Named & Shamed
Junk Offender: Printer junk
During a recent purge of my PC, I stumbled upon a whole load of installed tools that came with my printer – a two-year-old Canon TS8050 – and realised that I had never once used any of them. Windows 10’s ‘Apps & features’ didn’t list the amount of hard-drive space these tools took up. So, I did a little detective work and discovered that, in total, Canon’s bundled programs occupied at least 800MB of space (see screenshot).
Many of us routinely install software that comes with new hardware, often because it’s not clear these programs are optional. But the truth is that most of it is unnecessary and there are usually better free alternatives.
My TS8050, for example, came with no less than seven tools, none of which were actually needed for the day-to-day operation of the printer. If I want to edit images or organise photos, I’ll use GIMP or Google Photos, thank you very much, not Canon’s My Image Garden (a ridiculous name anyway). It also turned out that one of the bundled tools had even set itself up as a startup item, not only hogging space, but slowing down my PC’S boot time as well.
Printers aren’t the only offenders. Lots of hardware products, including digital cameras, webcams, external hard drives and more, come with generous amounts of software that’s sometimes useful, but often entirely inessential.
The crucial thing to install is the driver – the software that actually makes the hardware work. Everything else can usually be ignored without any impact on the operation of your device.
Whenever you connect a new device to your PC, keep an eye out when you install the accompanying software. You should see an option to deselect any tools you don’t want, or a way to install the driver only. And if you’ve already installed it, you can just do what I did: ditch the lot.