A new product from Uniblue that claims to
fix your PC performance issues
Windows is clearly much more robust than it
used to be. The dreaded Blue Screen of Death is not such a common visitor, or
at least it's not on my systems. Yet no matter how careful you are with the
programs and files that make up the data we work with on a day to day basis;
our machines still get screwed up. I'm sure you all recognise the symptoms; the
machine takes much longer to start up and close down. The hard drive spends
most of the day beating its brains out, when you're actually not doing anything.
It also takes longer and longer to open files, launch programs and generally
seems sluggish to use.
The
program found over 1800 issues on my machine.
My own remedy for these symptoms in the
past has been a reinstall of Windows, after formatting the drive. Followed by
the laborious task of reinstalling the rest of the programs and personal data I
need to work with. While I'm aware that there are many companies advertising
products claiming to fix these issues, I've yet to find one that can match the
performance increase you get with a Windows refit. However, this latest product
from Uniblue called SpeedUpMyPC claims to do just that, so I hoped to be
impressed!
SpeedUpMyPC is tiny at a little over 5.5MB,
it installs and launches in a few seconds. Then (whether you choose to buy it
or not), it will scan your system for unused processes, invalid registry
entries and provide the results in a series of reports. It will also offer
various system tweaks and its own set of speed tools. These are all designed to
optimise and improve the performance of your system. As you might expect, the
options are all listed in such a way that you can elect to accept or reject
each one in turn by clicking in a box to the left.
In order to act on this information, you'll
need to purchase and register the product. Then having verified the changes the
program intends to make, you simply click on apply. The whole process takes
about ten minutes, but could vary depending on the speed of your system and the
state it's in.
The
system speed tools do make a difference.
After completing the scan and resolving the
issues, I rebooted -only necessary if you defrag the registry - to see if there
was any difference in closedown or startup speeds. Closedown was certainly
quicker; the machine normally sits there waiting for some obscure programs to close
before it shuts down. Yet the startup was not much different, however there was
a difference in the length of time it took before I could use applications. So
yes, overall an improvement.
In mitigation, a reviewer's machine is not
typical; the amount of programs we install and uninstall is bound to leave the
system in turmoil, so any improvement is an achievement.
Finally the company offers a 60-day money
back guarantee that the product will improve the performance of your system, if
for any reason you don't agree they will refund your money.
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Details
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Price
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$31.92
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Manufacturer
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Uniblue
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Website
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www.uniblue.com/ software/speedupmypc
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Required spec
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Pentium class processor, 20MB HD space,
SVGA 16-bit video card, 2GB RAM, Windows XP or later |
