14 DAY TRIAL // Maintaining your PC at high levels of performance is no longer a laborious task that requires brain-busting decisions and documentation. Also, the launch of suites that contain a great part of what you need for the job has eliminated the use of multiple individual software that more than often would clot the registry before cleaning it, giving the intended operation a late start and slow progress at the beginning.
Raxco, one of the leaders on the file defragmentation market, has recently launched a new product, specially designed to clean your registry, reclaim free space by deleting temporary data and web browser cache, securely remove sensitive information and tweak the operating system.
PerfectSpeed's regular price is $29.99, but it can be purchased with a $10 cutoff all through July 31st, as an introductory offer. A higher discount is offered to owners of Windows Live OneCare, who can trade up the soon-to-be-discontinued product for PerfectSpeed at a $9.99 price. The application can be tested freely and with all its features and options active for a period of 15 days, sufficient time to notice the performance improvements.
With Raxco's new product you'll benefit from five modules and a task scheduler to completely automatize the maintenance process. The interface is very similar to PerfectDisk's and those familiar with the professional version of the defragmenter will notice that the two programs share some of the tools. The scheduler for instance, AutoPilot Scheduling, works in the same way in both applications, and so does the duplicate finder.
At the first launch of the software a wizard will pop out and guide you through configuring each performance improving module. Thus you can set PerfectSpeed up from the beginning and create a routine for the application to maintain the good functioning of the computer.
The main application window displays the modules that can make your PC run faster in a side panel positioned in the left part of the screen, while the largest section shows the overall performance of the system, as scanned by PerfectSpeed, and the state of each module. If the performance meter does not show excellent performance you'll have the necessary recommendations and the possibility to make a change. The wizard will be triggered and it'll jump directly to the module designed to carry out the job.
Registry Cleaner
To ensure a good run of the system, Windows registry needs to be purged of invalid entries and anything that has been left stranded in there (generally because of incomplete uninstalls) and serves absolutely no purpose. PerfectSpeed can look for errors or deletable items into the following registry keys: MRU files (most recently used), Help files, shared folders, file association, COM/ActiveX data, application info, Fonts, Shared DLLs and Startup section.
By default, the app is set to create a backup of the registry before making any modification to it, just in case you need to revert to its previous state. After the scan is complete all results will be displayed so that you can review them. Under “Details” you'll get a list with the number of items that have been found and in which area of the registry.
If you want a more extensive report, check out the log file. It provides a comprehensive view of all the detected errors and their residence in the registry together with the date and time of the scan. On the downside, you cannot create an exclusion list in case the PerfectSpeed's registry cleaner picks up a false positive that has to be skipped at future scans.
On the bright side, during our testing all it detected was good-for-nothing data that contributed only to decreased performance. Eliminating them was also a success and no problems arose. But, just like with any other registry cleaner on the market, it cannot be 100% efficient in finding the dead weight in the registry. That is why running multiple registry cleaners would benefit the registry and the system even more.
Reclaim Free Space
The space on the hard disks can easily be gulped up by data you do not really need, such as temporary files resulting from web browsing and even the simple use of the computer. More than often it happens that the operating system does not delete all this automatically, leading to huge piles of megabytes just sitting on the hard disk with no purpose at all.
PerfectSpeed provides a flexible module that not only helps you maximize the amount of free space on the computer (Maximize Free Space), but also lets you find duplicate files (Duplicate File Remover) and take a look at how the data is distributed on any of the drives available to the system (Space Explorer).
The same window structure is preserved, with the action buttons in the side panel sheltered in a drop down menu and the results and statistics present in the lower part of the pane. You get to choose the drives you want to be checked for temporary files and for each of them there is information on the type of the partition, current status, size and amount of free space (percentage included).
By default the module automatically empties the Recycle Bin and flushes the temporary data, but both these options remain your choice. If you want to see exactly which areas are being verified, you should go to the Options panel of PerfectSpeed (top right hand part of the application window) and check under Reclaim Free Space. Here you will have the possibility to add or remove new locations or restore everything to the default configuration.
The application will be thorough in its cleaning activity and will not leave useless temporaries on your hard disk. If not all the temporary files are deleted that's because they are in use.
The Duplicate File Remover screen provides you with the necessary means to detect all the duplicates on your computer. A special section in here lets you choose the types of files the scan engine should look for. The extensions are categorised by Text documents, Picture files, Video files, Music files and Other files, and the default choices can be changed by either adding new formats or removing some of the existing ones.
A simple check for duplicates consists in verifying all the drives that have been selected, but finer control over the task can be achieved. The “Advanced” button permits picking the directories to be scanned and the creation of an exclusion list with locations that should not be checked.
The time to finish the entire verification of the drives depends on the amount of data you have stored but it generally has a quick pace and should not take too long. However, for the best results appealing to “Advanced” settings and choosing specific areas to be scanned would be a good idea.
There are no settings to take into account, which makes it extremely easy to deal with. During our tests it accurately eliminated all the duplicate files we fed to it. And even the files with different names but same content were detected, which makes it plenty useful. It simply does its job responsibly and nothing else.
The Space Explorer tab can be used to view statistics on how and more importantly what data is scattered on the hard disk(s). The pie chart provides a comprehensive perspective of the files stored on the selected drive and even the individual directories.
What is beautiful about it is that all the files shown in the pie can be accessed by either opening or deleting them. Hover the mouse cursor over the files and you'll get their names, whilst right clicking lays out two possibilities: delete the file or open it with the associated program.
