WEBVTT 00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:07.040 Do you know where your RAM is right now? You might think it's just working late 00:00:04.640 --> 00:00:10.719 at the office, but the truth is it's cheating on you with bloatware you 00:00:08.960 --> 00:00:16.080 didn't even install. And in a world where RAM is so precious, I and Threat 00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:22.080 Locker, who sponsored this video, think you deserve to know how much your 00:00:18.960 --> 00:00:25.439 systems pre-installed craps, excuse me, 00:00:22.080 --> 00:00:27.920 apps are impacting your performance. To 00:00:25.439 --> 00:00:33.040 find out, we bought a brand new Dell Tower Plus desktop and tested it three 00:00:30.640 --> 00:00:38.160 different ways. Once with the outofthe-box bloat, once with a cleaned 00:00:35.840 --> 00:00:43.600 up install, and to make things interesting, we said yes to every single 00:00:40.960 --> 00:00:48.719 offer for value added software that we could find in an [music] hour. McAfee, 00:00:45.920 --> 00:00:53.520 don't mind if I do. Razer Synapse sounds smart to me. Well, maybe not that smart 00:00:51.520 --> 00:00:57.520 with just 16 gigs of system memory, but we'll get to that later. First, let's 00:00:55.280 --> 00:01:02.320 establish a baseline by comparing our factory bloated Dell against itself 00:01:00.399 --> 00:01:06.479 after cleaning up our unwanted apps. Note that neither of these is completely 00:01:04.239 --> 00:01:09.920 clean since Adobe Creative Cloud and Steam are part of our benchmark suite. 00:01:08.400 --> 00:01:13.920 Also, it's important to note that this is more of an ad hoc test and if you 00:01:11.920 --> 00:01:17.280 want us to dive deeper, let us know and maybe Labs will do a write up in the 00:01:15.439 --> 00:01:22.400 future. Diving into our results, employees of Dell, you can breathe a 00:01:19.360 --> 00:01:24.080 sigh of relief. We do see a slight 00:01:22.400 --> 00:01:28.000 consistent drop in performance across most of our synthetic and productivity 00:01:25.759 --> 00:01:32.000 benchmarks, but it's nothing that I would worry about. And as for gaming, in 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:35.600 Cyberpunk, we saw no measurable difference in performance in any of our 00:01:33.840 --> 00:01:40.320 test conditions. But that doesn't mean that there was no impact. For power 00:01:37.520 --> 00:01:46.079 consumption, we saw a 7% jump at idle, meaning the system is drawing an extra 2 00:01:42.159 --> 00:01:48.159 1/2 watts all the time that it's on. And 00:01:46.079 --> 00:01:52.640 there are aspects of the experience that aren't captured by our benchmarks that 00:01:50.079 --> 00:01:56.960 are a little worse. For example, our bloat configuration takes about an 00:01:54.799 --> 00:02:00.640 additional 30 seconds to fully boot. And then there's just the little nuisances 00:01:58.479 --> 00:02:04.799 like moving past an extra icon in the system tray and waiting for McAfee to 00:02:02.880 --> 00:02:09.440 approve everything that I do. Which raises a really big question for me. Why 00:02:07.759 --> 00:02:14.000 would anyone go out of their way to create a worse customer experience for 00:02:11.440 --> 00:02:17.520 their product, even if it is just two and a half watts? and a bit of extra 00:02:15.920 --> 00:02:21.520 mouse movement. It's like if I personally went into the package of 00:02:19.120 --> 00:02:26.480 every super soft hoodie and made it just a little less soft, which I would never 00:02:23.760 --> 00:02:32.400 do. So, get yours at ltctore.com. As always, the answer is money, but it's 00:02:29.599 --> 00:02:38.080 also a bit more nuanced than that. See, bloatware didn't start as a bad thing. I 00:02:35.920 --> 00:02:42.000 know, right? Back in the early 90s, when internet speeds were measured in 00:02:39.440 --> 00:02:46.959 megabits per hour, having software that was preloaded on a new PC was actually 00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:50.400 kind of convenient. OEMs even used included software as a way of 00:02:48.560 --> 00:02:55.519 differentiating themselves from their competition. But, as tends to happen 00:02:53.120 --> 00:02:59.519 over time, fully functional programs were replaced by trial wear that was 00:02:57.840 --> 00:03:03.440 begging you to buy it. And then by the 2000s, you weren't so much buying a 00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:08.720 computer as you were buying an ad delivery system. But why though? It's 00:03:06.480 --> 00:03:14.239 the classic race to zero mentality that keeps PC margins slim for any computer 00:03:11.360 --> 00:03:18.959 company that isn't named Apple. So, in order to boost their margins, PC makers 00:03:16.640 --> 00:03:24.480 took what used to provide extra value for their customers and weaponized it to 00:03:21.519 --> 00:03:29.440 shore up their profits. By how much? It's hard for us to say exactly, but we 00:03:26.480 --> 00:03:33.599 do have one data point. Back in 2008, InfoWorld reported that Sony had 00:03:31.360 --> 00:03:37.519 introduced a fresh start option that would ditch any of the pre-installed 00:03:35.440 --> 00:03:42.560 junk. The cost of the consumer, 50 bucks, and that was on top of a 00:03:39.840 --> 00:03:45.440 mandatory $100 upgrade to Windows Vista Business. Now, I don't know if they 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:50.480 would get the same rates today, but what's clear is that these bloatware 00:03:47.760 --> 00:03:54.640 add-ons clearly pay more than just pocket change. And that kind of makes 00:03:53.040 --> 00:03:58.640 sense when you consider how much bloatware is designed to sell you 00:03:56.560 --> 00:04:02.560 additional bloat or even sell you a recurring subscription. Now, let's move 00:04:00.239 --> 00:04:06.720 on from our factory bloat and prepare our system for use by installing some 00:04:04.720 --> 00:04:11.519 common useful apps, but not the savvy way with Windet, the bloy. Now, to be 00:04:09.439 --> 00:04:18.320 clear, not every installer is packed with crap. Firefox went pretty well. But 00:04:14.720 --> 00:04:21.199 then almost immediately, Dell's one sin. 00:04:18.320 --> 00:04:27.840 McAfee did the thing, practically begging me to protect my digital life 00:04:24.479 --> 00:04:30.240 with web advisor. Sounds horrible. And 00:04:27.840 --> 00:04:35.840 Threat Locker agrees. Thanks, Threat Locker. Blocking that would be nice. But 00:04:33.280 --> 00:04:42.320 unfortunately, I have to say yes today. Um, uh, okay. I don't really see 00:04:39.520 --> 00:04:45.520 anything happening, but I guess McAfee has my digital back now. All right, I'm 00:04:44.320 --> 00:04:50.080 not going to bore you guys with the details of 24 more app installs. So, 00:04:48.320 --> 00:04:56.840 with the magic of editing, we're just going to speed [music] through them here, but I'll stop along the way if 00:04:53.199 --> 00:04:56.840 anything interesting happens. 00:04:58.028 --> 00:05:00.048 [music] 00:05:05.233 --> 00:05:07.253 [music] 00:05:10.473 --> 00:05:12.493 [music] 00:05:17.023 --> 00:05:19.043 >> [music] 00:05:27.280 --> 00:05:31.488 >> Heat. Heat. [music] 00:05:41.520 --> 00:05:47.600 Oh, here's one. Fan control requires Microsoft's.net framework to be 00:05:45.919 --> 00:05:52.600 installed or updated, but it's not really bloatware in the traditional 00:05:49.600 --> 00:05:52.600 sense. 00:06:05.360 --> 00:06:11.759 Oh yikes. While installing CC Cleaner, I got my first popup asking me to install 00:06:10.240 --> 00:06:15.759 what I would consider to be true bloware. To be clear, a vast antivirus 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:20.560 isn't known to be the worst option. But on top of Windows Defender, I already 00:06:17.759 --> 00:06:24.560 have McAfee from Dell. And you might have heard this lines tech tip before, 00:06:22.160 --> 00:06:28.800 but it is not considered best practice to have multiple real-time malware 00:06:27.120 --> 00:06:34.720 monitoring suites running at the same time. What do I do with the prompt then? 00:06:31.199 --> 00:06:36.720 Well, the rules are clear. 00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:39.609 >> Oh my god. Hell. [music] 00:06:44.139 --> 00:06:46.159 [music] 00:07:00.080 --> 00:07:05.680 Now, at this point, I was thinking I could keep going with more software, but 00:07:03.680 --> 00:07:10.160 we got to draw the line somewhere. And these 25 apps took about an hour to 00:07:08.080 --> 00:07:15.360 install, turning our downloads and programs folders into haunted mazes of 00:07:12.560 --> 00:07:19.199 despair. As for our system tray, we're going to need a second monitor just to 00:07:17.120 --> 00:07:23.919 see all the icons. Now, let's see how much this all impacts our system 00:07:20.880 --> 00:07:26.240 performance. Ha, nice. We finally see 00:07:23.919 --> 00:07:31.759 our first noticeable drop. We're looking at anywhere from two to eight% worse 00:07:29.120 --> 00:07:35.840 than our clean system, which still might not sound like that much, but these 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:39.840 minor slowdowns can add up over