How to Fix PC Performance Issues with Software Utilities - How the products work
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After the initial installation, both products offer to perform a system
scan, and that is where the magic begins. System scans check for
registry errors, orphaned files, disk fragmentation, startup program
status and so on. From that scan, the applications create a list of
recommended actions. While both programs perform very similar scans,
how the information is presented to the user is very different. TuneUp
Utilities 2009 takes a dumbed-down approach, erring on the side of
simplicity. The program uses simple-to-understand terms, such as
“Increase Performance” or “Clean up Windows” and that makes it quite
easy to use. The program delivers its analysis as recommendations, here
a user can click on a recommendation and find out the details about it
and then have TuneUp Utilities 2009 perform the recommended changes.
System Mechanic takes a different approach and presents the user with a
dashboard, which indicates the status of the system – simply as “good,
fair or poor.” The program can do either a quick analysis of the system
or a deep analysis (which takes several minutes) to determine the
status. System Mechanic’s interface is more technically orientated, yet
is just as simple to use as TuneUp Utilities 2009.
On our test systems, both applications uncovered similar problems –
neither seemed to do the analysis better than the other and both
reported registry problems, disk fragmentation, unneeded startup
entries and so on. Ultimately the difference came down to how the
repairs were performed and the information represented to the end user.
System Mechanic proved to be more orientated to the technician and
offered excellent information about the repairs needed. On the other
hand TuneUp Utilities 2009 did more of the heavy lifting, making it a
good choice for the neophyte.
Both programs seemed to fix our test systems without any issues and
both were able to uncover problems we created intentionally to impact
performance. For example, we manually deleted “pre-fetch” data on our
test systems, which impacts startup performance – both programs found
that problem. We also purposely broke some file associations – the
applications took care of that also. Both programs proved excellent for
tuning the registry and identifying unneeded startup applications.
Honestly, both programs performed so well, it makes it difficult to
pick one over the other. But, when push comes to shove, System Mechanic
feels like a better utility with menus orientated more toward a
technical user and offering more complete information on each problem.
That said, there are many who will prefer the elegant simplicity of
TuneUp Utilities 2009.
