The profit margins in the mass-market PC business can best be described as suicidal. The big boys have discovered a way to tack on a few extra bucks of pure profit by loading their systems up with all kinds of unnecessary software; for a fee from the makers of such, of course. Most is trial ware that expires if you don't pony up for the full (and often just as crappy) version when the trial is over. Of course the system is busy looking to see if the trial period has expired, every time you boot. If you don't pony up, who knows what the software does to the speed?

The only secret trick that I did to my notebook was immediately remove the junk on the first night I used it. Other than that, the routine maintenance the computer gets is the MS updates and updates to the 1&1 website login program, and Adobe reader updates. Some users may be able to remove the junkware by themselves. Others are not so capable, but if you are dead set against taking the computer to someone knowledgeable enough to remove it, you will get what you pay for in that regard. A while back, some of the big guys used to sell their systems devoid of any added stuff. They charged extra for getting nothing though ($100 of $150 ??). Goes against human nature to pay extra for less, so I am not sure how many systems were or are being sold like this. Most families have somebody who is "real sharp" with computers, or so they say. They take it to this guru to save themselves the fee for getting nothing. Results there are fairly predictable in their level of effectiveness and customer satisfaction -- if you know what I mean.

Of course, there are always users that think it's necessary to load every program known to man, on their new machine with lots of hard drive room. I kid you not, I've worked on systems that have all three full blown copies of the major office suites; Office, Corel, and Lotus. Add two or three versions of Adobe Reader, a couple versions of Quick Time, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Bargain Buddy, My websearch assistant, Weather Bug, ever changing screensavers, and every other "free" popup that's offered and I'm amazed that the thing even boots at all after 20 minutes -- a testament to the built in robustness of Vista?

There is one more easy thing a guy can do, to keep drive-by software from installing. The UAC built into Vista alerts a guy to pending changes, but most think they 'need' what's being offered, so they click on through. Again, this trick goes against human nature and doesn't get used as much as it needs to be but a guy should set up a user that does not have full administrative privileges on the system, and always login as him when you're surfing or using your computer for normal stuff. But . . . the ego kicks in and the user thinks: " I paid good money for this thing and by gosh I'm gonna drive with full admin privileges." Again, results are predictable.

If you get a kick out of installing and removing a bunch of programs, get familiar with the built in restore points. Set one before you install the latest fad and when you're done with the program, un-install it and then restore the system to the previous setpoint, if you love affair with the latest fad was short lived