Boosting the performance of your computer is possible not necessarily by buying new, better hardware components or overclocking the old ones. The myriad of system optimizers available on the Internet are designed to tweak, free up memory, improve Internet connection and generally to bring your machine to a better performance.

Depending on what you want for your computer, you can get a bunch of free stuff to do the job of a single, commercial licensed system optimizer. The latter come equipped with almost everything you need in order to get the computer to the old self. However, as the prices generally tend to start from about $20 and their efficiency is questionable, I would go with the first variant.

AusLogics BoostSpeed brags about being a powerful, all in one system performance and Internet optimizer suite. The price for such a gem is not too high, only $24.95, but you should be warned from the start that the limitations imposed by the developer will hinder the testing and will negatively affect the experience through the 15 days trial period available.

Taking a swift look at the welcome screen of the application one can clearly see that BoostSpeed is designed to increase your Internet speed, speed up your Windows, the installed softwares and generally for optimization purposes.

The GUI of the application is easy to use and the options are running down in the left side of the screen. The Internet boosting alternatives are the first ones in the list and they include status and statistics, automatic optimization as well as manual and DNS cache optimization.

Status and Statistics section provides the user graphics for incoming and outgoing traffic. In the right hand side of the screen there is the total running time, the values for the total incoming and outgoing traffic. Lower in the window there are three additional options some users would deem very handy. First of all there is a traffic calculator for dial-up connections to keep an account on the charge, a reset button for rolling back all the upper values (running time, total incoming/outgoing traffic) and an option for taking a look at the open connections.

The last of the alternatives is composed of a number of four options that can be employed to traceroute, ping, check the open TCP connections and take a look at the TCP/UDP ports that are open for listening. Settings area allows you to configure the values for ping and traceroute tools (packet size, maximum hops, queries per hop, ping count) as well as for the network connection viewer (refresh rate, IP address display).

Internet optimization is designed to increase the download and upload speeds. This can be done either automatically by using the built-in wizard which involves only choosing the connection type you are using, or by manually tweaking the elements one by one. For completing the enhancement and the changes to take effect you will have to reboot the system. The software does not restart the system automatically so you will have a chance to save all your work.

Manual tweak may seem a bit difficult for a beginner and even an average computer user, but in fact the process is very easy to complete. Testing the application on a Vista system resulted in some anomalies, like the fact that only MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) and TCP RWIN (Receive Window Size) can be configured as all the other options are greyed out. On XP all the other options are up and kicking.

You get to tweak your connection by applying different values for the maximum connections per server, TTL (Time to Live - maximum amount of time IP packet may live in a network without reaching the destination) etc.

Boosting up Windows comes with a collection of options for optimizing the system settings (core, file system and services), increase the boot and shutdown speed, optimize the memory (RAM free up) and tweak the appearance of your Windows in order to trade good looks over performance.

Out of all the settings available in this section only some of them are enabled on Vista and these are the RAM release option, and part of the appearance optimization (visual effects and menu appearance). Weird enough, some of the settings are locked in XP as well. In Core Settings of the Optimize System Settings submenu, there is no way to enable the Write behind cache option or optimize swapfile performance. The restrictions continue in File System that does not let you change the disk cache and caching memory.

System Memory optimization comes equipped with a minimal process manager which allows you to end the activity of different processes. Also, the amount of memory you want to be released can be manually set in Manual Optimization window. Automatic RAM release settings is available in this section and you can set the values to be reached for the RAM optimization process to be triggered and the amount of RAM to be freed.

The most used web browsers (Internet Explorer, Opera, Netscape and Firefox) can also be tweaked and made to load the pages faster. The restrictions in this case seem to be applied only for Mozilla products (and they are legit as there is the developer's warning appended to the window), as Opera and IE are all good to tweak. There aren't too many options available, but they can make a significant change during browsing. You can disable pictures loading, sounds playing, smooth scrolling or disable GIF animation in IE and Opera. These will speed up page loading, but will result detrimental to page viewing, and this is definitely not a good compromise for the average user.

BoostSpeed makes available a suite of optimization tools designed to maintain your computer in tip top shape and clean the errors in the registry, defragment it, clean the disks of useless files, manage the startup items and clean uninstall the programs on your computer.

The registry and disk cleaners are locked in the trial version of the software, but they will perform the scan and give you the number of errors found. However, you will not know which are the "rotten" elements and they cannot be eliminated.

Compacting the registry files on the other hand, is working just fine. The trouble is that this should be run after saving all your work. In fact, the tool won't start until all the other applications are closed or the "Ignore running programs" is checked. Choosing the latter option results in no access to anything but BoostSpeed's Registry Defrager. And when the compacting operation is over, there will be required a restart of the computer, which in this case is automatic.

For properly taking care of your computer the application provides a startup manager that allows you to handle the processes that load with Windows. You can enable/disable them or even remove them from the list. Additional alternatives include checking the Internet for information about the items, opening the folder they resides in or running the files. Having all these options allows you to accurately identify the process and determine if you need it or not.

The uninstaller appended to the list of optimization tools is really disappointing. All it does is roll the "victim's" uninstaller. There is no registry cleaning so there is absolutely no benefit from using this tool. The only advantage is that it makes a little order in the list by grouping the Microsoft programs and large programs together.

Taking a look at the installed updates and hotfixes for Windows is a cinch as the option is provided in View menu. Obviously all the elements will be appended to the Microsoft Programs list. You may enjoy this feature in Windows XP but when it comes to running the application on Vista there is not way to see all the updates of the operating system.

Network Tools menu contains a series of options for synchronizing the computer clock with online atomic servers, lookup domain names and IP addresses or test the Internet connection speed. For finding out information about a certain domain or IP address the software makes available a list of 10 different servers, so there is a very slim chance not to find out what you are looking for.

Additional Tools includes IE7 automatic optimization, quicker access to files and folders in MS Office, a banner killer which is disabled in the unregistered version and Windows Power Tools which are simply shortcuts to Microdoft's System Information, DirectX, System Configuration, Computer Management and XP's Performance Monitor.

All in all the application turned out to work fine on XP but running short on options in Vista. There weren't drastic changes in the performance of the computer as the limitations of the trial version did their job well. However, many of the options provided by the application can be found in the operating system as well (menu appearance, visual effects, disk cleaner, uninstaller etc.).

The Good

The application handles well and proved to be quite stable. It has automatic optimization options and comes complete with a registry cleaner, defragger and memory optimizer.

The Bad

It runs short on file defragmentation and many of the limitations do nothing but hinder the testing of the software.

Registry Defrager takes away all the control over your computer and you have to wait for the job to finish.

The uninstaller will not clean your registry of leftovers of the uninstalled applications. It will simply run the uninstaller of the program.

The interface needs a little change as Vista is a tad more high-flown in this sense. BoostSpeed implemented support for IE7 but failed to make the software Vista ready.

The Truth

The after-running effects were not dramatic but a slight increase of speed is noticeable. However, this can be achieved by trying different system optimizers on the market.

Despite the lack of some important features like disk defragmenter the software manages to cover most areas required for optimizing your system. However, the restrictions imposed on some of the options makes it really difficult to get a hold on software's full powers.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: