I love a good all-in-one system tweaking & cleanup program. Glary Utilities provides just that! Packed with features, it really satisfies. Let’s take a look at the program bit-by-bit.
Initially when you open up the program, you’ll see four tabs: “Status,” “1-Click Maintenance,” “Modules,” and a “Menu” popup.
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The Status tab just gives you an overview of the version, last update, database date, etc. There is an “autocare” setting that’s only available for the pro version. If you like the program, you might want to buy the pro version to support the company, as this is a great piece of software. There’s also a “register” button but you don’t need it on the free version. Anyway, on this tab you can click “check for updates” and get the latest update of the program. I’d recommend that immediately after you install it to make sure you’re updated.
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The 1-Click Maintenance tab is pretty simple: check any or all of the six areas and click the button! After you click it, the program will analyze each of the areas and try to find problems. It’ll tell you which areas have problems and allow you to, again, click the button to repair problems. Pretty simple, right? I’m not sure how great the “Spyware Remover” is, as this isn’t really an anti-spyware utility, but it doesn’t seem like it would hurt.
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With all that, there’s more? Oh, yes. The Modules tab is chock full of features, with five sub-tabs. The great thing about each of the little pop-up module apps is that you can have several popped up and running at once. So you can be registry cleaning and memory optimizing at the same time.
Clean Up & Repair: Has a disk cleaner, registry cleaner, shortcuts fixer, and uninstall manager. The disk cleaner and registry cleaner are pretty straightforward…you can pretty much just click a couple times and your hard drives and registry are squeaky clean. Same goes for the shortcuts fixer: it’s quick and easy removal of dead shortcuts. The uninstall manager allows you to uninstall specific programs, remove the entry, or just modify it.
Optimize & Improve: Has a startup manager, memory optimizer, and context menu manager. The startup manager is very convenient, and allows you to decide which programs run when you start Windows. You’ll be surprised at a lot of the programs that automatically run that really don’t NEED to run. Stuff like Adobe Acrobat managers, ITunes helpers, and other things that just sap your computer’s resources. Uncheck a lot of unnecessary ones (but don’t uncheck your virus protector!) and watch how much faster your computer loads. The good thing is that if you make a mistake, you can go back to the startup manager utility and recheck the ones you want to start. It’s also possible to delete the entry if you are SURE you don’t ever need it again. The memory optimizer is a very convenient tool that will even run in your taskbar tray if you want to keep it around to defragment your memory whenever necessary. It’s easy to use…set it and…forget it? Well, set it on the memory amount and click it. About a 1/3 of your memory to a 1/2 is probably reasonable to defrag. The context menu manager allows you to tinker with your right-click menu settings. If you’ve installed a lot of programs, there might be some right-click settings that are really unnecessary. Change that in a jiffy.
Privacy & Security: Ah, if you’ve been snooping around online and don’t want others to know, you’ll love this tab. It has a tracks eraser, file shredder, file undelete, and file encrypter and decrypter. The tracks eraser is pretty straightforward: it clears your browsers’ cache of files, most recently used documents, temporary files, etc. Very convenient. The file shredder uses department of defense level security by erasing your file, and then writing over it seven times with random bits. In other words, the only more secure way to get rid of a file is to physically shred your hard drive! It also allows a wiping of the free space on your hard drive, so all those old files that you’ve already deleted can be securely destroyed. The file undelete is for normal deleted files that you haven’t specifically shredded or wiped. What that means: when you delete a file, you’re not really deleting it. You’re just erasing the pointer to the file. As you fill up the space on your hard drive that the file occupies, it gets overwritten. But, if you recently deleted a file and haven’t been filling up your hard drive, and need to get it back, the undelete utility is very convenient. Remember, though, it doesn’t work if the file has been “shredded” or has been accidentally overwritten by files. Finally, the file encrypter and decrypter. It says in the help file that it uses professional-grade encryption and decryption. I’m sure it’s true, and for files you just want to hide from prying eyes it’s a great and easy way to do it. However, I recommend another freeware utility, TrueCrypt, if you really want to make sure that your files are almost impossible to break into.
Files & Folders: On this tab, there are four great utilities: disk analysis, duplicate files finder, empty folders finder, and file splitter and joiner. The disk analysis app is a really nice feature, and it works much like WinDirStat except without the visual ability to see the files on your hard drive. It’s also faster, though, and you can pretty quickly see which files are taking up so much space on disk. The duplicate files finder is pretty straightforward, and it allows you to select certain criteria to match files by. The empy folders finder is straightforward as well. The file splitter and joiner is very convenient if you need to put files on a floppy, attach a large file to e-mail, or something similar. With the advent of flash drives, burnable discs, and a large Gmail attachment limit, that’s becoming less and less necessary. But if you want to send a 30MB file to a friend, split it in half and Gmail can send it!
System Tools: Three utilities here: process manager, internet explorer assistant, and windows standard tools. The process manager is much like the Windows Task Manager except it goes into more detail, allows you get the properties of each process, and block processes. Next, the internet explorer assistant has a lot of different tabs that allow you to customize IE and mitigate destruction that a rogue toolbar has wrought. The windows standard tools is just a shortcut to common Windows apps that you might want to use: checkdisk, system restore, disk defrag, backup, and system file checker.
And, finally, the Menu popup just gives you access to to Glary Utilities settings and the “Restore Center” where you can undo changes you’ve made (in case you’ve hastily made TOO many changes).
All in all, a fantastic piece of software for, of course, a great price. It’s my prescription of the week. — The Doc
Glary Utilities (v.2.4, 5.2MB): 
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