TuneUp Utilities 2010 review

Computer maintenance is a chore most users would happily delegate. TuneUp Utilities 2010 lets you do just that. Tools and routines are divided along practical lines; maintenance, performance, problem solving and customisation.

System maintenance takes care of housekeeping jobs like cleaning out your registry, disk cleaning and defragmentation, as well as optimising system start-up and shutdown. It can be scheduled to run automatically when your computer is idle or can be manually activated with a single click. It also helps to keep you computer free of clutter; it found over 1GB of unneeded disk clutter even on a 1 month old Windows 7 laptop.

TuneUp 2010 uses several different approaches when optimising your system's performance. Live Optimisation dynamically tweaks process priorities so that your system feels more responsive. The performance pane recommends changes to system and browser setting that could potentially increase performance, though we didn't notice any benefit. In addition, a Turbo Mode allows you to give your system a gentle boost by turning off a range of non-essential services. This will have much more impact on older computers where Windows tends to hog a greater proportion of system resources.

The TuneUp repair wizard can fix common Windows problems and you can also restore deleted files and check for and repair hard disk errors. A comprehensive process manager helps you keep tabs on your system if you want to self diagnose performance dips or crashes while the start-up manager is more user friendly than the native Windows version. TuneUp 2010 also provides a one-stop-shop for a vast number of Windows configuration options. Most options – like changing the start screen and context menu customisation – are available elsewhere in Windows but are far more accessible here.

Those with Windows Vista or 7 can engage a TuneUp Utilities 2010 desktop gadget, which provides an overview of and quick access to basic maintenance, performance and problem fixing routines without launching the main application.

If you have tons of RAM and processing power to spare then you probably don't need TuneUp 2010, but it takes the hard work out of keeping an aging PC running smoothly. It’s also £10 cheaper than System Mechanic 9, but equally proficient.