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The optimal optimizer
By H. Cunningham
(5/28/03)
People and computers share the characteristic of gaining weight over time. A variety of physical activities will keep the weight off a person, and a variety of system utilities can keep computers lean and mean. Of course, running a system utility requires much less effort than running up a mountain, but you'll probably want to know which system utility to use. Our two champions, Ashampoo WinOptimizer Suite and Systweak’s Advanced System Optimizer come into the ring promising to cut your bloated mechanical alter-ego back down to size. But which gives your machine lightning-fast reflexes and reshapes it from behemoth to bantam?
Interface
Coming from the Windows XP school of design, System Optimizer features big, colorful, rounded buttons and edges, leaping ahead of WinOptimizer's Windows-Me-style rectangular interface. But System Optimizer's modern looks suffer from the occasional spelling error. Both use a modular approach, launching with a main control screen from which you can choose one of many functions. System Optimizer requires a single click to launch a module, while WinOptimizer relies on the old double-click. Where System Optimizer loses its edge is in the file detail display properties: small result display screens mean a lot of weaving and bobbing to look at relevant file information, as well as headache-inducing flicker when scrolling; and European date file formats make nailing files by date a more concentrated activity.
Functionality
WinOptimizer starts to shine once you’ve invoked the separate subprograms from within its modular structure. Though slower to get going, it whizzes through your drives on a seek-and-destroy mission faster than its much lighter challenger. Both boast good default settings that make them useful straight out of the box, and both corralled files that had been routinely ignored by other cleaning programs, resulting in a huge recovery of hard drive space. System Optimizer’s result descriptions were harder to decipher than WinOptimizer’s. System Optimizer relies on the catchall phrase bad file type to show which files it’s put in a headlock.
Features
WinOptimizer packs a lot of weaponry, but some features it drags into the ring are of dubious use to the novice. In addition to the Registry tools, drive cleaner, and Internet history wiper also offered by competitor System Optimizer, WinOptimizer sports a recovery-proof file wiper, a start-up tuner, a DLL cleaner, and an Internet connection tuner. The last two of these features may cause more trouble than they save: the Internet tuner relies on manual selections of esoteric settings with minimal guidance and no auto-detection, while the DLL cleaner is a disaster in the making for even experienced users, offering up even required DLLs for possible deletion. WinOptimizer does mitigate the death-blow potential with good backup and restore options if your bloodlust takes you too far. System Optimizer dispenses with the fancy off-the-ropes acrobatics and kendo sticks of its feature-heavy adversary by deploying basic cleaning tools along with a more useful systemwide backup and file restore feature.
Quality
WinOptimizer and System Optimizer have more than just Windows optimizing in common. Both download and install quickly and cleanly, and both sent our computer crashing to the mat at least once. While System Optimizer is slightly more gentlemanly in its CPU aggression than its glossier counterpart, you don’t want any other programs to get their ears bitten off by these combatants, so it’s a good practice to make sure any other monitoring-type programs are shut down before you let these cleaners run amok on your system.
Superstar WinOptimizer weighs in at an embarrassing 17.7MB, just when you’re trying to get lighter, compared with System Optimizer’s modest but effective 5.24MB. Happily, you can say goodbye completely to the excess poundage, since both programs pack thorough uninstallers.
Demo
These are hired killers out on a 30-day loan, so you get a good chance to clean up your act with the demos long before they expire. With e-mail registration and confirmation, WinOptimizer’s demo has full feature usage, but the unregistered demo version taunts you with limitations such as only doing 33 percent of the cleanup at a time and disabling some testing features. Better behaved if not grammatically inclined, System Optimizer is fully operational in its demo version, so it spares you the drama of running outside the ring to grab a steel chair.
The winner
You need one of these guys to act as your bouncer in the pit of sluggishness a minimally maintained Windows operating system can become. And even though Ashampoo WinOptimizer Suite came in as a proofread popular favorite and the self-proclaimed champion, the belt and the title have to go to the much lighter and humbler Advanced System Optimizer. Viva el underdog!
H. Cunningham, a frequent contributor to CNET, is a freelance Web designer working primarily to keep her Chihuahua in furs.
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