Review: SpeedUpMyPC 3

Does your PC feels like it's running through treacle? Ian Waugh sees if SpeedUpMyPC 3 will give it a new pair of running shoes...

Product	SpeedUpMyPC 3
Company	Uniblue
Web	www.uniblue.com
Price	£19.95
We like	Easy to use, does lots of optimising and cleaning
We don't like	Lack of control over some settings (such as cookies) and more information about certain functions (such as Internet and File Shredder) would be welcome, no built-in registry optimiser
Rating	8/10
Requirements	Windows 2000/XP/Vista (32 bit)

You know the problem – your PC seems sluggish and simply not as fast as it used to be. This inevitably happens after it's been used for a while, after programs have been installed and removed, and files have been saved and deleted. Your PC has collected gunge and dead weed.

The causes can be many and include disk fragmentation and programs that insist on starting when you boot your PC, hogging resources and slowing it down.

You can solve some problems manually – defragging your hard disk, for example, but others are difficult or simply not possible without some help.

Enter SpeedUpMyPC 3 which features a series of checks and remedies to help make your computer the lightning beast it was when you first got it.

Tabbed

The program has one window with four tabs. Overview is the main one. Here you can scan your computer and optimise memory, the CPU, and your internet connection. It also checks privacy and junk files for cleaning.

This works fine as a one-stop clean-up shop but for finer tuning you need the second tab, Optimization. Here there are settings for Memory, CPU, Disk, Internet and Startup.

The CPU setting lets you monitor the memory usage of applications and assign more resources to individual ones to increase performance.

The Disk setting simply monitors disk activity with no defrag or performance enhancement functions. It seems to work on all installed hard disks; you can't select individual ones to monitor.

The Internet option aims to optimise you settings to maximise your usage. It doesn't tell you exactly what it does although there are known tweaks you can do to supposedly increase performance but given the vagaries of internet connections, event broadband, it can be difficult to measure.

Finally ,Startup shows which programs are set to auto start when you boot your PC. You can prevent specific ones from auto starting to improve startup time and increase resources. You can also do this via msconfig and, oddly, msconfig shows entries that SpeedUpMyPC does not.

Under the Clean Up tab you scan for various kinds of junk files and remove them. It can also remove 'privacy' files such as URL histories, auto complete data, recent files lists and so on.

Good cookies

It can remove cookies but there are good cookies you will want to keep (so certain sites remember you when you return) but there's no option to select specific cookies to keep so if you want to do that you'll need another application.

With the File Shredder you select files or folders for permanent deletion although it doesn't say what level of deletion it performs. It may be enough to foil the casual hacker but if you want real security you may need to investigate this further.

The final option on this tab is Uninstall which purports to remove fragments which can sometimes be left behind when removing applications. Sometimes this simply called a program's uninstall option and sometimes it left behind icons and folders so it's difficult to see any improvement over Windows' Add/Remove programs Control Panel.

The final tab is Settings where you can decide how SpeedUpMyPC starts up, and what happens to Clean Up files.

As you're running through these clean-ups and optimisations, you'll be tempted to click on the large Enable PowerSuite button. This offers to increase your PC's stability through RegistryBooster 2, and increase privacy through SpyEraser 2.

Very nice, too, but the button simply opens a page on the developer's site and tries to flog you these additional programs. But as all three programs currently cost £19.95 each, and the PowerSuite currently costs £26.62, that's a nice saving if you want even two of the programs.

Conclusion

There are many optimisation programs out there and SpeedUpMyPC 3 does a fair old job simply and quickly although it could be better in a couple of areas, not least of which is to perform a registry optimisation but you need RegistryBooster 2 for that. However, although seasoned users would want a little more information and a bit more control, it's easy and effective for beginners to use. But you can try it for free - Click here for a free Scan

 

Ian Waugh
Read More of Ian's music reviews and tips at www.making-music.com