One of the most annoying things about Windows laptops these days is the sheer amount of bloatware, not to mention straight-up ads, littered throughout the OS. Microsoft has been steadily increasing the number of ads appearing in places like the Start Menu and even Settings (gotta pay off that OpenAI acquisition investment somehow), and every time I review another laptop, it seems like there are more and more pre-installed apps that I didn’t ask for or want.

And there’s often nothing I can do to uninstall them without going deep into places within the OS that I don’t know enough about so as not to be worried I might break something. Can you tell I’m annoyed?

Anyway, despite all this, I have found that, occasionally, some pre-installed apps can actually be useful. They may not change my outlook on bloatware, but at least I can use them for something.

5 OneDrive

Not quite one to rule them all

This one may be a little obvious, but OneDrive is not a completely useless piece of software. I still don’t prefer it over Google Drive or Dropbox — or hardly any other cloud storage service — but it has improved and even has some helpful features.

For example, I prefer using Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (desktop apps, of course) over Google’s offerings, and the auto-saving to OneDrive is pretty helpful. Granted, I would still much prefer the autosave to work across platforms, but I’ve lost enough documents mid-project to default to using OneDrive mainly for this reason.

4 Outlook

The new default

Until AI becomes useful, email will still be our default digital communication tool. And while there are plenty of great email apps out there, Outlook is preinstalled on every Windows 11 machine — or at least will be starting in 2025 — and brings a decent amount of features from its paid-for version to the free one.

Outlook will actually, quite controversially, be replacing the Mail app Microsoft was shipping for the past several years. There are a lot of reasons to be upset about this, not least of which is because it will be ad-supported, but if you need a decent, free email app that you don’t have to download and install, Outlook is there.

3 Microsoft Teams

It’s Slack but from Microsoft

Love it or hate it, Microsoft Teams has quickly become ubiquitous across the business world. For all its quirks, it does have some redeeming qualities. For those highly embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem, it offers even more benefits, like seamless integration with your Outlook Calendar. The video calling features are arguably better than most other tools. It has quickly become another go-to communication tool in the business world, so having it up and running out of the box can be helpful.

2 OEM support tools

Mother knows best

Stay with me here. I will be the first to say that most laptop management software bundled by manufacturers is complete garbage. That being said, there are a couple of things about some of them that can be genuinely useful. First, it often provides a more direct line of communication to the customer support team if you need help with something. For most average consumers, this can be a helpful place to go if they need assistance.

Second, as is the case in the Acer Swift 14 AI I recently reviewed, Acer included some AI features for the webcam. To be fair, one of them was not helpful at all, but the other one did actually work and, indeed, made the image sharper on my video calls. Granted, this may not be something many people need, but it works and can be helpful.

On another occasion, I found these OEM tools helpful on my HP ZBook Studio G11. I had some issues with the internal webcam and kept trying to update the drivers via Windows Update. The Microsoft tool kept telling me it couldn’t find any new ones, but when I checked HP’s tool, it found nearly a dozen. After installing them, the webcam started working again as normal.

1 GPU control tools

Tailored performance

These GPU management tools can be quite useful for those of us blessed to have a dedicated GPU in our laptops. Whether you want to tweak the settings to get every last frame while gaming or if you need to manage performance for some heavy editing work, you often have pretty granular controls over the GPU. I personally prefer AMD’s offering over NVIDIA’s, but they both offer tools that can be helpful.

If we gotta have it, make it useful

It’s unlikely I’ll ever want or recommend anything other than the cleanest possible version of any OS, and sadly, there’s not much we’ll ever be able to do to avoid all the bloatware companies choose to install on our PCs. But we can at least try to find a silver lining and make some use of what we’re given. I seem to recall an old saying about making lemonade out of lemons.