If you’re like most people, you’ll have a ton of software installed on your computer that you’ve accumulated over the years. You see programs are rather like socks. You obtain them from various sources over the years, use them and then they lie forgotten in your bottom drawer (or hard disk folders) for ever more or until you upgrade computers. Whichever comes first.

The problem with all this clutter is it slows down the machine and makes it more susceptible to disk problems. Which is why Should I Remove It? is such an interesting piece of software. The freeware program uses a crowdsourced set of user data on software uninstalls to advise you whether to uninstall your own version of the program in question.

It’s extremely easy to use. Once you’ve installed the program, it creates a listing of the programs residing on your hard drive and a rating advising you whether to remove it or not based on what others have done. This is useful information for those who may not be familiar with the concepts of malware or adware and who have all this junk sitting on their machines messing with their computing.

One quick look at a bright red warning should be enough to send them scampering for the uninstall button, and the freeware helpfully supplies a list of instructions as to the best way to accomplish the task on your computer.

We also like the little touches like the information about the computers and countries which have the most installs, as well as the listing of exactly what the program has put onto your machine as part of the installation. There are around 620,000 programs catalogued and rated, which means it covers just about everything out there, and the online knowledgebase is clearly rich and varied.

At the end of the day, the choice is still left up to the user, which is good, since one man’s malware is another man’s valuable toolbar, but it’s good to know that there are tools out there to help people make more informed choices about the products they store on their personal computer.