I first used Cacheman in 2001. Back then, this little piece of software ( freeware then) was everything one would need to whip Windows into frenzy. Using Cacheman was a perfect substitute for hardware upgrading (my Cyrix MII 233 worked so well I had no need to buy new computer for a long time).

But, having had so wonderful experience with the old Cacheman, I find this new XP version a disappointment. Not only the performance raise unnoticeable, the "preset" where Cacheman catered for specific use of computer (multimedia, game, graphic manipulating) is no more. The freeware status is also gone.

There's not much use for Cacheman XP for me. The tweaking functions are practically the most useful - but X-Setup easily out-performance Cacheman in that area.

Cacheman XP is still a good piece of software, though it's heyday is over. But I'm definitely looking for something better.

I've been using CachemanXP for three weeks. I'm a professional graphic designer. My current system is WinXP 64 on a Intel Dual Core Extreme with 4 GB of RAM.

So far I'm impressed with CachemanXP. Auto-Optimize made the system significantly faster, especially the response times. What I like best is the Kill Process feature. I'm running a lot of software at the same time (up to 20 different applications) and never reboot my PC (it goes to S3 standby when I'm done with my daily work).

From time to time some application hangs and once it was a lot of work to end it using the Task Manager (clicking end now 10 times, but nothing happens etc). Cacheman allows to end a crashed application instantly.

The tray icons CPU usage graphs are very handy, I see this way when hidden applications are complete with calculations (I do a lot of rendering).

There are many other small things that you only notice on the second look, like changing the priority of system processes (which Task Manager won't allow) .

Cacheman is completely configurable, the original softpedia review mentions that setting the tray icons refresh time above 10 seconds would be nice. well mine are set to 30 seconds (you must open your eyes to configure it this way ;).

All in all I'm impressed. The gui may not look "novice friendly" and some of the functionality is hidden, but this tool is definitely something I would recommend to everyone.

All I can say is, after using auto-optimize and restarting my PC. I tested some PC games with cacheman and without cacheman. The fps (frames per second) that the games were running at actually got WORSE with cacheman running. A few frames worse, which would be a big no-no to hardcore PC gamers. Definitely not my idea of optimization.

Cacheman might work for other things, like playing mp3s while you work with a 500MB file in paint program as a virus scan runs in the background... I don't know and I don't care. But cacheman actually decreases gaming performance, and for the price of registering cacheman you'd be better off spending the money on RAM which would significantly improve all around performance.