the course of a project. And if you like to 00:07:38.080 --> 00:07:44.319 turn your computer off at the end of the day to avoid idle power draw, you just 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:49.199 added over half a minute to your boot time again. Oh, and on the subject of 00:07:46.800 --> 00:07:55.120 idle power draw, we crept up by another one watt on average. Still not that much 00:07:52.080 --> 00:07:56.639 over base, but again, this stuff can add 00:07:55.120 --> 00:08:01.440 up. Fortunately for the gamers out there, we still don't see any impact on 00:07:58.720 --> 00:08:05.919 our gaming performance. Unfortunately for the gamers though, we've yet to even 00:08:03.599 --> 00:08:11.120 touch the worst category of system bloatware. The applications that come 00:08:08.400 --> 00:08:17.039 with RGB lighting and with gaming peripherals. This is where our say yes 00:08:14.479 --> 00:08:22.560 to anything test is going to get kind of nasty. Immediately after plugging in 00:08:20.080 --> 00:08:28.879 their keyboard, MSI prompts us for their driver utility installer. Okay, we say 00:08:25.599 --> 00:08:31.840 yes. Then we get installers for Dropbox 00:08:28.879 --> 00:08:38.240 Redeem Launcher, MSI Center, Voice Mod, and Norton 360. Well, I guess I'll 00:08:35.519 --> 00:08:42.080 install them all except Norton because I actually see an icon on my desktop for 00:08:40.479 --> 00:08:47.120 that already. I don't know when that sneaked in, but that's a perfect example 00:08:45.200 --> 00:08:50.640 of the kind of thing that Threat Locker would have prevented. More on them 00:08:48.560 --> 00:08:54.720 later. For now, it's time to deck out my system with a mishmash of peripherally 00:08:52.800 --> 00:09:00.160 transmitted infections. The included software for many of these products are 00:08:57.040 --> 00:09:02.399 notorious for being resource hogs, and 00:09:00.160 --> 00:09:06.276 that completely ignores any extras that might come along for the ride. Looking 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:08.296 at you, Norton. [music] 00:09:13.481 --> 00:09:15.501 >> [music] 00:09:21.040 --> 00:09:26.800 >> Oh, good lordy. A popup for Norton 360 00:09:24.720 --> 00:09:32.480 for gamers just showed up in my notifications while I was installing 00:09:29.040 --> 00:09:34.959 Aura Creator. I have to say yes. So now 00:09:32.480 --> 00:09:41.760 I have McAfee, Avast, Malware Bytes, Norton 360, and Norton 360 for gamers, 00:09:39.279 --> 00:09:46.959 which all sit on top of Microsoft's own defender. I can't imagine anything going 00:09:44.880 --> 00:09:50.800 wrong with that holy sex tet. Then at virtually the same time, Armory Crate 00:09:49.040 --> 00:09:56.399 popped up offering me some additional features like playground assistant and 00:09:53.436 --> 00:10:00.080 [music] content service. Well, who could resist playground and those other 00:09:58.240 --> 00:10:03.519 things? Man, this was bound to happen sooner or later. And I'm totally not 00:10:01.839 --> 00:10:07.600 surprised it was Armory Crate, but this is the first time that we got prompted 00:10:05.279 --> 00:10:12.720 for a system restart. And then almost immediately, Corsair's IQ also required 00:10:10.959 --> 00:10:17.120 a reboot. After another hour, we managed to get 00:10:15.120 --> 00:10:21.760 eight peripherals, not to mention their parasites, finally installed. And this 00:10:19.839 --> 00:10:26.640 is where things start to get a little sluggish. Let's have a look at the lab's 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:30.720 test report. And oh lordy, it's proper boys. Adding all this extra 00:10:28.640 --> 00:10:37.440 bloat has caused our performance to drop by nearly 16% in some of our benchmarks. 00:10:34.880 --> 00:10:43.680 That's like equivalent to a CPU downgrade. At best, we see a 6 and 12% 00:10:41.680 --> 00:10:48.800 decrease in performance in some of our productivity and synthetic workloads. 