TUNEUP UTILITIES 2011

SYSTEM UTILITY

TUNEUP
UTILITIES 2011

Verdict:  A must-have optimization tool for PCs that are used extensively.

One of the all-time favorites, TuneUp Utilities has always been trusted by system administrators and enthusiasts. The utility comes to the rescue when you experience Windows behaving sluggish after day-to-day use. The operating system tends to get slow due to several reasons - erratic and fragmented hard drives or registry, unwanted files and programs occupying space, unnecessary processes in the memory, etc. TuneUp Utilities 2011 has a bunch of features under one roof which help tweak, repair and optimize Windows to quite an extent. The utility is reasonably priced and is very simple to configure and use. It features several segments, which help with the system’s current status and recommendations for tweaking, optimization of the system, disk space retrieval, fixing registry problems, and customizing Windows according to one’s personal preference.

Status and recommendations: This section is beneficial for automation in optimizing the operating system. It features two modes—automatic and one-click maintenance. The automatic mode has options to run when in idle mode every ‘X’ number of days and can run tasks such as registry cleaning, defragmenting, broken shortcut removal, deleting temporary files, and optimization of the startup and shutdown. The one-click option does the same, but immediately.

Optimize system: This helps in disabling and/or uninstalling unwanted programs, disabling programs from startup, and other maintenance tasks. A great feature here is the TuneUp Programs On-Demand Technology, which helps start a particular program or service only when demanded, saving huge amounts of memory space and processor utilization.

Gain disk space: This section is our favorite; it features a complete analysis of the hard drive and lists down the amount of unwanted files that occupy hard drive space. These include all unnecessary files, windows functions (hibernation files, search indexes, messenger cache), and old backups (system restore points). Additionally, one can also find and securely delete large files that you might not know even existed.

Fix problems: This section helps troubleshoot areas in the operating system where problems usually crop up. For example, it can help you fix issues that usually come up after prolonged usage of Windows, such as menu bar errors, or ‘run’ command not showing up, taskbar not being displayed, icon errors, link failures, font problems, system updates, etc. You can also restore recently deleted files, check and fix for hard drive errors, list detailed information of the hardware and software, and display running processes.

Customize Windows: Here, you can change or modify the look and settings of the Windows operating system. This includes transforming the logon screen or visual styles, or the overall appearance of Windows. You can also download and apply new themes for Windows for free. Plenty of customization options are available here, which deal with minute settings of programs such as browsers, mail clients, or the network, administration of logon screens, drives and memory or even standard tweaks and settings related to input modes, startup and the taskbar.

Turbo Mode: This section is the best of all; it is a one-click solution, which can be either temporarily applied until shutdown or permanently applied until it is relaxed. This mode boosts the system performance by at least 25 percent, if not more, by running tasks such as postponing scheduled processes like defragmentation, maintenance and automatic updates. Further, it can also turn off auto-sync modes with cameras and mobile phones, disable Aero themes and switch the Windows power plan to Performance Mode. Additionally, it can turn off media sharing, Windows search and indexing, error reporting, rarely used services, and a lot more. These rules can be applied by default or can be set according to your preferences.

We installed the application on a standard desktop computer (as a test rig), which was being optimized using various other utilities one after the other. We did find that TuneUp Utilities could still scan and detect errors and optimization tweaks on the test PC and help us further optimize the PC. We did all the required tweaks and optimizations suggested by default by TuneUp and found our PC working better than we expected. Using the Turbo Mode, we did find a substantial boost in performance, where we could see unwanted services being shutdown and the CPU being freed-up for additional jobs. Overall, the experience with TuneUp Utilities 2011 was great. This single utility can help optimize your system extensively, in turn helping you save on time and PC maintenance costs. 

- Francis D’sa