15-Minute Reviews :: Need3Space v1.3.12.48

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Need3Space version 1.3.12.48 by 585Soft – An application to help you recover your lost disc space.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Need Free Space is a comprehensive set of tools which helps you to control and manage your disk space, while also gathering free space. Need Free Space will help you free up disk space by locating duplicate files, temporary and junk files, obsolete and infrequently used files, search for empty folders and zero-size files.

Number of options allows you to customize your search. You can exclude some directories from the search (for example, system directories), you can find duplicate files more effectively by excluding from the search small or large files, duplicate files with specified attributes (system, hidden, read-only). To search for temporay and junk files you can also add your own wildcards.

With the Analyze tool you can find out which folders and files are the largest on your drives with only a glance and a few clicks. The integrated Uninstaller will list for you the applications installed on your computer, system components, system hotfixes and broken uninstall entries.”

Quick Pros

• Interface is easy to use for the most part
• Lots of useful tools bundled into this one
• Duplicate files functionality compares file data
• Recycle Bin Explorer has wipe functionality
• Speed of searching and analyzing is very quick

Quick Cons

• Interface for weeding through duplicate files could be more intuitive
• While Uninstaller looks great, does not offer any additional benefits
• While Recycle Bin Explorer offers a view of all bins, not a great use

Expansion

When you first launch this application, you are greeted by a pleasant-looking and functional interface. Along the left side of the screen are side tabs; Three of which when clicked on expand to show further options below them, much like the Outlook-style sidebar. To the right of this you’ll find the information for each tab and the process. For all the tabs, overall it is very easy to use. Almost all the options you’ll need for every task appear in each pane, so there is little diving for the Options tab except for some basic filter changes.

There is a total of 6 sets of functionality in this application: Search For offers the ability to find duplicate files, temporary and junk files (in general), empty files and folders and infrequently used files; Analyze Disk Space allows you to see where your hard drive usage is being used at, and spider into it, much like WinDirStat but without the visual plot graph; Uninstaller for aiding you in uninstalling the bloat off your system; Temp & Cache, which also allows you to clear your browser, Windows and Office temp and cache files; Recycle Bin Explorer for browsing your own and others’ Recycle Bin; And Hard Drive Info which offers you some useful information on your drive, its usage, and some right-click functionality.

Overall, during my test of this application, I found that the Search For… functionality worked fairly well. I was surprised that the duplicate files finder does compare the file accurately and does not rely on solely the file name or file size (I did not show up with the false-positive I have had previously, but it did find files which had different names but were identical). With that said, out of the entire application, I feel the duplicate files functionality is the most awkward to handle. Each pair/group of duplicates are places inside a folder which you can’t see any information on at all. You have to physically open each folder to see what files are similar and to preview the files, which if you had 193 similarities as I did, it becomes a very tedious process. The best thing I found to do is right-click in the table area and click ‘expand all’. There is a feature called Smart Selection, which you can set up some definitions to be able to automatically select the best out of the set to keep, such as by newest or similar, which can aid in the initial set-up process.

As for the other functionality, they all work as well as you would expect. I do question the Uninstaller and Recycle Bin Explorer. It is handy to have this bundled directly into the application, but doesn’t seem to add too much. The Uninstaller does look a lot better than the Windows Uninstall window does, but does not add additional functionality such as searching the registry for leftover entries, or ensuring the installed directory is obliterated. As for the Recycle Bin Explorer, it essentially gives you a tree version of the Recycle Bins of the users, does give you the Wipe function (The only place I can find in the application with Wipe functionality), but does not really add much besides the Wipe function that the Recycle Bin offers. They do offer a bit to the application and give a handy all-in-one feel, but it’d be nice if they did have further functionality beyond very basic functions.

Final Verdict

As usual, I must mention that any application which alters your system needs to be carefully used. A backup should be made before running any application offering cleaning functionality. The functionality here is meant for those with a little more computer knowledge, just for the sake of not deleting system critical files or folders, even with the system folder filters enabled. While I do wish there was more functionality added to the application such as improving the Uninstaller and Recycle Bin Explorer, it does fairly well for what it is intended to do. For free, if you are looking for an application which offers the functionality that Need3Space offers, this may be a good title for you to try. As for paying $19.90, the price isn’t outside what would be acceptable and may make a good application for some, just keep in mind that there may be a freeware or open source alternative which fits your needs more closely, such as CCleaner (providing cleaning functionality) or WinDirStat (Offering disk analysis).

Posted by BladedThoth on Thursday, November 01, 2007