Having Problems With Your Windows System?

excellent
key review info
application features
  • Cleans disks
  • (7 more, see all...)

I always had a weakness about system tweakers. Sometimes I even tweak my system editing the registry by hand, but I must admit that specialized applications are much easier to use.

I used a lot of excellent all-in-one tweaking applications, and I thought things were settled. As usual, something new and big struck me. The name is Elite Utilities Professional, the version is 9.0.0 and the reality is that this application seems an elite one from the start. Why? This is what we should see next...

Fortunately, the installation kit doesn't have an outrageous size, it weights only 27MB, which is small enough if we think about those over sixty tools that come with Elite Utilities.

After the setup process finishes (no problems with that) you will be taken to the main screen of the application, inside the Clean and Repair area. Elite Utilities Professional has a beautiful interface, with excellent graphics and easy to use. The tools are organized into four main areas: Clean and Repair, Optimize and Improve, Privacy and Security, Useful Programs. Now, let's check the most important tools that can be found in each of them!

The first area has five tools, all of them being common to the tweaking and cleaning programs. The four cleaners can handle junk files, registry, Internet traces or run a quick system cleanup, while the Personal Uninstaller can handle the task of the Add/Remove Programs applet from the Control Panel and even a bit more (such as checking the programs list for validity and deleting invalid entries).

In the Optimize and Improve area we have no less than ten tools for system optimization. The list begins with the Start-Up Manager and ends with ScanDisk. Here, you can optimize your Internet connection, memory or defrag the system registry.

The intelligent task accelerator can speed up most frequently used programs, but you can edit the list of accelerated applications yourselves.

If you want to benchmark your CPU, search no more! Elite Utilities has a small CPU Benchmarking tool done especially for this purpose. Unfortunately it doesn't have a rich results database, you can only compare your processor's performance to one result obtained by the producer of this software using an unknown computer configuration (unknown for us, because I am sure they know what hides inside the case of their test computer).

Privacy and Security are two hot topics today and they'll remain this way for a long time, I am sure of that. There are a lot of useful tools here, and I will tell you few words about most important of them.

The Personal Firewall module allows you to control outgoing and incoming Internet connections easily, and the Network Utilities are a perfect companion for it. There are sixteen network tools at your disposal, and some of them can be great helpers for any user.

The most important network tools are the Bandwidth Monitor, the port and IP address scanners, trace route, IP ping and the list doesn't end here. Using them is very easy, and I am sure that even my mom can handle them without much problems.

Security can't be complete without being sure that a deleted file is really dead & gone, and this potential issue is also handled here. The name of the tool that takes care of it is Personal Shredder. The files that you select for removal are purged using a seven-pass deletion method.

Now I have to tell you few words about another great tool, called File Armour. You files won't be protected by a suit of armor, but encrypted using River's Code 4 algorithm. Any person trying to access your file won't be able to do it without decrypting it first. I don't know about you, but for me this sounds great!

Before moving on, I have to tell you about the Surf Anonymus tool. The name says it all, but this is not just another IP hiding tool. Once enabled, it will automatically change your address each 10 seconds (you can change this period, if you want), and I think this can prove extremely useful in many cases.

The Privacy and Security area has even a second page full with useful tools, and I only want to tell you about one: the Parental Control module. With it, you can restrict access to certain websites and even redirect the browser from them to other sites, like Google or Yahoo. This tool is highly customizable, having a rich amount of keywords and sites that are used as filters, that you can change as needed.

Last area of this all-in-one software package is also a very rich one and its name is Useful Programs. Let's point out the most important of them!

The Virtual Desktop allows you to create even over a hundred virtual desktops and assign keyboard shortcuts to access them. It's something good to know, but I think that when a certain number is exceeded (around twenty, in my opinion), it becomes really hard to assign new keyboard shortcuts.

One of the many reasons that make me love Total Commander is its multi rename tool, and Elite Utilities has one of its own. Files can be renamed using numeric indexing or text replacement and even moved to another directory.

The Shutdown Manager can schedule system operations like shutdown, hibernation, desktop locking, log off or restart. You can schedule an operation once and check a box in order to make it happen every day. No more nights with your computer left running alone!

Most people like having a wallpaper on their desktops, even though this can take away a small amount of the free memory available. The Wallpaper Manager can create a database with your favorite images and place them on your desktop periodically or change the wallpaper each time you start your computer.

When talking about backup, you can use the Registry Backup or the System Restore tools. While the last one doesn't have any special options, allowing you to create and restore system restore points, the first one can let you backup only the parts of the registry that you want.

The Media Organizer allows you to manage your multimedia files, no matter where they reside. It can scan your HDD, FDD or optical drives. The extensions of the files to be placed into the database can be easily customized to better suit your needs.

I skipped a lot of tools obvious for such applications, like the process manager, the hardware information tool, duplicate file searcher and many more, but discovering them will be your task, and I am sure you won't mind.

Before I go, I have one more tool to introduce. Its name is Style Desktop and its purpose it should be obvious. It can disable, hide and customize your Windows desktop. How? This is the last homework for you now, and I am sure you will enjoy it. Good luck!

The Good

This software package has so much to it that I don't know where to start! It has an excellent interface, an incredible amount of useful features and it's easy to use for every computer user out there.

The Bad

I can't understand why the Process Analyzer feature doesn't work at all, since this is a very limited trial version anyway. I also found some spelling mistakes that shouldn't appear in an application like this. For example, in the Useful Programs section, the Desktop Style function should "Backup your system registry"!?! The Parental Control filter used over 90% of my CPU when hidden, but maybe it was just my system...

The Truth

Elite Utilities Professional is almost perfect, if we skip the small spelling and misplaced texts issues. The shareware version that I tested is very limited, but when talking about an application suite like this, that shouldn't be much of a problem - the price of the full version is very good and I think this is one of the best deals that I found in the last months.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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user interface 5
features 5
ease of use 5
pricing / value 4


final rating 5
Editor's review
excellent
 
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