optimized

Does your Mac feel sluggish? Internet surfing, downloading software, and just plain regular use are all major contributors to filling up your hard drive with useless files. As time goes by, your Mac starts to fill up with cache files, unused language files, and even leftover installers, making your whole system struggle to keep track of it all. You can go through and try to clean out a lot of these files manually, but knowing that it might take you a significant amount of time makes it easy to put off until later.

Fortunately, there are a number of utilities … Read more

ZeoOptimizer offers to help your computer run to its highest performance level. By seeking and destroying errors, this easy-to-use program is a great tool for improving your PC's speed, but its trial limitations left us wanting more.

The program's interface was delightfully simple to use, as its layout reminded us of some of the more basic virus-scan programs available. However, instead of seeking out viruses, this highly readable program is on the hunt for performance-killing errors. ZeoOptimizer searched an entire computer in only a matter of minutes, and it showcased its results on an easy-to-read list that allowed … Read more

As we’re nearing the end of a year and the end of a decade, it’s time to look back and ahead. With at least three formative events in this young 21st century (9/11, the Tsunami, and the Great Recession) providing some sort of apocalyptic arch and instilling a profound sense of anxiety, it is no wonder that former visionaries are gathering at conferences asking “Where did the future go?” But, at the end of the day, the end of all days didn’t occur, and as the New York Magazine points out in its comprehensive review of … Read more

While there are a number of utilities that will perform drive defragmentation and optimization, this option is usually included as a small side-feature along with a slew of other drive-related functions. Conversely, iDefrag is a small utility with the single purpose of running drive defragmentation and optimization, and does this job quite well. Over the years it has become a reputable and complete option for people wanting to defragment and optimize their hard drives.… Read more

AnVir Task Manager Free offers users a one-stop shop for managing your system's running processes and applications. Though it more than delivers the information it promises, it could really benefit from a more streamlined interface.

Users will need to spend some time taking in AnVir's user interface, because at first glance it's overwhelming. It uses tabs to distinguish system categories, such as start-up, applications, processes, and services. Command buttons at the top of the window give you the ability to kill processes, block processes, free memory, and select a parent process. The bottom of the window details … Read more

You can't predict every hard-drive failure. But when a drive goes down because certain hardware components are slowly degrading, then S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) can help warn you of an impending crash, so you have time to run a last-minute backup. Mac OS X already uses S.M.A.R.T. to track the health of drives, but it only runs a check whenever you use Disk Utility to verify a disk. SMARTReporter is a free, open-source tool that checks the S.M.A.R.T. status of drives hourly (by default, or … Read more

The beauty of Diskeeper is its simplicity. It runs in the background when your machine is idle, automatically defragging your files making manual defragmentation mostly unnecessary. But new in version 2010, Diskeeper offers what they call IntelliWrite technology to prevent fragmentation even before it begins.

You can schedule your defragmentation for times when your away from the computer or you can use the manual defragger when your system feels sluggish. But beyond basic defragmetation functions there are a number of advanced options to increase system efficiency. Use Boot Time Defragging to defrag your hard drive at start up. While it … Read more

Some of us here at the lab think there needs to be a "Netologism," a new Internet word, for registry cleaners, something that encapsulates their controversial, let-the-user-beware nature. You may know the species: They generally offer a free download and/or system scan, which identifies "problems" in the Windows Registry that they will fix, if you buy the full version, which is usually around $30. If you pay up and just let it do its thing on your registry, there's a darn good chance you'll boot back up to a sick machine, or your … Read more

Ashampoo Photo Optimizer Free is the perfect tool for fixing underexposed photos quickly and easily. Open one picture or a whole folder full of images, and it will lighten all of the files with a single click.

Ashampoo Photo Optimizer Free is a one-trick pony, but it does its one trick well. The program lightens photos that are too dark. You can also rotate your images left or right. When we tested this utility, we found it did a good job with underexposed files, but it doesn't improve overexposed files, reduce digital noise, or make any other adjustments. Clicking … Read more