Thinkpads Forum

I am slowly removing what I don't use / don't want from my TP -- I have gone that route rather than doing a fresh install of Win XP.

So far I have removed :

Picasa
Google toolbar and other tools
Norton / Symatec antivirus & firewall
Diskeeper lite

I am thinking now of removing the Intervideo software.
Before I do that, I'd like to know what others use to burn CDs?DVDs ?
What about defragmenting, what do you use?

Anything else you remove? What do you use instead?

Thanks!

guYom wrote:<snip>
Picasa
Google toolbar and other tools
Norton / Symatec antivirus & firewall
Diskeeper lite
<snip>
What about defragmenting, what do you use?
Thanks!

1. I don't have Picasa on my T41
2. Google toolbar and other (Google?) tools did not come on my T41, I don't ever install them, and I don't want them.
3. Depends on the version. NAV 2005 is fine, NAV 2006 is overly bloated and a resource hog (I have not yet been able to corral it). I use Symantec Client Security V3 Corporate and it works exceedingly well, but is not generally available to the public
4. I use Perfect Disk. It can be set to run silently and automatically. It can run while doing other work, and I run mine (on the TP) at noon each day. I run it at midnight on the desktop machine.
... JD Hurst

1.) Get rid of Picasa; it is of little use
2.) Get rid of the Google toolbar and associated things; as with Picasa, they are of little practical use
3.) I removed the NAV version that came on my T43 and replaced it with AVG as NAV was a resource hog. I can also say that the corporate edition is far better than the NAV preload.
4.) I too use PerfectDisk; scheduled silent online defrags during the day and at least two offline defrags per day.

I wouldn't get rid of the InterWin DVD software; unless you either want to watch DVDs and know what you are doing or just want a simple way to watch DVDs.

The preloaded burning software by IBM/Lenovo is a good starting point should you want to start to burn CDs and DVDs.

HTH

The preloaded CD/DVD burning software is Sonic RecordNow. It's pretty good.

I personally use Nero.

Personally I don't mind Diskkeeper. I wish they would let you use Microsoft's defrag though.

I disabled the Thinkpad backup utility because the backup was taking up way too much space. Also, I did not enable the advanced security options. That was the only way I could get rid of the password manager (which I never used) icon on the taskbar.

When I first got my t60 I was bewildered by how many stupid taskbar icons there were. I hate it when there are too many.

Thinkpads are pretty clean compared to other makes.
Dalls have so much junk preloaded that it came down to this: http://www.yorkspace.com/2006/04/38
HP/Compaq is just as bad. They are all the masters of the 30 day trial.

Don't get me wrong, by crapware I don't mean ThinkVantage. Crapware means for me all non Win XP and ThinkPad apps that are pre-installed.

What's the use / advantage of keeping Intervideo? Isn't Windows media player enough?

This forum is great. Was definitely a deciding factort when I bought my TP.

Thanks.

guYom wrote:Don't get me wrong, by crapware I don't mean ThinkVantage. Crapware means for me all non Win XP and ThinkPad apps that are pre-installed.

What's the use / advantage of keeping Intervideo? Isn't Windows media player enough?

This forum is great. Was definitely a deciding factort when I bought my TP.

Thanks.

It depends, Intervideo has some features that WMP doesn't; use the one that best suits your purpose.

I leave the intervideo stuff on as it doesn't really bother me and can be good as a backup but I install VLC (free) for all my media playing.
I also leave the roxio software on for the same reason but install CD Burner XP Pro (free) as it does the bootable stuff that I need

I like google toolbar but I don't like having a lenovo logo on it so I would replace this.

Picasa gets uninstalled as does google desktop search - I don't want or need any replacements for these.

Diskeeper Lite gets removed - windows defrag with ThinkVantage Away Manager is fine as a replacement that won't annoy you on a daily basis.

Anything from Symantec comes directly from hell so I like to send it back there - I don't use Anti Virus software - I find common sense to be a suitable replacement for it and I like to be able to access networks properly so just use Windows Firewall as a replacement for that which is good enough for my needs.

snife wrote:I don't use Anti Virus software - I find common sense to be a suitable replacement for it

for real for real? just because you don't go to crackspider.net, doesnt mean you arent going to get a virus..

5 years since I stopped using it and not had a virus yet - keep everything up to date and don't run stuff I don't trust, i might just be lucky but seems to work for me, I would prefer the occasional rebuild of my system than having symantec stuff installed even if the worst happened

well whatever works for you- are you tight on memory or something? avg doesnt use much. i would rather skip the rebuild and just wait an extra 3 seconds on startup.

im going to send you an email..click the link..

haha jk.

