When you buy a new desktop computer or a laptop, especially from a big brand, your computer will come loaded with a large number of pre-installed trial software, called craplets. The main reason for putting these trial programs, including a lot of games, is that the company making those computers or laptops may be getting payments from the software publishers and the game publishers to put their trial software on the new machines. As the big brands sell huge numbers of desktop computers and laptops, they may be getting hefty amounts for putting these trial software in the new machines. However, if you buy a computer from a lesser-known brand or from an unbranded vendor, normally you won’t find so many sponsored trial programs. Just to illustrate, when I bought my Compaq laptop, it came pre-installed with a very large number of trial games and some other trial software (the total must have been around 100 trial programs). The problem is that most of these trial programs will never be used by you. Moreover, most of these programs are useless in as much as they are just trial ones giving you the chance to run for a few times or days; and, afterwards while they’ll stop functioning, they may still keep showing you nagging screens reminding you to purchase the software. In any case, such trial programs will consume the precious memory of your computer and will slow it down at the startup as well as during regular operations. Mind you, some of these trial software may actually be trial versions of full-fledged software requiring huge hard disk space for a single program installation (for example, Microsoft Office trial version).
Therefore, the first thing you must always do after purchasing a new computer or a new laptop is to remove such unwanted trial software which are more of an irritant and less of use. Of course, there may be one or two particular trial software that you may like to retain. Some of it may even be freeware and may be useful such as Google Toolbar, so there is no trial expiry. But then, you have to take a call and decide which trial programs have to be removed. And, most of such trial software deserve to be removed immediately after purchase.
Instead of manually looking around your computer trying to locate and remove these trial programs, you can use PC Decrapifier which is meant specifically for the purpose of finding and removing trial software from a new computer. It is absolutely free for personal use. Recently (as of September, 2009), its new versions 2.0 and 2.1 have been released. You can download it free for personal use and simply run the EXE file; there is no need to install this software since it is written with a scripting language.
PC Decrapifier can automatically remove the most common trial programs (about 60+ trial programs, as of the time of writing these lines). You can see the complete list of these trial programs at this page. Of course, there may be other trial software on your computer (especially a large number of trial games) which PC Decrapifier cannot remove. You can remove these other trial programs manually.
To use PC Decrapifier, simply run its EXE file on your new computer. It may first optionally set a Restore Point on your computer, just in case something went wrong and your computer crashes or just in case it removes something that you thought you wanted to retain. It is advisable to set the Restore Point, though it is optional. See the image below:
Next, it will show you the list of the trial software from which you can select which programs to remove and which programs to retain. It will not remove or uninstall any trial program without your approval. See the following image:
After you have selected the trial software to be removed, PC Decrapifier will start removing those software.
As I mentioned above, it may not be in a position to remove all the trial software since it does not support removal of many trial software. So, to further clean up your new computer of the remaining trial software, you can remove them manually.
You may notice an appreciable improvement in the performance of your new computer once your remove these trial software, depending upon how many and which type of programs were removed.
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