Absolutely and utterly useless applications

Mine:

1- Realplayer
2- Apple Quicktime
3- Yahoo! and everything associated
4- Google talk
5- Windows messenger (this one that comes by default)
6- Nero, seriously this thing takes over your windows when installed. It's just for burning, why bundle it with 800 million "helpful" applications and "tools"
7- Microsoft Office Picture Viewer, why???
8- Windows Mail.
9- Divx and anything associated (just get VLC)
10- Ieverything, Itunes, Ipee, etc...
11- Registry "Optimizers" - Biggest myth since the dawn of humanity.
12- P2P software, it's more traceable, its risky, its slow, its dangerous and its dumb - one word, Rapidshare.

more to follow, cant remember them all now...


list yours, GO!

 

Hahahahah, RealPlayer!
QuickTime for Windows isn't too nice... VLC plays its files anyway.

iTunes, but you need it to handle an iPod...

I believe Samsung laptops have a piece of software called Instant Fun...

 

Most of the bloatware that came on this brand new vaio....

Also, you dont need itunes for your ipod. try Songbird, download the ipod support addon. much more feature rich for a media player AND for ipod support than apple's own crapware.

IM clients. why do all OS' force theirs on you ??? garbage. pidgin all the way. trillian for honorable mention.

BROWSERS. i know some like IE, but id much rather choose firefox or opera on my own and leave it at that.

ev

 

and another thing!!! microsoft works. WTH???

I mean either way its getting un installed immediately, because you either bought ms office or downloaded and are about to install open office. works is garbage, redundant and useless.


ev

 

NORTON ANTIVIRUS!!!! I'm surprised nobody has said it.

 

Norton Antivirus is not absolutely and utterly useless--you could make the arguement it is not very good, but not useless. And really, Norton AV is acceptable, it is Norton Internet Security that makes me want to hurt people WHEN it goes bad (most of the time it works OK, not great, OK)

I am still waiting for someone to say VISTA.....

 

Vista.









HAHAHA...lol

 

i would say any and all trialware that comes on a brand new machine. it just takes up space that could be used for a decent progam. thats just my opinion tho.

 

Seriously, though... I don't keep useless programs installed, other than the M$ junk, like WMP, Windows Mail, and the rest. I do try to disable/remove as many of those pointless M$ features as possible, though.

 

Thanks for the replies, I would suggest everyone who want to reply from now on to make a list so it becomes easier for all of us to follow and see which app will be the most useless

 

Similarly, WordPad. I understand its main use is to open RTF files, but most people seem to use Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, or even just plain ole NotePad nowadays.

I would love to see RealPlayer dead and buried, but I still visit sites which stream only in Real formats and provide no alternatives. Grr. I should get around to installing Alternative some day.

It's not really 'useless' as such, but I'm surprised that people still use ICQ.

1. WordPad
2. RealPlayer
(3. ICQ?)

 

I would have to go with RealPlayer, I don't let it touch my computer with a ten foot pole.... hmm, what else?

WLM-seriously Microsoft, that's not cool. I'd rather use Windows Messenger-at least that doesn't make me think that my computer's been hijacked....

QuickTime-You were tolerable, until you started trying to drag Safari and iTunes on my system. Boo to you Apple!

Dell Support Center-Absolutely horrible, I could deal with the old version, but the new one is slow, and poorly designed. Got rid of both on the Dell desktop my family shares

Ruckus Player-Basically a WMP skin, only partially adware. Plus the company went belly up and left the songs covered in DRM+ you had to pay to transfer the songs to CD or a portable device. FAIL! I'm about to rid my computer of this program today!

Google Earth/Windows Live Virtual Earth 3D: Seriously, what's the point? After the initial novelty wore off, Google earth sat untouched on my computer for ages.

So here's the list for me:

RealPlayer

Quicktime/iTunes/Safari

Dell Support Center

Ruckus Player

Google Earth/Windows Live Virtual Earth

Windows Live Messenger

 

I like windows mail. I use it to check my msn and gmail at the same time using pop3. Although by default, vista won't let you into the pop 3 setting until you rename the msn user name.. MS wants you to use http based outlook for msn even though it will still work with pop 3 if you know the right settings. So i renamed it and got in the wizard and changed it back.. i know that's pathetic. Its pretty light and opens fast and is better then using web mail. I have outlook but windows mail is simple to use. Although I think MS express was a bit better. I'm also starting to use WMP more. For some reason the colors look nicer.. better contrast and the translucent full screen controls in vista look nice. The one thing that I really think is junk is IE. I have IE 8 RC1 and admit its much better then IE7. But compared to FF is total complete crap.

The two apps that were really bad when I received my dv6500t was the Vongo and norton. Uninstalling norton killed my wifi and I had to do a system restore no more then one hour after I opened the box lol. I used the symantic removal tool to kill it off. Vongo required several registry deletions to kill that resurrecting son of a gun.

