloat, windows, -- (permalink)

It's been some time since I've had to do some work on a Windows computer, in particular lots of software installs and uninstalls to cleanup a slow computer.

Now before you jump the gun, I'm not talking about Windows the operating system being full of bloat, although it may be. I'm also not talking about the bloat that comes installed on OEM installs.

What I am talking about, is how so much third party free windows software is full of bloat. Just about every installer now wants to install another piece of software with the piece you downloaded, ether a toolbar or another "great" piece of software they recommend to you. And then when you uninstall a piece of software, just about every piece of software then insist on opening a webpage saying how sorry they are that you uninstalled the software and would you please do this 5 minute survey telling them why blah blah blah.

And even my favourite antivirus Avast has started doing it. First, the installer has jumped from 20Mb a few years ago to over 100Mb now. And now when you install it, if you aren't watching out it'll try and install Google Drive, and once it is installed it keeps popping up asking you to install the great security extension for chrome, blah blah blah.

What ever happened to nice free software that wasn't packed full of bloat, and that let you install and uninstall just that software that you asked for without trying to push other software on you? I'll happily keep my Linux world, where software does what you ask, and nothing more.

And if you live in the Windows world, seriously, I think it's well past time to get out, but you can still get out now!