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Computer cleaner face-off
By Holly Cunningham
(8/13/03)
To increase speed, engineers often build caches and swap files into operating systems and software applications. While these techniques let your computer find information more quickly, it also means more information gets copied all over your hard drive. Your computer becomes an open book for the curious or ill-mannered, not to mention the clutter factor all this evidence leaves behind. Someones got to watch your back so your private computing habits stay, well, private, and we have just the bulldogs to do the job, Window Washer 4.8 and Tracks Eraser Pro 4.0. These two luchadores join battle so we can see which is the champ at keeping your computer squeaky-clean.
Interface
Window Washer comes into the ring looking more like the guys who try to wash your windshield in traffic than the professionals in coveralls as its name and squeegee icon imply. Sporting a button-based interface that lays out all your destruction options up front, every inch looks stomp-ready and easy to deploy. More demure by far and equally easy to navigate, heavyweight Tracks Eraser Pro opens with the usual trial splash screen and then opts for a simpler Explorer-type interface, showing the task list and status alongside its self-explanatory control buttons in a split-screen format. But appearances aside, under its powder-blue apron, Tracks Eraser Pro is quietly cracking its knuckles and hoping for a brawl.
Functionality
Both Window Washer and Tracks Eraser Pro deliver speedy deathblows to accumulated junk files and bits of tracking data that appear everywhere on your system; but Window Washer took an early lead by whipping though our computer noticeably faster than Tracks Eraser Pro. But faster came at a price, with Window Washer overlooking some Registry entries easily smacked down by Tracks Eraser Pro. Despite its kinder, gentler appearance, Tracks Eraser Pro stopped us dead in our tracks with some of its ominously overbroad line item entry descriptions in the task window, such as Erasing WinZip and Erasing Windows Office. In fact, the program was just tidying up junk in those folders, but we lost time parsing out the programs terseness. Both programs recovered almost exactly the same amount of megabytes, and the round tied due to the caution given Tracks Eraser Pro by our refs.
Features
Heavy weight Tracks Eraser Pro got back into its style in the ring by giving us some key features not found in Window Washer. Both battlers pack some juicy extras into the ring: autorun and background cleaning, customizable folder cleaning settings, index.dat rewrites that eliminate personalized data, and unrecoverable erasing for those really incriminating files. Not content to stop there to save you from potential embarrassment, Tracks Eraser Pro loads its gloves with lead, throwing an icon-free stealth mode into the mix. But our very favorite extra is the Boss Key feature, which immediately hides all browser and messenger windows completely, even on the taskbar, without any fumbling around and making distracting conversation.
Stability
Easy to install and customize, both of our champions made nonfatal missteps in the ring. Window Washer froze when too much was going on around it, long enough for us to clean our physical desktop the old-fashioned way; while Tracks Eraser Pro seemingly went down mid-install when it had in fact completed and left empty tabs on the taskbar after we employed the Boss Key. Window Washer won the round for uninstalling prowess, leaving behind only the lemony fresh scent that the license agreement promised us, where Tracks Erasers uninstaller was down pounding the mat after the trial period elapsed.
Demo
The downloadable demo versions of both fighters contain all the kick-butt functionality of the registered programs. Tracks Eraser Pro takes full advantage of a nag screen for the duration of its 15-day trial run on your computer, after which the demo becomes inoperable along with its uninstaller, earning it a foul from our judges. More menacing-looking competitor Window Washer takes a surprisingly more gentlemanly approach with a discreet demo-run countdown on its main screen, and uninstalls as cleanly as it came.
The winner
If it hadnt been for the rookie performance with the uninstaller, Tracks Eraser Pro, with its to-die-for Boss Key, might have walked away with the match cleanly, no pun intended. But a demo cleaner that doesn't clean up after itself leaves you further in the hole than when you started. The win by technical decision goes to lemon-fresh Window Washer.
Holly Cunningham, a frequent contributor to CNET, is a freelance Web designer working primarily to keep her Chihuahua in furs.
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