 

Your obviously not an architect major. Windows live virtual earth is great it offers a birds eye view. Lets you see building elevations that aren't well documented elsewhere. For a quick study model i can use sketchup, which goes hand in hand with google earth, for sun angles and site coordinates.

i guess my useless application is ms paint can you do anything is that program
ms messenger
hp updater
any pc tool you see on tv that says it will make your pc run faster haha

 

I actually don't find Real Player to be useless. The only fact that I hate about it, is it pops up EVERY TIME I PLUG IN MY EXTERNAL HD!

Other than that, it's what I use to put music on my Ipod. Works perfect.

 

Clearly (No offence to architect majors!)

I like MSPaint, and switch between it + the Print Screen key and the Snipping Tool for screenshot editing work.

 

"Useless" is pretty subjective. OpenOffice is useless to me because I have MS Office, but to somebody else it might be utterly essential.

 

I have to disagree with these items, as I find them quite good. Guess it depends on how you use them.

 

For Linux (yes, FOSS does suck from time to time):
- Adept 3.0 - a castrated version of Adept 2.0 that can't even last for a few minutes without crashing

- Compiz Fusion - several years old and it still has numerous bugs; it really can't be counted on for reliable use, much less when suspending or hibernating. It's annoying, kind of like the 41 year old who still lives with his parents.

For Windows:
- Windows Movie Maker - an all-around POS program; little or no functionality with terrible stability.

- Nero 8 - a very, very bloated program; used to be good in the glory days

- Adobe Acrobat - again, bloated

- MS Outlook - seems to be designed to crash.

- QuickTime - just like other users, I must agree that this program should have died long ago. It's demanding, invasive, and slow in the face of far better competition.

 

Eh... I just use my web Gmail page, so it's useless for me at least.

 

use media monkey much better and faster and ipod support

nero
norton
quicktime
google updater
google tool bar
any ie toolbar
any brand bloatware
cyber dvd
and M$ trials
windows messenger
Windows media player
mceffe
any bloatwear sucks
IE explorer
many many more

 

haha its cool, when im not using it for school i guess there is no real function. i used to be big on the prnt screen, until the snipping tool came out with vista.

it seems like every time i update that stupid itunes it gets slower and slower. apparently 4 gigs of ram and a dual core processor isn't enough to make the music scroll without lagging. can i export the songs as they are in my itunes, like artist album album cover right to media monkey?

 

My list

1) Memory / registry optimisers. Most are just pure space hogs and do nothing more than expand to full memory size and then shrink back again giving the illusion of making space.
2) RealPlayer, just why...
3) QuickTime / iTunes, same as RealPlayer. I have to have it as I have an iPhone. Its not associated with any files though.
4) Super Spiffy codec packs. No problems with ffdshow and its not that big.
5) Nero (6,7,8,9 etc). DVD burning program that likes to act as a word processor etc as well. At least I can do a custom install on it to only put on the things I want. BTW, it also has its own system search engine that I kill and disable as I have to use the MS one for VMC.
6) EULA's that try and own it all. Have you read any?
7) EA Games, all of them. Wont rant to much and just say DRM
8) Bloatware. Give us a DVD with an autorun menu. At least the 512MB of ram you put in the machine will stand a chance if we can choose what we want.
9) Add in tool bars to IE / Firefox. Just what's needed, less browsing space.

 

1+2: Use Real- and Quicktime Alternative to just install the codecs and browser-plugins.
3+4: No one forces you to install this crap.
5: On XP, XP-Antispy can uninstall it, on Vista it isn't installed by default.
6: Use Nero Lite from http://updatepack.nl/.
7: You can choose what to install during Office-Setup.
9: As you said: Get VLC.
10: Never used iTunes... and never missed it.
11: The only good Reg-cleaner I've ever seen is CCleaner. Use It!
12. Didn't use p2p for several years now. Seems much too unsave...

I always do a clean install, so the only crapware on my machine is the by default installed and not uninstallable Microsoft-Crap like Wordpad, Paint, Windows Mail, Windows Movie maker, DVD Maker, Media Player...

 

Interesting that one person's "useless" app is another's favorite! A few cases in point:

REAL PLAYER - I l ove Real Player and use it exclusively for all my media. It is completely customizable, and offers features that others don't, like letting you set up Play Lists to group the mixes of music or videos that you want to hear, played together.

YAHOO and YAHOO MAIL and YAHOO SEARCH etc. Can't say enough good things about them. Many more customizable options than most, very thorough, great mail application, with the only messenger service that I know of that has, not only an on screen pop-up telling you who your new email is from, but an icon in the system tray that lets you know whenever you have new mail.

MICROSOFT OFFICE PICTURE MANAGER - Are you kidding me??? Best photo editor currently available!!!! And one of the very few that let's you resize your photos when they upload/download in the wrong size.

