The results proved shocking but, when it comes down to it, that software is pretty easy to deal with – it’s just a matter of uninstalling everything and, if you’re really particular, running an app like CCleaner to get your Registry back to its fighting weight.

Not so with smartphones. On Friday, I eased the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro from its box, turned it on, and was greeted with a message urging me to set up McAfee WaveSecure before I’d even set up the phone with my Google account.

Delving into the app drawer revealed more unwanted software, with a host of apps neatly summarising Android’s perennial fragmentation issues: alongside the official Market, the Xperia Mini Pro comes loaded with four different app stores. There’s also other McAfee apps installed as well as a Popcap Games trial and a selection of media management tools.

It’s not restricted to Sony Ericsson handsets, either. HTC’s often held up as the paragon of Android quality — alongside Samsung — but my own Desire HD is riddled with stuff that I simply don’t want: 3Mobile-TV, 3Musik and Planet3 were all installed alongside third-party apps such as Amazon MP3, Bebo, Bejeweled Deluxe and a demo of EA’s Sims 3.

Who’s responsible? Networks, largely, which receive clean handsets and then load them up with rubbish after signing deals with numerous partners. And it’s not like you can just get rid of this software, either — most of it’s there to stay, with hard-coded blocks in place to ensure you don’t uninstall any of the tat you don’t want.

There are ways around it, with rooting a possibility if you’d like an untarnished Android experience. Personally, I use a superb app called LauncherPro to kill two birds with one stone: it replaces HTC Sense with its own customisable home screen, and it also allows you to hide apps in your app drawer — the next-best option if I can’t uninstall.

Vodafone’s actions prove that smartphone bloatware can go very wrong, but other companies don’t seem to be learning lessons. Instead, this greed continues, and comes at the expense of Android’s reputation and, more importantly, the tarnished experience that users will have with their new phones — after all, this sort of thing doesn’t happen on iOS.

A few months back Sony was forced to scrap its outrageous plans to charge punters extra to get their brand new laptop clean of “crapware” – the useless bundles of trial software that seem to clog up more and more systems that enter the Labs thse days.

Many of you left comments agreeing that enough is enough, and reader rjp2000 made the point that the printer and camera markets are just as bad as laptop manufacturers. From experience I knew that (s)he was spot on, but this month that point has been rammed home far more irritatingly than I ever imagined.

You see, I’m currently holed up in the dark and lonely PC Pro Labs with a haul of printers and all-in-ones fast approaching 20. That’s a lot of printers. That’s a lot of printing, scanning and copying. But, most painfully, that’s one heck of a lot of installing.

From downloading one manufacturer’s driver and application setup file of a ludicrous 198MB, to another installing a list of accompanying applications that went well into double figures, pretty much every installation of a printer has taken 20 minutes or more. Programs to ease printing; to simplify scanning; to put pretty little cartoon frames around your photos before you print them and inevitably bin them in disappointment.

Does anyone actually use these things?

Of all the printers I’ve owned, I’ve never made use of any of the bundled applications. OCR software I can admittedly see the point of, but apart from that there’s nothing useful this crapware does that I can’t do in the simple driver settings. Even in a graphics utility as basic as Microsoft Paint, clicking Print | Preferences brings up the very same options as you’ll find in something as advanced as Photoshop, so no expensive software is required to access your printer’s full potential.

Thankfully, most printer installations at least give you the option of selecting which individual utilities to install. But with most also burying the whole lot in an “Easy Install” button, manufacturers know that their bloated, irritating and largely useless bundled extras will nonetheless make their way on to a huge number of PCs.