coasterwarenoun.
Software so bad or useless that it never gets installed.
Example Citation:
"Its marketing plan has changed several times, and one analyst who is a SoftKey fan calls its products "coasterware,'' because if you don't like the actual software you can use the CD-ROMs as drink coasters since they're so cheap."
—Herb Greenberg, "Does SoftKey International Have Some Hard Core Problems?," The San Francisco Chronicle, October 25, 1995
Earliest Citation:
"Of course, the emergence of Windows as a widely accepted and widely used operating environment on the PC is certainly not obvious right now. Although sales of Windows have been good, most of it is undoubtedly shelfware."
—Charles Petzold and Winn L. Rosch, "Four-figure video," PC Magazine, May 26, 1987
Notes:
The more common synonym for coasterware is shelfware, which has been around since the mid-1980s.
