Wednesday, June 19, 2013

TuneUp Utilities

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search TuneUp Utilities TuneUp Utilities 2012 Start Center Developer(s) TuneUp Software GmbH Initial release 1997; 16 years ago (1997) Stable release 2013 ( 13.0.3020.7 ) (February 7, 2013; 4 months ago (2013-02-07)) Operating system Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 Platform AMD/Intel x86 - 32bit and x64 Size 25.4 MB Available in English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Japanese and Russian Type Utility software License Proprietary commercial software Website www.tune-up.com

TuneUp Utilities is a utility software suite for Microsoft Windows designed to help manage, maintain, optimize, configure and troubleshoot a computer system. It is produced and developed by TuneUp Software GmbH, headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany and co-founded by Tibor Schiemann and Christoph Laumann in 1997. The American version of the software is distributed by TuneUp Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of TuneUp Software GmbH located in Miami, Florida.

As of 2011, nine versions of TuneUp Utilities have been released and the number of included components have been increased from sixteen to thirty-two. TuneUp Utilities have attained generally positive reviews, although multiple reviewers did not approve of its price for value. TuneUp is acquired by AVG Technologies in 2011.

Features

TuneUp Utilities 2013, the latest version of the product, consists of 30 different components, all of which can be accessed from within a central hub, called TuneUp Start Center. Most of these components can also be invoked from the Start menu. TuneUp Start Center itself can show the components either in a category view (default) or in a list view.

Status and recommendations

The Status and recommendations category houses four sub-sections: 1-Click Maintenance, Performance Optimizer, Fix Problems and Live Optimization. The 1-Click Maintenance section runs multiple routine maintenance tools at once. The Performance Optimizer and Fix Problems utilities are intended to provide tips to identify and fix potential problems and increase performance, such as disabling unnecessary visual effects and disabling or removing unused Windows services and programs. Live Optimization, according to the application's author, is intended to improve the responsiveness of Windows applications by tweaking their execution priorities.

TuneUp Utilities 2012 in list view mode, showing all its 30 components. System Optimizations

The Optimize system section includes TuneUp Program Deactivator, which unloads programs from memory and prevents their further automatic execution, an alternative to uninstalling them. While disabled programs continue to consume disk space, they no longer affect the startup time, the shutdown time and the system performance. Other components include a defragmentation tool, a registry cleaner, and a startup manager to replace MSConfig.

Disk cleanup

The Gain disk space section itself is a disk cleanup component which replaces Windows Disk Cleanup. It also gives access to TuneUp Disk Space Explorer (a disk space analyzer) and TuneUp Shredder (a data erasure tool).

Troubleshooting tools

The Fix problems section provides access to TuneUp Repair Wizard which allows users to selectively repair problems that TuneUp Utilities cannot automatically detect; e.g. icons getting corrupted or items like My Computer and Recycle Bin permanently vanished from Windows Desktop.

Also in this category, there is TuneUp Disk Doctor. It can check the integrity of files stored on hard disk drives and salvage damaged files. It can also scan for physical defects known as bad sectors and isolate them. TuneUp Disk Doctor is a graphical replacement for Windows CHKDSK.

Other items include a task manager, a system information tool and an undeletion tool.

Windows customization

The last section provides access to TuneUp Styler and TuneUp System Control. TuneUp System Control is a program that allows access to some of the obscure or harder-to-access settings of Microsoft Windows, similar to Tweak UI. TuneUp Styler allows for customization of the Windows user interface by changing the desktop appearance, icons, and the logon and startup screens.

Turbo Mode

The Turbo Mode, accessible from the bottom of Start Center, gives system a performance boost by temporarily disabling some of Windows services and features of user's choice, such as Windows Aero themes and visual effects.

Economy Mode

The Economy Mode accessible from the bottom of Start Center, gives system a more battery power to save by reducing background programmes and CPU power to saves battery.

Development

Supported operating systems Operating system Earliest version Latest version   Windows 95 97 2003 Windows 98 97 2007 Windows Me 2003 2007 Windows 2000 2003 2008 Windows XP with Service Pack 1 or earlier 2003 2008 Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or later 2009 2013 Windows XP Professional x64 Edition 2006 2013 Windows Vista 2007 2013 Windows 7 2010 2013

The first version of the software, TuneUp 97, was released in 1997. Since then, eight versions have been released over the years.

TuneUp Utilities 2003 TuneUp Utilities 2004 TuneUp Utilities 2006 TuneUp Utilities 2007 TuneUp Utilities 2008 TuneUp Utilities 2009 TuneUp Utilities 2010 TuneUp Utilities 2011 TuneUp Utilities 2012

Critical reception

TuneUp Utilities received generally-positive reviews, despite the product secretly installing pop-up advertisements without notifying the user. Computer Shopper magazine reviewed TuneUp Utilities 2009 and give it a score of 8 out of 10. It commended TuneUp Registry Cleaner as well as the hard-drive-related components of product but also noted that some tools are superficially implemented and that this suite lacks an antivirus and a personal firewall. TuneUp Utilities 2009 was voted #37 of "The Top 100 Products of 2009" and won the award "Best Utility Suite" of Computer Shopper.

CNET also reviewed TuneUp Utilities 2009 and gave it 5 stars out of 5. “To call TuneUp Utilities 2009 useful would drastically understate the situation”, said Seth Rosenblatt, an associate editor with CNET. He assessed TuneUp Utilities as a powerful and easy-to-use set of tools, with its disk cleanup and registry cleaner the “bread-and-butter” of the entire set.

PC World's Preston Gralla reviewed the 2010 version and commented that TuneUp Utilities is a comprehensive suite that “includes everything from a startup optimizer to a driver defragmenter, from an overall speed optimizer to a Windows Registry cleaner, and more.” However, he said that the high price of the entire suite ($50) might make the purchase decision more difficult. Preston had also previously reviewed TuneUp Utilities 2009 for PC Advisor and gave it 4.5 stars out of 5 stars.

PC Magazine reviewed TuneUp Utilities 2011 and gave it a score of 4 out of 5. “Overall, the software does a fine job of revitalizing a worn PC," commented Jeffrey L. Wilson, PC Magazine software analyst. He appreciated the product's one-click repair feature and the subsequent reduction in his test PC's boot-time. However, Wilson criticized the software license that only permits installation on three PCs, contrasting it with Iolo System Mechanic 10, a competing product that allows an unlimited number of installations in the same household.

TuneUp Utilities also received a Softpedia Pick award from Softpedia. Although Alex Muradin, Softpedia editor, expressed concern over the lack of proper technical support for TuneUp Utilities 2006, he gave this product a final score of 5 out of 5. However, it is notable that he gave this product a subscore of 3 out of 5 for Pricing/value.

Christian Immler characterizes TuneUp Utilities as a classic amongst tuning tools.

Notes

^ ^ Only Windows XP Home Edition, Professional Edition and Media Center Edition are supported.

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