NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, September 2009
Glary Utilities
By Ira Wilsker, APCUG Director;
Columnist, The Examiner, Beaumont, TX; Radio & TV Show Host

Iwilsker@apcug.net
(click to email author)

WEBSITES:
http://www.glaryutilities.com

One of the common themes in this column is improving computer performance. I still hear on a regular basis about slow performance and other PC problems that may have an easy and possibly free solution. I emphasize free not just because of today’s trying economic times, but also because an acquaintance of mine recently paid a big box store $300 to clean up his hard drive in order to improve his PC’s performance. There are many utilities available at varying prices from free to many dollars, and like anything else in society, they vary in quality from mediocre or worse, to excellent. The trite cliché’ “You get what you pay for” does not always apply when it comes to computer software, as there is some excellent quality free software available.

I have worked on several decrepit computers in recent weeks, and had the opportunity to try software utilities from several publishers, and found some that I really liked. Some of the titles that I found that worked very well were freeware utilities from Glarysoft, .

The first Glarysoft utility that I tried on an older XP machine that was in desperate need of some software maintenance was its flagship product Glary Utilities. Available in 23 languages from href="http://www.glaryutilities.com"http://www.glaryutilities.com, Glarysoft claims that this product is, “… the #1 free, powerful and all-in-one utility in the world market! It offers numerous powerful and easy-to-use system tools and utilities to fix, speed up, maintain and protect your PC.” I cannot vouch for the #1 status, but I did find it a capable utility that does all that it claims, and it does it very well. Available in two flavors, the free version, and a $40 commercial version, Glary Utilities PRO, either will have enough features to likely improve the performance of any dragging PC. Obviously the PRO version offers more features than the free version, such as automatic care in background; enhanced system fixing, optimizing and more; free 24x7 technical support, and may be used commercially. Both versions will run well on most modern PCs, and is compatible with Windows 2000, XP 32/64bit and Vista 32/64bit. I ran Glary utilities on the old XP, as well as a new Vista 64 machine, and it ran flawlessly on both.

Glary Utilities has a clean and intuitive front end, and is easy to use. The opening window gives the version and status, and a link to download any updates. The “1-Click Maintenance”, which can be scheduled or run on demand, offers six automated clean-up functions which can be run together or individually. The “Registry Cleaner”, which can fix invalid or incorrect registry entries, is one of the best in the business, and may reduce the number of conflicts and “blue screens of death” that antagonize many of us. The “Shortcuts Fixer” identifies and cleans any invalid shortcuts that may have been left over when deleting old programs. The “Startup Manager” may be one of the keys to improved PC performance by stopping useless and unnecessary programs from automatically loading when the computer is booted. These unnecessary programs often get inserted in the startup when their software is installed, and may be a terrible resource hog, degrade performance, cause slow boots and shutdowns, and create software conflicts. By easily managing the startup process, the user has better control of the computer as well as better performance. Massive amounts of hard drive capacity are often wasted by having thousands of temporary files from various sources eating up the capacity of the drive; a “Temporary Files Cleaner” cleans up these temporary files, and recovers the wasted hard drive space; one computer I recently cleaned had over 4 gigs of useless temporary files, which this program detected and deleted. Our personal privacy may be jeopardized by leaving internet tracks and traces on our hard drive, and the integral “Tracks Eraser” detects and removes these items, helping to maintain the users’ privacy. The final “1-Click” utility is a “Spyware Remover”, which can detect and remove much of the spyware which may infest the computer. These six tasks, all of which can be run with a single mouse click, can do much to improve PC performance.

For those users who want even more power and control coupled with additional performance improvements should choose the “Modules” tab. Five modules, each consisting of several system tools, provide an excellent selection of resources designed to provide the maximum improvement of performance, short of hardware upgrades. The “Clean Up & Repair” button connects to the disk cleaner, the registry cleaner, shortcuts fixer, and an uninstall manager. While two of these utilities are automatically invoked when selecting the 1-Click option, the disk cleaner detects and removes far more clutter on the hard drive than the simple temp files remover. The uninstall manager allows the user to completely remove any unwanted programs more thoroughly than Microsoft’s “Add/Remove” feature.

The second module contains four utilities to optimize and improve performance, including the startup manager, a memory optimizer, a context menu manager (a tool for techies and geeks), and a registry defragmentation utility. Besides the already described benefits of the startup manager, the registry defrag feature would probably be the most beneficial utility in this group. Since the registry is constantly being written to and modified, gaps appear in its structure which can slow its reading, waste processing power, as well as take up extra space on the hard drive; the registry defrag function resolves this problem.

Next is a privacy and security selection which includes the already mentioned tracks eraser, as well as three other utilities. Sometimes it is necessary to permanently delete files and data, such that they are unrecoverable; the integral file shredder erases files such that they are gone forever. Unless a file has been shredded or overwritten on the hard drive, it may very likely be recoverable. We all have accidently deleted files, or changed our minds after deleting files, and wished that we could get them back; the file undelete utility can quickly and effectively recover files that had been accidently deleted. Some other files that we have may also be personally sensitive, and made safe from prying eyes. The “File Encrypter and Decrypter” protects files from unauthorized access and use.

The “Files & Folders” group includes utilities to analyze and the hard disk structure, detect and delete duplicate files, find and remove empty file folders, and a neat utility that can split large files into smaller ones and then rejoin them when needed.

The final module is the “System Tools” selection where the running processes on the computer can be monitored and stopped as desired, freeing up computing power. Another system tool manages Internet Explorer add-ons, tool bars, and other functions, and can recover from a high jacked browser. The final utility opens Window’s own secretive tools utility, providing user access to dozens of Window’s settings, allowing the user to tweak the operating system as desired.

I found Glary Utilities, both the free version and the more comprehensive PRO version to be useful and effective in improving PC performance, and maintaining that enhanced functionality. I would recommend that users download the PRO version, as it offers a fully functional 30 day free trial, and see how well it performs. If satisfied, then the $40 purchase price may be well worth it. For those who prefer free software, the free version would be very satisfactory, as it also is a very capable product. For those who want the functionality of the individual modules as free standing products, many of them are available for free download from http://www.glarysoft.com. Glary Soft has some fine products, and would be a worthwhile addition to the stable of utilities that we all should have and utilize.

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