Another Free Oil Change for That Thar Puter (Disk Cleaner)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Disk Cleaner
Date:	28/11/06 (456 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tiny download, quick

Disadvantages: Possibly better alternatives around

Having recently reviewed the handy Eusing Free Registry Cleaner, I thought it might be useful to bring readers' attention to a further free download that tidies up your hard drive a bit more and frees up valuable disk space. With all of the programs we run these days, it's easy to clutter up the main drive with lots of rubbish that doesn't get cleaned up regularly leading to slower performance and a less efficient PC. So what the blinkin' 'eck is Disk Cleaner then? Well, it's a free open source tool that enables the user to free disk space that is used by temporary files like those in the system temporary folder, the Internet Explorer Cache and Cookies folder, and the Recycle Bin. These are files/folders that get clogged up following browsing the Internet, having downloaded something online or even simply items sent to the recycle bin but not emptied. The site at http:/:diskcleaner.nl proudly claims that Disk Cleaner is absolutely free from adware and spyware (always reassuring I find).

Disk Cleaner is copyrighted to J G Moerland and was apparently inspired by one of the system tools in Windows 98. Anybody with an operating system that's either Win98 or beyond should find Disk Cleaner compatible and is a tiny concise download at just 360kb. The recommended download includes all of the associated plugins that go with the program otherwise you can use zip archives for those plugins you want to park for now and maybe use later. Plugins help your browser perform specific functions like viewing special graphic formats or playing multimedia files and are slightly different from extensions, which modify or add to existing functionality. Some common examples of plugins include Flash and Realplayer. DC can run quietly at startup meaning that you can clear the cache every time you boot Windows. You should notice straight away just how fast the program works; this is because the critical parts are written with just plain Windows API. Disk Cleaner is also entirely self-contained and no other DLLs are necessary to run the application, so it can even be run from a floppy without trouble for those folks that still have floppy drives, of course (thing of the past these days aren’t they?).

Using Disk Cleaner is dead easy. Having downloaded the necessary file from the site mentioned above, select the program from the start menu/desk top icon or whatever you've got as your shortcut and then choose the items you would like to clean. Press the clean button and the program wipes the various files immediately. Within the check box options the user can choose to clean either system temporary files/internet history/browser cache/browser history/browser cookies/recent documents/recycle bin/works documents/Office 95/97/2000/XP/2003Recent files/Quicktime Player/Windows memory dump/Windows logfiles/Forced/windows/TempCleaner and WinXP prefetch clean depending on which Operating system (for most people this will be Windows of some description) you are using. DC is compatible with both Windows and Mozilla Firefox browsers and I’ve certainly not had any error messages or problems with it so far. I tend to check all of the boxes available and each aspect cleaned is given an indicative file size with a grand total at the bottom. It’s not unusual to clean up to 80MB after a few hours browsing on the Net.

For the more advanced PC users and programmers then DC can be adapted by using either full-featured DLLs (where a DLL = Dynamic Link Library i.e. a library of executable functions or data that can be used by a Windows application. Typically, a DLL provides one or more particular functions and a program accesses the functions by creating either a static or dynamic link to the DLL) or just text files which can provide the necessary extensions to enable power users to clean specific items. Most users won't want to adapt like this so I shouldn't worry! I certainly didn't.

Other features within Disk Cleaner include:

-ability to change colours within DC

-the ability to adapt plug-ins to enhance usage

-can protect cookies before cleaning.

-user forums at http://www.diskcleaner.nl/forum/index.php

-you can sign up to a free newsletter for the latest news about DC

-updates are available via the newsletter or site. This latest version is 1.5.7

I’ve been using Disk Cleaner for a few months now and whilst there are other free alternatives like CCleaner, I’ve found DC very fast and very effective. It cleans up the mess left behind from browsing and frees up valuable disk space to enable me to do other things. It’s freeware which means it costs precisely nowt (although there is the facility to make donations online via Paypal to fund further freeware development) and in a recent article in Web User, DC achieved the bronze award in its software category. What have you got to lose?

Highly Recommended

Mara

Summary: Overview of Disk Cleaner

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