Your PC Will Never Run Smoother (TuneUp Utilities 2008)

Member Name: spencer_hawken

Product:	TuneUp Utilities 2008
Date:	01/07/08 (525 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Maintenance you can see and feel working

Disadvantages: None as yet

It was that time of year again, the internet virus protection and cleaning tool I had been using on my PC for the last year, in this case Norton 360 glided to a halt, they wanted more money. £59.95 or £99.95 in fact for another one or two years service in fact, last time I upgraded a Norton program for a second year it only cost me £39.95, shocked at the increase I gulped and decided to forget the upgrade for another day.

In an unrelated event the following day at work the PC engineer turned up at work, shocked that there was no virus protection on our PC's. "I'm amazed your world has not come to a halt" he said in his artful dodger style accent, "oh yeah I thought" here comes the punchline Norton antivirus on all the PC's, 3 or 4 per licence that takes us to £700 - £800 to kit out the whole building. To my surprise however this conversation was not going in this direction, he recommended free virus protection programme AVG 8 , and a programme called Tune Up Utilities 2008 the latter at the cost of £29.99, but you could use it on as many PC's that reside at your address, so whether you have 1 or 100 pc's your still looking at the same cost; better still Tune Up comes with a 30 day free trial that gives you FULL use of the program, what was to lose?

Here is the key thing, nothing was to lose the work PC's started working better than before, so it was obvious that I was going to be trying this out when I got home.

Forget AVG 8 for now, that's another review entirely. Tune Up 2008 downloads from there own website or you can pick it up from PC world stores, difference being is that by picking it up you don't get the free month. The big plus with Tune Up is that at the end of the year you don't need to upgrade, once purchased its yours for keeps.

Tune Up is compatible with every single windows program since Windows 98, so you don't need to feel you have to have a snazzy operating system for this to work effectively.

There are two parts to the programme Tune Up Utilities 2008, and Tune Up 1-Click Maintenance. The first one looks after itself after first run, whereas the maintenance program should be ran once a week, I do mine on a Monday morning and it takes about 8 minutes maximum, far quicker than Nortons once a week updates.

Now considering that Norton 360, is supposed to keep your PC running smoothly as well as battle internet crime in the form of viruses, after running Tune Up for the first time I really felt that for the last year I had been ripped off. Because on my first run, the program gave me back 60 GB of storage on the two build in drives on my PC, furthermore it informed me that all those windows updates with Vista, don't replace the old ones, simply put them in storage for a later date, the result? 34 files that will never be of use again. All of which your informed about prior to deletion. Next came the tune up, "what I here you cry? That's not it?" The tune up program which you rune once a week, looks at all your files, removes the defunct once, and those that it sees as flawed are in need of update it will do for you, ever switched on your PC and had a message saying such and such does not work? And the reality is that you don't have a clue what that it. Well suddenly that message was gone, it either deleted or repaired it.

Now each week Tune Up returns at least a GB of my PC to me, updates existing programs, and informs you of all the pointless things going on in your PC. Better still considering its not virus protection, it still does part of the job, informing me and quarantining viruses for a virus killer to dispose of. On the subject if viruses etc. though it does kill spyware dead, no sooner is it on its way in and its gone.

Tune Up is more than just a clean up tool however, it allows you through a nifty choice of tools the ability to customise your PC exactly how you want it. Now you could argue that Windows does that, but in reality it does not because it only lets you customise the PC the way it wants you too. Tune Up allows you to change every aspect of your PC's appearance, from the little icons, to the colours of the background. It will even get rid of the windows boot screen replacing it with one of its own images or one of your choice, my PC now loads up to a woman having her eyeball pulled out (what can I say I'm a horror nut) its certainly a talking point.

The biggest gain is that my PC feels so much quicker, and looks so much swifter, people are enthralled by the way my PC looks (on screen) so different, the most common point "How do you do that?" The PC will even (if necessary) defragment itself as part of the Monday morning 8 minute routine

For me, its the best £30 I have ever spent, and it really does beg the question for a hundred quid what does Norton actually do for your PC, because tune up is supposed to be a major factor. Unlike Norton your updates here are free, even after the first year.

Try it for 30 days commitment free, and you really will see the difference, hit your favourite search engine now for this program.

Spencer Hawken 07/08

Summary: A program that raises the question what are other protection tools paid for

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