Systweak Advanced Vista Optimizer 2009
Advanced Vista Optimizer 2009 from Systweak is your one stop optimizer, cleaner and system utility for a faster, better running Vista computer.
Ease of Use, Performance: 21/25
Look & Feel: 20/25
Features 24/25
How much I enjoy 12/25
Total: 77/100
Systweak has designed and stuffed plenty of optimizing programs into one convenient and handy utility called Advanced Vista Optimizer 2009. This handy utility is a cabinet full of tools that helps you solve many of the system problems that slow or make your computer and operating system work less efficiently.
Advanced System Optimizer has a nice clean looking window and easy to navigate menu system that mimics the Vista look without being too cluttered. The installation is easy and requires a restart due to the integration with many system programs and the registry.
Once you have restarted your computer the program automatically opens and runs through a system check that will only take a few minutes at most. The system optimizer will then show a list of things it did and ask if you want to optimize and clean up your computer, beware.
This is where I start to have problems with this program; it doesn’t clearly state what it is deleting when it does the initial or subsequent cleaning operations. It is deleting cookies and other data that you may need such as files that are required for some programs.
If you are unfamiliar with the operating system and many of these files you may accidentally delete some of these when doing the optimizing and be unaware of why a program is suddenly having a problem. The program should assume you do not want to delete these files and ask whether you want to delete them by warning that deleting them may stop programs from working correctly.
Instead the program asks if you want to continue to with deletion when it says “It is not recommended that you should delete this file. Continue with deletion… Yes No Cancel. I think it should be worded differently but it’s not that big a deal as it does pop up a warning box asking again if you want to send the file to the recycle bin.
I think this is the main problem I have with any program that is a one click or one stop shopping for cleaning or doing tweaks to a system. It is too easy to accidently get rid of stuff as the program too quickly goes through the cleaning and such when you are just trying to clean out stuff you don’t need.
While the phrasing of the question is not all that important the price is, $35 for a program that gathers all kinds of optimizing utilities in one place. Do you want to pay the price for stuff you can get for free from the internet for no cost?
Another problem I have but it is not that big a deal is the program assuming I want to use the User Account Control and Firewall of Windows Vista. I do not want to answer a question every time I want to do something on my computer that occurs when using the UAC and I have3 a better firewall in my router and Trend Micro’s products.
The program has several handy utilities like a drive and registry defragmenter which organizes files and the system registry. Other nice features include a browser and system cleaner to get rid of history, temporary files and other useless data that would eventually slow down your system.
Advanced Vista Optimizer 2009 includes a startup program checker that allows you to remove programs that automatically starts when you turn your computer on. Some of these programs are not needed and some can be malicious so you have a nice opportunity to see and get rid out these programs.
Other nice tools include a junk file cleaner that goes hand in hand with the history cleaner, a memory optimizer and several others. Some of these programs like the memory optimizer is just a handy way of keeping your system running the best it can but allowing you to change the memory settings without having to go into Windows system performance pages.
The cleaner and history deletion is probably the most useful as you can simply delete all that useless information like websites visited and temp files. These files can eventually clog and slow down your computer but it will take a while for this to happen but you should have some kind of cleaner to get rid of this type of information periodically.