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But the overall performance score was lower after running TuneUp Utilities.

There were some gains in a few areas, notably CPU compression, CPU encryption and sequential disk write. This time, mysteriously, the total score was lower - 140.8. Instead, I had to hold down the power button for three or more seconds to shut it down. Historically, the Presario wouldn’t always shut down when I asked it nicely through the taskbar menu.
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The software might have been a placebo, but I noticed that the machine turned off now when I told it to. I clicked “yes,” and TuneUp quickly swept away the temp files.Īfter that brief encounter with TuneUp Utilities, it seemed like the Presario was running a little faster.
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It also said I could free up 820M or more of hard-drive space by deleting 16,736 temporary files. You could tell TuneUp Utilities to fix the problems, which it did very quickly. It analyzed my hard drive in about 20 minutes and diagnosed 49 system problems and 1,037 program problems. I clicked on Disk Doctor, which shows a stethoscope icon listening to a hard drive.
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TuneUp rightly pointed out that the Presario had 447M of RAM, but Windows requires 512M for optimum performance. I can’t imagine anyone else ever wanting to log onto this laptop, so I clicked “yes” to remove that option. For example, it suggested I remove the secondary log-on - the start-up screen that lets another user log onto my laptop.

Some of the suggestions were obvious: “You need extra memory.” But others were downright draconian: “Remove the background image from your desktop.” The software did a good scan of all the temp files and programs that were cluttering up the hard drive and made some recommendations I had never thought of.
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It took about 10 minutes to install the TuneUp Utilities software, which prompts you with a short questionnaire about how you use the laptop: dial-up modem or DSL? Do you access a company network? Then TuneUp performs an analysis and makes a series of recommendations to boost your system’s performance. The computer had a total score of 167.8, which is pretty low but not surprisingly so for this wheezing laptop. It was definitely worth a shot.īefore loading TuneUp Utilities, I took a quick pulse of the Presario 2100, which runs Windows XP with a mobile Advanced Micro Devices Athlon processor, by running the PerformanceTest 6.1 benchmark suite from PassMark Software. The booklet that comes with TuneUp Utilities says the software can increase performance, free up disk space, maintain Windows, solve problems and customize Windows.

Could this be the laptop equivalent of Geritol, the right combination of B12 vitamins and iron supplements that will make my laptop hum again? I turned to TuneUp Utilities 2009 from TuneUp Distribution of Darmstadt, Germany.

Now manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, Geritol was supposed to give older folks vim and vigor and relief from what Welk called “iron-poor tired blood.” I realize what I’m searching for is a kind of laptop version of Geritol, the elixir Lawrence Welk hawked on his show in the 1960s. Trying to squeeze a few more months of service out of my dying Compaq Presario laptop has become a recurring theme for me. Pros: Multitasking utilities software performs a wide variety of tasks in one package Cons: Doesn’t really improve performance benchmarks, won’t resuscitate a dying laptop Performance: B+ Ease of use: A Features: A Value: B+ Price: $49.95
