Removing Bloatware

Many computer companies ship their computers & laptops with all kinds of "bloatware" pre-installed, apps and extensions which you don't really want or need.

Some are inert and just want to advertize and spread their reach, in hopes of growing their user base and prospective paying-customer base.

But some are legalized spyware, generating telemetry on your computer usage and personal behaviours, sending it back to the mothership. And, as you should have noticed over the last 5 years (~2019—2024), most big companies are now more interested in data than anything else — and they're using this data to generate LLMs (Large Language Models) and similar, neural network data cores that have been misrepresented as "Artificial Intelligence" in an attempt to humanize and personify these giant models of human knowledge and human behaviour.

Again, watch Westworld to see what I mean.

To Do:

  • how to remove bloatware

    • uninstaller apps (safe ones!)

  • common bloatware apps & extensions

  • common spyware disguised as bloatware

  • how to work out what is or might be bloatware

How to remove bloatware

use the uninstaller page in Control Panel

use uninstaller apps

Microsoft Bloatware

Not one to be left out (FOMO), Microsoft actually provide us with their own bloatware.

You can find all kinds of Microsoft-flavoured bloatware quite easily! Basically everywhere you look, there is a lot. It's a bit like trash on the streets, beaches and rivers of most places where there are humans. Shit everywhere.

Hit Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Windows's Task Manager, and switch to the first tab. Sort by CPU usage and you'll see all kinds of Random Shite using your precious CPU cycles, for god-knows-what.

Granted, some of these processes are core to Windows functioning correctly. Don't worry, this isn't one of those websites which encourages you to tinker around with unknown pixies and sprites.

But a bunch of these processes are actually apps — the techniqal term is crapware — from Microsoft, which do nothing useful except try to drag you into their sloppy, unfinished apology of an œ́cōsystem. It would be cute if it weren't so gorram annoying.

Common bloatware

Adobe Acrobat

Everybody and their toaster can read PDFs these days. There's very little in Adobe Acrobat that most people really need. Even having it installed means that Adobe have an "updater service" running in the background all the time.

Acrobat also installs a Chrome (etc) browser extension, to view PDFs inside your web browser. It probably adds a few features that aren't available in Google's and Microsoft's built-in PDF viewers...

But, Adobe's extension ALSO uses 500+ MB of RAM when you don't even have it open!

That is honestly insane. It's not even being used yet it takes up a sizeable portion of your computer's memory. On one laptop, with 6GB RAM, that is a significant amount!

Remove the extension.

Consider uninstalling Adobe Acrobat altogether.

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