Is Your Computer an Ace?

System optimizers are everywhere I look around, so I can't avoid such an inevitable encounter, and here comes a new product from this category: Ace Utilities. Before telling you more, you should be aware that we have another all-in-one tool, so get ready for another interesting program!

The last version of this application is 3.0.0.4038, and what I have here is a full featured shareware version that will work for 30 days. At the end of the evaluation period, you are required to pay 29.95$ to register, or uninstall the program, of course. The installation kit is pretty small, having only 2.1MB in size, and anybody should be able to install it, so let's get to the interesting parts now: interface and features.

Ace Utilities looks just as one would expect - user friendly, well organized, with graphics that are a real pleasure for the eye. This program looks like all those nice skinnable optimizers, but it's not one of them, unfortunately, so no additional skins here. No problem, we have four areas to watch - Clean Up, Optimize, Protect and Miscellaneous, so let's get to it!

First of all, if you're in a hurry, you may want to try the Maintenance Wizard, a tool that allows you to find and remove junk files, clean system registry, erase history/Internet cache and delete invalid shortcuts, all in a single step. For the rest of us, here's what can be done slow and easy...

The Clean Up area has four tools for you, exactly those from the Maintenance Wizard that I just told you about. When you start one of them, a new window opens, allowing you to perform the required operations and set advanced options, such as file exclusions or advanced removal options.

Moving on, we find the Optimize area. Here, there are only three tools available - Auto-start Manager, Find Duplicate Files and the excellent Uninstall Manager. There's nothing special about them, all you have to do is enter and you'll find your way.

The Protect area is worth all your money, because of the tools available here and their features. Securely Delete Files and Wipe Deleted File Data are both about the same thing - purging data so it won't be retrieved by unwanted people in the future. All I have to say here is DoD, Gutmann and pseudorandom data, the data removal methods used. If you don't know more about them, then search on the Internet or believe me: they're all you can ever need when it comes to data destruction!

At last, we have the three Miscellaneous tools - Find Empty Folders, Disk Analysis and Scheduled System Maintenance. You never know when you need to remove empty folders from your drive, analyze the amount of space taken up by your folders and, of course, schedule maintenance tasks.

This is it - small, handy and easy to use. Let's move on to the conclusions now, shall we?

The Good

Ace Utilities has a great interface, but that's not everything - it's easy to use for beginners and has enough features for everybody.

The Bad

Considering what you can get for 30-40$ from the competition, I can call this program "a little expensive", although it has some really strong points.

The Truth

Ace Utilities is an interesting program, worthy to spend some time with, but if its price would be a little lower, I know it would be much more interesting for a lot of people. Anyway, you have an entire month at your disposal to enjoy it, so don't wait any longer, start now!

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: