It is inevitable, faster processors and bigger hard drive capacities will always lead to more useless crap choking up the works. PC Pro has released some astonishing figures regarding the memory and hard disk footprint of bloatware with various manufacturers and the affect that the software has on boot time. The results grate more than they surprise:

• Acer: 2:01 longer boot time, 952MB larger memory footprint, 2.4GB less HDD space
• HP: 1:35 longer boot time, 1.06GB larger memory footprint, 2.18GB less HDD space
• Dell: 0:52 longer boot time, 1.18GB larger memory footprint, 3GB less HDD space
• Sony: 1:54 longer boot time, 1.11GB larger memory footprint, 1.3GB less HDD space

There was a time that 1GB of RAM was more than anyone would ever need and if you cut things back to basics it will still get the job done. These figures indicate that, if you want to run all of the bloat, you are going to need at least 4GB not to notice the added weight that it puts on your system.

The RAM use can be worked around, and space can be freed up via task manager, but two minutes is a significant increase to boot time and the only way to fix that is to hunt out all of the bloat and kill it. Or, if you want to save yourself the effort, just give your system a fresh install as soon as you get it home. That or you could get a Mac, which booted in 49-sec and, according to PC Pro, had virtually no bloat. [PC Pro via Gizmodo]

[Gizmodo]

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