I have heard good things about AVG and if people need the peace of mind then that would be the one to go for I think but Id been without antivirus for a couple of years without any ill effects so didn't see the point of installing it. I don't like to tempt fate - but I just can't envisage a situation in which I would get a virus.

my girlfriend goes on the waste of (my)space.com, and got hit a few times. i told her it was her fault for visiting a stupid website, but either way, garbage is out there where some people may not suspect it.

did you knock on wood? or at least on your thinkpad?

I use my TP professionnally, and I don't let anybody else touch. It's in 'production' and I need a very controlled environment. But even if it was a leisure machine, I don't think I'd let anyone fidget with it either for the reason you just mentioned.

What are the other favorite antivirals beside AVG among TP owners? I am not sure I want to fly without protection either.

there was a virus topic just a few days ago...dont remember where it was, but a few programs were recommended. search..

Take a look at NOD32. It can be found at www.eset.com

carbon_unit wrote:Thinkpads are pretty clean compared to other makes.
Dalls have so much junk preloaded that it came down to this: http://www.yorkspace.com/2006/04/38
HP/Compaq is just as bad. They are all the masters of the 30 day trial.

The new Dell Lattitudes (D420, D620, and D820) do NOT have preloaded junk software on them. They are virtually clean right out of the box. I think they finally realized that this was a turn off for the business buyer. Kudos to Dell for finally making this change, perhaps the pressure from Lenovo/IBM helped since they didn't ever do this.

I used nLite to create a SP2+Hotfix Windows installation CD for myself and reformatted my T60p as soon as I received it. I didn't reinstall all of the non-Thinkvantage and non-Microsoft/Windows applications that came with my computer.

If you want a free image viewer, Irfanview does the job. I replaced Norton with Kaspersky and I use the Windows SP2 firewall. I also use the Windows defragment utility. NOD32 and F-Secure are also pretty good antivirus utilities. As far as media players go, I love the CCCP Codec Pack (pun intended as far as the Soviet Union goes) at http://www.cccp-project.net accompanied with the QuickTime and Realplayer Alternatives which can be googled and found easily. To burn CDs/DVDs, I'm a fan of small programs so I use Alcohol 120% (for image burning/creating and virtual drive mounting), Burrrn (for music CDs), and burnatonce (for burning data).

Contrary to most people, I actually find Picassa2 and Google Desktop to be useful (got lots of photos and misc. files on my hdd, imported from previous comps, all the way back to '96). To avoid Picassa from slowing your bootup, just go go msconfig and uncheck the 'Picassa Media Detector' startup item, it still works as usual for browsing photos. Granted, you can browse photo as well using Windows Explorer, but I like Picassa's interface better, and it has some simple editing capabilities which I found very useful.

Google Desktop slows startup quite a bit, but I like to use its calendar/todo/scratchpad stuff that I don't really mind the slowdown (not to mention that I usually restart only once a week or longer). Google Desktop also do email notification if you have gmail, similar to push email notification that you'd get if your email account uses MS Exchange server. Speaking of emails, Google Desktop search is also useful if you have crapload of emails that you want to, well, search. Other uses includes foreign exchange rate monitor, news reader, etc.

As for AV, I really don't find Symantec to be a resource hog... then again I got free license from school, so I can get all the updates no problem. I used to believe that I can avoid all viruses by behaving rationally and not running stuff that I don't trust. Until MSBlast. Which I got while I'm on a dial up connection. While checking email.

For iso reading or CD/DVD burning, either Alcohol 120% or PowerISO do the job pretty well. Preference is on PowerISO simply because it has better context menu integration.

Simply put, I think the T60 has much more than enough power to run all this stuff, sure I can go without, but then what's the difference between the new T60 and my 4-year old Toshiba? Almost unnoticeable drop in performance for general use is a good tradeoff for the functionality that I got from these 'extra' softwares (I mean the first two).

There goes my 2 cents.

I find a wrecking ball gets rid of 'Crapware' once and for all.

[Of course there are other, equally effective methods available. ]

EDIT: The reason for this frivolous post is that I do not enjoy reading the software I find useful labeled 'Crapware' by anyone - especially in a thread title.

From a format, I installed the following:

Win XP SP2
Drivers for everything excepting the fingerprint scanner (haven't decided whether I care about that yet)
TweakUI
Symantec AntiVirus (yes, I like SAV)
Zone Alarm
Spy Bot
AdAware
Firefox
SmartFTP
Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and Outlook only)
Adobe CS2 (Photoshop and Acrobat only)
Canon Digital Photo Professional
Nero
WinZIP
PowerDVD

That's my core package. It's been imaged using Ghost (yes, I prefer Ghost).

Then I installed a few "time killers" like Chessmaster 10 and Virtual Pool 3.