Sometimes when I work on a computer that is running very very slowly, I see lots of toolbars installed in the web browser. Each individual toolbar might be nice, but you can definitely have too much of a good thing. Multiple toolbars can slow down your web browsing, cause your computer to become unstable, and even make it hard to see all of a web page on the screen at one time. How do folks end up with so many toolbars?

Well, lets of folks don’t always read the fine print when they install new software or allow a software update to take place. Lots of times, this is a source of unwanted add-ons such as toolbars.

As a test, I started with a freshly formatted Windows XP system. It was perfectly tuned, booted in seconds, and Internet Explorer rapidly snapped open to show the Google home page when you clicked on the trusty Internet Explorer icon, taking less than one second to launch. Overall, the system was very responsive, and made full use of the fast processor and fast internet connection that was available.

Then, I installed a standard complement of necessary software components such as Java, Adobe Reader, Flash Player, etc. Normally I read the fine print on these install screens and clear any box with optional software such as a toolbar. This time, I left the default boxes checked each and every time I installed these software components. In this shot you can see a Java update selecting the Bing toolbar by default.

After I had installed these components, I noticed the system was sluggish. Boot time was horrible, and it took more than three minutes to launch Internet Explorer. This same system was blndingly fast only a few minutes ago! To top it all off, once the browser was loaded, the screen was so full of toolbars that very little room was left for the web page itself. Look at this screenshot! It’s a joke.

The moral of the story - when you install software or an update, pay attention to the opt-in or opt-out software that is tagging along. If later on you decide you really need that toolbar, you can always download it separately.