With the holidays so close I can only imagine that many people are getting new computers.  It's so wonderful how the manufactures provide a plethora of software included in the bundle... or is it?  While following the story about the Apple vulnerability I recently posted about I ran across an interesting read from Roger's Security Blog about the included software with new computers.  You can read more about the actual article I am referring to, but here is a quick summary of the post:

Taking this back to the OEM installation above, we (being the industry) just do a big step back to the old days. Why do I have to have a dictionary, train schedule, etc. to be installed by default? Who is taking care of these applications and makes sure that they will be properly managed and updated? Why is a AV-solution forced on my PC (yes, I want one but I want to have choice)?

And to further his point he added another post worth reading about how HP confirms vulnerabilities on 82 Laptop models:

This package provides a critical security update for HP Quick Launch Buttons on
the supported notebook models and operating systems. This patch removes a
security vulnerability by disabling HP Info Center.

So HP's answer to their vulnerability is to disable the HP Info Center...  Nice.  I'd rather just remove all of that crap from the very beginning and be done with it.  What do you think, is it worth keeping the OEM software on that new computer of yours?