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How the mighty have fallen: TuneUp Utilities 2010

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tranglos:
I still will give it a try, to see what happens and, above all, to see what is new in the old tools, but for the time being I'll keep 2009 around. What happens when I install Windows 7 is something worth of a few thoughts.
-Lashiec (October 31, 2009, 01:10 PM)
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I absolutely think everyone interested in TUU should still give it a try. Your mileage may vary.

BTW, TuneUp Utilities did have a few updates over the years, but they were just mere bugfixes and minor enhancements. IIRC, 2008 and 2009 were updated twice, and 2007 just once. After reading your report, I'm sure 2010 will get at least one ;D
-Lashiec (October 31, 2009, 01:10 PM)
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I never-ever saw an update available through the update checker. Do you happen to recall how soon the updates were posted after the initial release? I usually waited some time (months) before I decided to splurge and upgrade, so I may have been installing "final" releases that didn't get any updates within the version cycle.

I was still surprised that the update checker never mentioned the annual paid upgrades, either.

tranglos:
TuneUp Utilities are made for fixing errors they break themselves.
-Tuxman (November 01, 2009, 03:03 PM)
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Well, I wouldn't go that far, myself :)

TUU certainly had a number of things going for it. It was lighter and nicer to use than anything coming from the Norton/Symantec shop. It did not install much (or any) "resident" software in the earlier versions. (There was a memory optimizer, but I never used it.) It was nice to have a complete toolkit under one roof, so to speak, and the original Control Center was really well designed, good looking and functional. And some of the individual tools were pretty good: their Startup Manager has always been one of my favorites. It has a useful feature I haven't seen duplicated elsewhere, which lets you move startup items from registry to the Start Menu and vice versa, for example. The Registry Editor is more convenient than the built-in MS tool, etc.

The problem is, IMO, that over the years those well-working tools were not updated much. (To be fair, the 2010 version of Startup Manager adds highlighting of newly added items. That's good, but it still has a long way to go before it can catch up with AnVir.) Instead, in versions 2009 and 2010 TUU added a lot of new features that required some service or other constantly running and monitoring things, while the original utilities were being made less accessible, less important — as if they were about to become obsolete.

...They don't install a bunch of unwanted stuff into your autostart menu...
-Tuxman (November 01, 2009, 03:03 PM)
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TUU didn't use to do that, either. Ah, those were good old times! :)

At least TUU doesn't seem to leave anything behind when you uninstall. I recently took a close look at the output from Autoruns (Sysinternals), and that was a head-scratching experience to say the least. Several file filter drivers and all kinds of other low-level drivers were left active by Acronis TrueImage, PerfectDrive and Paragon; ThreatFire left behind a keyboard monitor driver which, when you uninstall it manually, kills all communication between Windows and your keyboard (so that you can't even log in after reboot, and restoring the original keyboard driver does not help), etc. All kinds of awful crap left by well-respected packages. So at least in that respect TUU scores one better.

Tuxman:
It was nice to have a complete toolkit under one roof-tranglos (November 01, 2009, 05:33 PM)
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You completely ignored my actual posting.  :P
What is the need of a "complete toolkit" when two or three single, free applications are more than enough for everything related to "optimizing"?

(A memory optimizer which resides in the memory is ridiculous at best, BTW.)

tranglos:
You completely ignored my actual posting.  :P
What is the need of a "complete toolkit" when two or three single, free applications are more than enough for everything related to "optimizing"?
-Tuxman (November 01, 2009, 05:40 PM)
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Well, I don't know Brain, but Autoruns and CCleaner don't cover the whole range of tasks. And some users might prefer a single toolkit where all apps look and work the same, and where there's only one app to update, instead of several. To each his own, though.

Plus, its not like the apps you mention have no shortcomings of their own. CCleaner can "clean" too much just as any other utiity of that type can. In Autoruns just unchecking an item (in the Drivers section, say) can have more disastrous effects than using a registry optimizer, because Autoruns does not perform a complete uninstall and does not scan the registry for co-dependent settings. I experienced this firsthand. TUU utilities have an undo feature and can rollback any cnages you've made (though sometimes you may notice negative effects too late for the rollback to make sense).

Tuxman:
Well, I don't know Brain-tranglos (November 01, 2009, 06:04 PM)
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;D

Brain 1.0 is metaphorical. It means: Don't load your computer with various shit and wonder why it slows down. No waste, no need to clean it, you see?

Autoruns and CCleaner don't cover the whole range of tasks-tranglos (November 01, 2009, 06:04 PM)
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What kind of important task is missing there? Memory optimizing?  ;D

A "rollback" feature is a step into the very wrong direction. If you don't have it, you'll consider twice if you should really perform an action. If you have it, you'll think "oh well let me delete anything and I can still recover it"... which is wrong, because it may be hard to recover something when you can't even log in anymore.

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