Ina Fried, of CNET’s New.com, has posted an overview of ‘Crapware’ installations on new PCs. It’s a good survey of the big-box companies’ current and recent abuses, er, I mean practices.
Other news reports have been identifying this stuff as ‘craplets’ or ‘crap applets’. Some craplets are also startupware, if they’re pre-loaded software that runs at startup. Not all. Some craplets are just desktop icons to advertising links. There’s no programming code there, so it’s just a link to delete, and not startupware.