 

Agreed on Office Picture Manager, for the resize and photo compression features alone, it's priceless. Partly because it's dead simple for a photo/imaging n00b like myself to use.

 

I didn't get a chance to see the crap my laptop came with since I reinstalled Vista.

 

Internet explorer, Adobe photoshop, feed demon, real player.

 

I'm stunned! Why do you think that Feed Demon's so bad? I personally love it, esp. for it's podcast integration and the ability to jump directly to a feed post's webpage directly from within the program.

 

even though there are free alternatives, this is far from useless

 

I agree with:

*Windows Movie Maker. It's so useless to me that I've never used it.
*Ruckus Player. At least since this week.
*RealPlayer. Haven't found a need for it yet.
*Vista. For me.

I wish I could agree with:

*QuickTime. But it plays my cell phone recordings that nothing else seems to.
*Internet Explorer. But it's still required for too much for it to be useless.

A few of the others I agree with too, too lazy to list them all.

I disagree with:

*MSPaint.exe. It's a very nice light editor when you just need to crop something. I probably use it more than any other image editing program.
*WordPad. Gives you the formatting that Notepad doesn't, without the long startup time of Word.

Works actually was kind of nice before I got Office. I used it for about two weeks or so, and it did the job fairly well. But it does lose a lot of its usefulness after you get Office.

 

Every "Recommended/Optional Application" that came on my ASUS Driver CD (with the possible exception of the camera app).

Microsoft Works, because it kept popping that little dropdown tab into every fullscreen app I was running.

Norton Internet Security, and for that matter *every application that thinks it knows better than you do*... I mean, if I want to uninstall something, I should be able to do it without having to excise little binary tumours out of my system. If I want to turn something off, I don't want a reminder telling me to turn it back on every thirty seconds!

Quickloader/synchroniser apps that load on startup in case I want to use acrobat/openoffice/etc. (Mind you, I don't do that much that requires it, so that's entirely subjective).

 

About 90% of all browser plugins are crap also. And, any program, like Quicktime, that put a 'qtupdate' in your start menu and reapply itself every time you access the program. Stupid updaters for crapware.

I hate all anti virus programs and spyware removers except spybot, avg, and avast. They are worse than viruses most of the time.

I can't stand itunes, and I hate winamp. but not as much as WinMediaPlayer.

Hate acrobat launcher, MS works, anything associated with AOL. I HATE the vista defragger (whats up with that?) - it has gotten worse and worse.

Hate windows indexer.

Man, I hate everything! : ) OpenOffice rules but I get that, and acroreader to crash all the time. But I blame vista! Haha.

 

lol true. Norton has gotten better over the years, but there's no reason why it should be bundled with every new PC. And I also can't stand the fact that it can't be removed without using the Norton uninstallation thingy.

 

haha guys I love how this topic is shaping up, its a big place where everyone just let go of their hatred to those annoying little nagging thingies of no use.

I got to add, Internet explorer has the dumbest things ever, even though they are so small and not all users notice them, they really frsustrate me.

two little examples:
you cant type anything in the address bar just after launching internet explorer, why? nobody knows. you need to wait until the "ghost" address - an address you cant see, you cant edit, you cant go to and you cant escape from, you need to wait until it "disappears" and then you can type address, if you type "over" it and press enter it gives an error, you close the error and you're ready to go or simply wait a few seconds until the IE "gets rid" of this ghost address and puts you back in the driving seat.
not sure many will understand what I am saying.

another thing, sometimes, for no obvious reason, where a picture is actually a link, the "view shortcut" or whatever its called, does not show up so you cant know what links to what, totally dumb.

 

P2P/torrent applications are far from being useless. There are plenty of files available on torrent websites not found on Rapidshare. Also, if you are not stupid and take the proper precautions, torrenting is not "risky."

 

Actually I don't think it's that bad but I don't use it much and that's why it is useless for me.

 

For those having troubles with iTunes, altering its installation process may help. I can't say whether it'll reduce the laggy feeling on some computers, but it does get rid of several useless processes*, as well as that annoying update program, asking me every bloody time whether I wished to install Safari!...

Ahem. Anyway, if you must use iTunes (and I prefer the interface to MediaMonkey anyway), this may help.

* (If you just disable them from starting, iTunes will detect this and often refuse to start properly, even crash sometimes.)

 

+1000 hahahaha

 

UGH, YES! I hate that, the few times I have to use IE, I try to type the address I want as soon as it launches, only to have the browser stall and redirect me to the MSN homepage EVERY TIME!

 

I actually like Windows Picture Viewer and have tried everything else out there, Picassa, Irfanview, etc. but I keep coming back to Picture Viewer. It is simple, fast, and you have full control over your directory structure. The only thing I wish it has was a black background.

 

ACDsee is nice and you can choose a black background. Very powerful but its not cheap.

 

Try XnView

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enxnview.html