Just want a chime in here with my apparently-unique view of the app.

First off, I think TuneUp Utilities 2010 is a step in the right direction for a project which was heading off the rails.

They had a wonderful, solid product 5 years ago, and have been trying to optimize, expand, and enhance it every year. Sometimes they do things right, and sometimes not--but inevitably whatever they change makes some happy and displeases others. For the past couple of years, not much had changed, and they made minor tweaks to each tool and the start center looked a little bit cooler. Then they wanted to do something different, and TuneUp Utilities 2009 had a new look and new functionality allowing it to evaluate a user's system in a short amount of time, making it suitable to run when the application starts and give them an up-to-date picture of their system's health.

While it's a nice idea (a live view of your overall system health and status), it wasn't logically laid out, and you couldn't get to everything from the main screen (you had to go to a sub-page, and then find what you wanted there). This made navigation more clunky, although it looked nice and worked pretty well on its own merit.

For 2010, they did two main things I like differently:
1. They laid everything out on the main page of the start center. You can access basically every setting or program function from the main start center screen without having to go somewhere else or open something else first. They may need to tweak their category logic, but it's a huge step ahead of 2009's layout.
2. They took their "live" system view from 2009 to the next level. Now, in addition to a system check when you start TU (and occasionally thereafter), it can also handle live optimizations (subjective word, apparently). Some users don't want extra things running, even if they're designed to make other things run better--TU does not require its notification area, desktop widget, or live optimization features to be running, but they are there for people who are interested in taking their system optimization to the next level.

I like what they are doing, and believe that if they perfect the art of live and automatic system optimization (which they obviously have not done yet), then you'd never even have to run TU's start center in the first place, because it would already be optimized. They haven't gotten there yet, but they are a lot closer.

While I do see more false positives in the registry cleaner than in past years, it does a better job than any other alternative I have found. I know it has been suggested by some users not to use a registry cleaner at all, but sometimes, in some situations, it can be a great timesaver. I would take a step back and say if you want to use one, great, but know what you're doing, and go over the records it finds before deleting anything to make sure it's logical.

Turbo Mode I'm not too concerned with--it's a nice idea, but it's in its infancy and needs a lot more functionality.
1. Only a single Turbo Mode setting? It would be more useful if they turned the same idea into a customizable list of "modes"... Game Mode, Office Mode, Multimedia Mode, etc.?
2. Very limited options--I want to be able to choose which of my services to start/stop, etc.

While I think it's trying some new things, not all of which work as well as likely planned, I still feel it's a nice step forward from TU 2009 and it paves the way for them to do some neat things in years to come. They had to find a way to expand their product and keep people waiting for the next version--while not universally accepted, I think they are doing that. I completely respect your views about this, as well, and I do feel they have a lot of areas that could use improvement, and TU is no longer as "solid" of a product since they have been introducing these new concepts.

I'm very sad that I missed out on this deal. VueMinder looks like a calendar I'd like to support, although my funds are too limited at the moment to impulse-buy at full price.

I'll use my trial, and see if I find it worth continuing. Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll go back on Bits Du Jour in the near future :)