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Lenovo Offers Up a CRAPWARE Solution

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This is good news. Many users decry the OEM practice of loading up new computers with trial versions of software, an allotment of OEM specific utilities, and other detritus, that I and others have taken to calling CRAPWARE. On the Lenovo Blog, Inside The Box, comes word that Lenovo now offers a tool that can help users remove some of the unwanted clutter on their machines.

Intriguingly, the writer acknowledges that some of the Lenovo pre-load is more than he’d like to see on his system. He also offers up the financial reason (lower costs to consumers by adding in the trials, etc..) that we lead to the practice.

The article goes on to tell how the ThinkVantage Base Software Administrator works. Here’s an excerpt:

This wonderful little tool allows you to see our preload recovery area for both our desktops and our notebooks.  You can then choose which programs, patches, and utilities you want to have installed, and which ones you don’t.  The typical scenario would be to boot up your system for the first time, create a “manifest file” using this tool, and immediately thereafter do a factory recovery.  However, when the system recovers, it recovers to YOUR specifications.  The major advantages to doing it this way is you spend much less time as the recovery is automated, and since these programs are never installed, you don’t have any residual Registry junk from incomplete uninstalls.

Note in the article that this only works with newer Lenovo systems running the Rescue and Recovery version 3.1 or newer.

This can only be a good thing and Lenovo should rightly boast about being the only OEM to make such a tool available to customers. Here’s hoping other OEMs follow suit. I’m looking forward to trying this out.

Here’s the link to the full article that contains the link to the downloads section and here’s a link to the download description.

Also note that in the comments, one user writes in that those running newer Lenovo machines with Rescue and Recovery 4 have the option to exclude some software when performing a recovery.  That’s even better news.

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