00:10:45.600 --> 00:10:50.959 This is gnarly. And the performance hit 00:10:48.800 --> 00:10:57.279 is finally rearing its ugly head in gaming. Even again, very ironic. Okay, 00:10:54.800 --> 00:11:04.399 it's not nearly as much as in the more CPU dependent workloads, but at 1440p, 00:11:00.480 --> 00:11:06.640 we're losing nearly 10% in our 1% lows. 00:11:04.399 --> 00:11:12.160 As for Cyberpunk with ray tracing, the bloatware caused horrific frame pacing 00:11:08.880 --> 00:11:14.000 issues that cut our 1% lows in half. So, 00:11:12.160 --> 00:11:17.120 if you install every utility that comes with your gaming hardware and you don't 00:11:15.600 --> 00:11:22.640 happen to buy them all within the same ecosystem, you could be paying a serious 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:24.640 price. Literally at this point, we found 00:11:22.640 --> 00:11:32.240 that our system had gone from idling at 38 watts to 61 watts. That is a 60% 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:36.720 increase in idle power consumption. All for your computer to do nothing. And if 00:11:35.040 --> 00:11:42.720 you want to save power by turning your computer off, lucky you. You just get to 00:11:39.920 --> 00:11:45.839 wait nearly 4 minutes to turn your PC on. Just imagine how much worse this 00:11:44.399 --> 00:11:50.399 would have been with a laptop. Those have even more factory bloat than 00:11:47.760 --> 00:11:54.800 desktops from our experience. Now, for our last test, we uninstalled all the 00:11:52.399 --> 00:11:58.640 bloatware and fired up Threat Locker, who sponsored this video. I mean, this 00:11:56.800 --> 00:12:02.320 was pretty important because if the cure is worse than the disease, we wouldn't 00:12:00.399 --> 00:12:06.399 really want to promote it, right? So, it's kind of a risky play, but Threat 00:12:04.399 --> 00:12:10.320 Locker was confident that not only would their software prevent unwanted 00:12:08.240 --> 00:12:14.480 installs, but it would have a minimal impact on system performance. And 00:12:12.480 --> 00:12:18.160 looking at these bootup times, we've got good news for Threat Locker. There is no 00:12:16.639 --> 00:12:22.480 appreciable difference when it's added to a system. Okay. Hey, hi. It's me, 00:12:20.079 --> 00:12:26.560 Adam. Idle power draw. Threat Locker does have an appreciable increase over 00:12:24.240 --> 00:12:31.680 the non-bloated condition, but it's still much less than if you had a bunch 00:12:28.480 --> 00:12:33.279 of gaming blowware on there. So, as for 00:12:31.680 --> 00:12:37.519 our productivity tests, [music] Threat Locker has negligible effects while 00:12:35.360 --> 00:12:40.880 providing all of its benefits. And if any apps did try to do something that 00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:44.959 they weren't supposed to, Threat Locker's ring fencing would spring into 00:12:42.800 --> 00:12:48.399 action and put a quick halt to it. Meanwhile, for gaming, there's no big 00:12:46.639 --> 00:12:53.120 performance hits running Threat Locker, but it is worth noting they are there. 00:12:51.120 --> 00:12:57.680 Now, while CIS admins would normally block game installations, hey, one man's 00:12:55.920 --> 00:13:00.399 bloat could be another man's most important piece of software. That's 00:12:59.120 --> 00:13:05.839 where Threat Locker's learning mode comes in. [music] It scans your computer to find the software that your 00:13:03.440 --> 00:13:09.680 organization uses and automatically allow lists those pieces of software to 00:13:08.240 --> 00:13:13.600 minimize the impact on your team's productivity. And if they do need to 00:13:11.839 --> 00:13:17.519 install something new, Threat Locker's elevation control allows a user 00:13:15.680 --> 00:13:21.920 temporary time-based elevation privileges without just giving the user 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:25.680 the keys to the kingdom. Anyway, this whole exercise goes to show that you've 00:13:23.680 --> 00:13:29.519 got to pay attention before mindlessly installing software and keep an eye on 00:13:27.600 --> 00:13:32.480 your system tray for programs that just plain don't need to be running in 00:13:30.900 --> 00:13:37.680 [music] the background. Also, if you like RGB stuff, maybe consider a 00:13:34.959 --> 00:13:41.200 unifying control program like OpenRGB so you can at least minimize the overhead. 00:13:39.680 --> 00:13:45.040 Finally, another thing to consider would be threat locker for your organization's 00:13:43.120 --> 00:13:49.120 needs. Most of the users watching this channel are going to know how to 00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:53.279 unselect bloatware. But if you're an administrator, you know that you have 00:13:51.200 --> 00:13:57.760 people who behave exactly like we did today and just say yes to everything. 00:13:55.600 --> 00:14:01.920 And threat locker is a great way to keep their systems clean, performant, and 00:13:59.839 --> 00:14:05.839 secure. If you guys enjoyed this video, check out the one we did on how to set 00:14:03.440 --> 00:14:10.240 up Windows properly. will help you avoid a lot of the bloatware [music] prompts 00:14:07.600 --> 00:14:10.240 in the first