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How the mighty have fallen: TuneUp Utilities 2010

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tranglos:
WARNING: Below this line you will encounter another of my vitriolic reviews. After the ranting has subdued, please maintain calm and proceed slowly to the exits :-)

How the mighty have fallen. I was in awe of TuneUp Utilities when I first found it in 2006. It looked beautiful, was packed with useful functionality, and every tool was logically placed and easy to find. I've been upgrading almost every year since then (skipped version 2008) and sadly, I regretted every upgrade, as the product turned out progressively worse.

The original layout was clear and logical. In version 2009 the distribution of tools was rearranged in the control center, so that I no longer knew where to find the tools I needed. Things that took one click now took several, as TuneUp displayed the nice-looking but ultimately irrelevant diagnostic messages on the main screen - and oh, now it took ten seconds or so before the UI became available, as it was busy performing the various system checks which should only be done at user request. As a result, I didn't use TuneUp nearly as often as I did before, and finally only ever used the Startup Manager, which you managed not to spoil.

Meanwhile, the tools that were truly useful were not seeing much improvement. The registry editor hasn't changed since 2006. System Information pales in comparison to what applications like Everest (previously Aida) can tell. The Registry Optimizer *always* breaks MS Office 2003 installation, so that Word starts to ask for the installation disks as soon as I press F1 or try to use the task panes — this hasn't changed since the earliest TuneUp version I used. And the Process Manager lags behind competition (Process Explorer or AnVir Task Manager Pro) so much it's lamentable.

And then there was that funny thing about TuneUp update. The program has a "check for updates" feature, which reminds you to check for a new version every now and then. I do not remember if it was first introduced in version 2006 or 2007, but I do know that it has never, *never* found an update available. I even learned about the pay upgrades through the website! What's the point of having an update checker, if there are never any updates?

So I had my little gripes, which detracted a little from the overall satisaction with a commercial package, but there was still a lot of useful greatness under the hood... and the hood looked awesome.

Version 2010, however, is a new low. The "hood" may be prettier than ever, but what hides underneath is a lemon.

Now *all* the utilities have been hidden, so that it's completely impossible to tell where they are or how to find them. Is my favorite Startup Manager under "Maintain system" or "Increase performance"? I can't *see* where it is, so I'll have to hunt and peck every time. And why is "Defragment hard disks" located under "Maintain system" instead of "Increase performance"? One could argue that both categories are suitable — but if so, then the categories were badly picked in the first place.

Yes, the individual utilities can be accessed via the Start menu, which is their saving grace. This doesn't excuse the confusing mess the control center has become.

System performance advice is next to useless, sorry. TuneUp is telling me I have many programs installed. Well thank you, I do have a bunch. I use my computer for a lot of things. At the same time TuneUp installer adds *three* new always-on services, and a tray icon. All for the sake of keeping the computer running smoothly, it seems.

The tray icon, by the way, adds insult to injury, as it has no "Exit" command. Major blunder, developers, not to let me close a program peaceably! Killing processes makes me feel bad, you know?

Then, before I had a chance to read the docs and to configure (i.e., disable) all the automatic maintenance features that will do who knows what to the computer, TuneUp is doing outright silly things on its own. I check the report and see that TuneUp forcibly lowered the process priority of Total Commander, because it thought TC was behaving selfishly with the CPU. Well, TC was busy doing my work, gentlemen. It was searching for text in a large directory of files. By lowering its priority TuneUp ensured I had to wait longer for the result — is that a bug or a feature?

All this automatic magic is not helpful at all; it is not smart, it does the opposite of what would be logical. It presumes to know better than the user and makes the wrong choices. What happened to the idea of asking the user whether a program is important (so boost it) or a background drone (so keep it tame)?

After such start, I was just curious to see what chicanery lurked inside the "Turbo Mode". The description reads, "In Turbo Mode, all unwanted background programs and services are disabled to ensure individual programs run smoothly". I couldn't help but check what programs and services TuneUp considered "unwanted", and whether it was going to make that determination by trying to read my mind, or whether it would just make a wild guess.

As I tried to click the "Configure Turbo Mode" link, two things happened. First, I did not manage to click that link, because as I approached the link with the mouse, the sliding information panel kicked in and switched to the "TuneUp Live Optimization" slide. As a result, I inadvertently clicked the "Configure Live Optimization" link instead. Just as I tried to click the link, it was replaced with another link before I had time to react. At least this is what I think happened. Congratulations for the innovative UI design! Maybe next we'll see sliding OK and Cancel buttons, too?

The second thing that happened was that LiveOptimizer.exe crashed.

Then I tried again, this time making sure I clicked the correct link. Another crash from LiveOptimizer.exe:

How the mighty have fallen: TuneUp Utilities 2010

And the worst thing? The worst thing is we're only getting warmed up here.

I ran Drive Defrag. It analyzed two of my physical drives, and when I clicked the other drive in the list, the process froze. I had to kill it with the Task Manager.

I ran Disk Doctor. It started scanning the filesystem, then I left the computer unattended for a while. By the time I came back 10 minutes later, DD had consumed over 330 MB of memory (was it trying to load the whole filesystem into memory?!) and stopped responding. I had to kill it, too.

Oh, and then I found out that uTorrent.exe was semi-frozen. Busily churning bits just moments before, it was now sitting blankly, vacantly, as if it got clobbered over the head with something heavy. When I closed it, the UI disappeared, but left behind the zombie process running. Another kill. Now, it may have been a coincidence. Then again, µTorrent had *never* crashed on my system before. Never. Not once in years. My wild guess is that it did not survive some of the TuneUp's new process-managing, smoothness-ensuring little games.

Speaking of unwanted programs... Maybe I would play my own silly game and turn the Turbo Mode on itself... Nice thought — if only it ran, rather than crash!

Time to bid TuneUp Utilities good-bye. Wish I had not spent all that money on upgrades, but for that I only have myself to blame.

(Windows XP SP2, running smoothly otherwise).

sajman99:
Thanks very much for the info. I was just thinking about checking out the newest TUU and now I see this. :o

Looks like another case of "progress" gone awry. I loved the older version years ago because it was both powerful and intuitive.

Curt:
I guess you forgot to first do the meditation?  

 :P

I feel with you, tranglos; it is such a sad experience when a hero falls to low levels.

I don't know who've written MAGIX PC Check & Tuning 2010, but I cannot think it was written in-house. All I want to say is, that before I tried this disastrous program, my Vista was sluggish but stable, but after ten minutes with the MAGIX "tuner", I have had approx TWENTY blue screens within 3 weeks!! In general, MAGIX is a hero of mine; they are the authors of Xara Xtreme, and others, but this chocking experience has taught my something about the difference between coders and merchants! ... Of course you know if TuneUp was sold to Avanquest or someone, so it no longer was owned by a coder but by a merchant?

tranglos:
Glad to be of service :) And sorry about the vituperation, I just seem to have an emotional relationship with software!

I'll go back to an earlier version of TUU, most likely 2007, where everything was in its right place and pretty lean. Too bad that version may not run well on Vista or Windows 7.

tranglos:
I guess you forgot to first do the meditation?  
-Curt (October 30, 2009, 07:50 PM)
--- End quote ---

Quite right, that! My hero Allen Ginsberg would not be proud.

(And really, you just have to see him sing it!)

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