A couple of weeks ago, I got a plea for help from one relative: their laptop, quite powerful and by no means obsolete, had become very laggy. Upon a close examination, I found that % of its computing resources were wasted on five different 'home page helpers' and 'search panels'. They were accompanied by malicious adware which demonstrated huge and irritating banners on each web page opened. All of these little

a feature of the gamedev community. It is costly to develop a modern game, even a simple one, and they need to raise money somehow. If they do not charge users directly, they are earning their buck somewhere else. It could be through, for instance, a partnership with advertising networks and search engines.

How can you avoid installing adware add-ons?

• Always download apps from the developer's official web page, and not

enhancements were gone in two hours, and my venture was a success. Where did all these undeletable malvertising banners come from? It took me mere seconds to figure it out: One quick look at the desktop was enough to get the answer. The desktop contained a couple dozen games, which are mostly given away for free by developers. Altruism is not

from software aggregators.

■ Pay attention to each Installation Wizard window when installing software and un-check all boxes which suggest you installed additional programs.

. Hit ‘Advanced Installation' or 'Installation Options' buttons, which usually contain useful options like disabling add-on installation.