Useless Crud Alert

How many useless apps do you have running on your PC? If you’re like me there’s probably at least half a dozen. Winzip, for instance, costs money, spews out links all over the place and was superseded by Windows’ built in zip functionality. If you really need an archiving/compression tool use the freebie 7-zip instead.

Dodgy codec packs? Did you ever try and run a video only to find it required a new codec installed in your media player, and you hit OK to download and install it? Hmmm. Well…the only one you will really ever need is ffdshow or VLC media player, which between them will handle everything you can throw at them. VLC has the added advantage of being able to mount ISO disk images, so you don’t even need to burn that pirated backup copy of your legitimate bought DVD. (Note, VLC is a GUI front-end to the core codec of ffdshow). Thanks to Anil Dash for the 7-zip and ffdshow links.

Among the comments on Anil’s post were recommendations not to include proprietary instant messagers but to use Trillian or WinGAIM instead. Why have Adobe Reader when you could install the much more expressive FoxIt? (Note, FoxIt can mess up when displaying some graphics, which means it’s not 100% the best alternative to Adobe Reader, SumatraPDF may be better) And, if you want download resume functionality don’t install an accelerator, grab the Firefox extension DownThemAll. That way you’ll avoid lots of complications, such as spyware and a rack of new desktop links you never wanted. If you have to install Useless Crud always choose the custom option.

Anil’s post inspired the guys at Lifehacker to come up with even more examples of Useless Crud you should not have on your PC, probably not too hard as Anil only made two suggestions, winzip and codecs. I wonder whether he deliberately didn’t write a proper list as some kind of linkbait experiment…

Anyway, to avoid (seriously avoid) and in no particular order: Nokia software, Real software, ntl netguard (VirginMedia product), almost any browser toolbar, any software offered by a pr0n site, iTunes, anything made by Corel, AOL, Symantec, Norton, and Yahoo, desktop weather applications (basically spyware and you don’t need constant weather forecasts unless you’re navigating an ocean-going vessel or flying an aircraft).

Ultimately, however, you might even consider Windows itself to be useless crud in which case you’re possibly a Mac user or toying with Ubuntu Linux, neither of which are really much use for power users unfortunately.