The Junk Software Economy
It's fairly clear that PC vendors receive money for loading your computer with junk. But few people are willing to talk about this business. Nearly all of the system vendors we contacted--Acer, Apple, Gateway, HP, Toshiba, and Sony--declined to comment. Alienware was the only vendor to state emphatically that it takes no money to install software.
Service and software vendors eBay and Symantec freely admitted to having "relationships" with a number of vendors, but declined to comment on the specifics. Symantec did say it had a revenue-sharing model, implying that its payments to PC vendors might be based on the number of customers who pay for a license when the free trial ends. Google, which provided its Desktop and Toolbar software on almost every PC we tested, declined comment.
Vendors told us repeatedly that they are providing a service to the user by bundling trial versions of McAfee Antivirus, Microsoft Office 2007, or Norton Internet Security. But customers might be better served if the PCs came with full versions of free alternatives such as OpenOffice.org and Grisoft's AVG antivirus application.
While preloading software may help subsidize prices for consumer PCs, it has also created a burgeoning cottage industry for "optimizing" new systems--that is, removing the junk. (This is a large part of what a retailer does in the PC-setup service that most stores offer at a cost of $90 to $150.)
You can do this yourself for free: See "How to Clean Your New PC". And vote with your dollars. If enough people ask for clean PCs, vendors will notice.
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