Microsoft Will Charge To Remove OEM 'crapware'

For around two and a half years, Microsoft has been offering what it calls Signature editions of certain PCs. According to Microsoft, these PCs give you faster and easier access to “the applications you want right away without getting sidetracked talking to trialware or other sample software”. In other words, when you boot up your new PC, instead of having to deal with a blizzard of pop-ups and dialog boxes related to trialware and demo software — collectively known as crapware — the system boots to a clean Windows desktop.

Microsoft even offers up numbers to show how detrimental this OEM-installed crapware is to your system. Microsoft claims that Signature systems start up 39 percent faster, go into sleep mode 23 percent faster, and resume from sleep a whopping 51 percent faster compared to their crapware-ladened counterparts. So far, Signature has been limited to new PCs. But now, Microsoft will offer customers the opportunity to give their Windows 7 PC the Signature treatment by bringing it to a Microsoft Store and paying $99, according to the Wall Street Journal.