Gunk Software

This time around it was not a customer but a friend from my trap shooting club who asked a question that I want to answer here. Thank you Steve. He sent me the following text:

My new Toshiba laptop seems loaded with a bunch of Toshiba software.  It seems to want to [do] things its own way. 

If I try to use Internet Explorer as my default browser instead of Toshiba-Google Chrome, my email at SBC-Yahoo does not always seem to work well... the cursor won't respond normally and always the Toshiba browser loads anyway. 

I suspect I might have to uninstall everything that says "Toshiba." 

What are your thoughts on this?

Good that you asked before uninstalling everything from Toshiba.

In my usual complicated manner I will probably tell you more than you wanted to know but I'll do it anyway.

All the following is valid for every brand name computer marketed to consumers, no matter what manufacturer we are talking about!

Sony, Samsung, Toshiba and lately ASUS are in my experience and opinion the very worst of companies as far as dubious or questionable pre-installed software is concerned. Sometimes it takes almost criminal investigative skill to find out what the software really does that they install on their computers.

Some of these programs your computer really needs to function correctly. Other programs have questionable purposes at best and still others are outright gunk. This mix is different from manufacturer to manufacturer and within manufacturers different from model to model or series to series.

The lowdown is that you as a "normal" human being will not be able to correctly discern what is safe to remove and what needs to stay. I have personally witnessed even experienced professionals failing at that and I am VERY careful and conservative when I do that.

In your case I assume hat you can at least uninstall the existing Google Chrome version. I don't want to say more because it could be just the wrong advice in your computer's case.

Besides that I strongly recommend, no urge my customers NOT to use Internet Explorer. Use Firefox instead, but please only the original version and not Yahoo's crippled version.

As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance. 

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