Computer manufacturers ship their devices with 18 pre-installed applications on average, according to the Dutch consumer organisation 'Consumentenbond'. The pre-installed applications are also known as bloatware and are usually limited versions of paid software.
Consumentenbond investigated 283 notebooks sold between 2013 and 2015 and found that the majority of computers ship with bloatware. Packard Bell topped the list with 25 applications on average, while Microsoft's Surface devices came with nearly no pre-installed software.
The majority of the software tried to convince the user to pay, either to continue to use the software or for an upgrade. Also free games that were ad-supported were found to be installed by default on computers, as well as free software of which the Consumentenbond could hardly understand the use.
The Dutch consumer organisation also reports that 73% of 1,643 survey respondents found that computer manufacturers shouldn't be paid to install additional software on new computers.
Computer manufacturer Lenovo has been in the news a lot because the Chinese company shipped laptops with adware that contained a security vulnerability.
