15-Minute Reviews :: Glary Utilities v2.0.0.3

Good day all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Glary Utilities version 2.0.0.3 by Glarysoft – An application to clean up, fix and optimize your system.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Glary Utilities offers numerous powerful and easy-to-use system tools and utilities to fix, speed up, maintain and protect your PC. It allows you to clean common system junk files, as well as invalid registry entries and Internet traces (theres a plug-in support for 45+ external programs). You can also manage and delete browser add-ons, analyze disk space usage and find duplicate files.

Furthermore, Glary Utilities includes the options to optimize memory, find, fix, or remove broken Windows shortcuts, manage the programs that start at Windows startup and uninstall software. Other features include secure file deletion, an Empty Folder finder and more. All Glary Utilities tools can be accessed through an eye-pleasing and totally simplistic interface.”

Quick Pros

• Plenty of functionality to use; Cleaners, fixers, scrubbers and more
• Backup functionality on a good deal of the application
• Very quick functionality
• Context Menu Manager is nice to see in an application
• Startup Manager handy to give ‘ratings’ and suggested actions
• Tracks Eraser very detailed

Quick Cons

• Usefulness of a ‘Memory Optimizer’ is questionable; At least doesn’t state it works wonders
• Startup Manager does not show every entry
• Lacks empty space shredder

Expansion

There is surprisingly a lot to this application; A lot of time has been put into developing this into a good application. It would take quite a while to fully test all the functionality in this application; I tried the most common (and deadly) ones which usually cause grief. I was delighted that the ones that tend to be the most dangerous, also have ‘backup’ functionality which allows you to save a backup in the case that something goes wrong. It also displays for you what it wants to remove and why; In the case of the registry scanner, it gives you a full sentence on every single item that tells you in detail why it is butchering that entry. I was surprised at how fast the application runs, but doesn’t lack scanning functionality in lieu of speed.

There were a few surprising features in this application. The Context Menu Manager allows you to remove Context Menu entries or simply disable them. This is handy, especially when you have an army of applications which have taken upon themselves to install their own context menu features, so you end up with 3 or 4 sets of media player context menu items and so forth.

The Startup Manager, while in itself not surprising, was nice to have with ratings on the files it knew (And it knew most of my files) as well as recommended actions on each plus the ability to look up more online directly in the internet. One issue with the Startup Manager is that it did overlook one startup item (Logitech SetPoint) for some odd reason. The Process Manager has similar functionality by giving running applications a rating and recommended action as well.

There is also the Tracks Eraser. It is interesting in that it supports a LOT of applications that would normally store information which could be insecure, such as MSN Messenger and more. It doesn’t cover all of the applications which may contain sensitive information, but it helps you get the more common ones.

This application isn’t without its pitfalls. There is the Memory Optimizer, which following all the other memory optimizers out there, simply pages out parts of your memory to your hard drive, causing slowness the next time any of the paged information is retrieved, defeating the purpose of this application. Windows manages this well; why do we need something that doesn’t do it as well?

While it is nice to have a file shredder, it’d be better if there was a empty space shredder. I can’t see most people through the hassle of opening up the application, clicking ‘Privacy & Security’, hitting ‘File Shredder’, then manually adding their one (or few) files every time. It’d make more sense to have an empty space scrubber, or at least offer an ‘Shredder Bin’ on the desktop which people can put files in directly.

Final Verdict

Any application which alters anything on your system for a goal of ‘cleaning’, ‘fixing’ or so forth should be cautiously used. Since this application confirms what is being done every step and gives backup functionality, it is not as dangerous as others; As usual, you need to tread lightly and make sure of every item being affected. There is a lot to this application; A lot to get yourself into trouble. However, if used properly (Even the functionality which isn’t so potentially dangerous,) this application is pretty good. I had no issues with the registry scanner or disk cleaner at all.

For free, if you are looking for some help cleaning up your system, I’d say give this application a try. If you find it is useful for you, $39.95 is really not bad concidering all what is bundled into this application.Just, as always, tread lightly.

Posted by BladedThoth on Thursday, May 10, 2007