Advanced SystemCare Free review

By: Codrut Nistor, Editor, Software Reviews
Published: 8th September 2009

Cleaning time, people! Unfortunately, you can't clean someone's mind as easy as you can do that with a computer, and I have serious reasons to say that. If you happen to have at least two or three friends/relatives who seem to simply be headed towards the grave, without any serious desire of doing something with their lives, you surely understand what I have in mind when I speak about cleaning people's minds...

... but let's leave people behind and move to one of the better things in life - computers. I don't know about you, but I never got crossed by computers. Sure, they can break, they can give you headaches, but you won't ever see a computer lying or stabbing someone in the back, at least not until AI gets closer to human nature, of course.

OK, so... computers, right? To clean computers, there are plenty of solutions around, and today we'll talk about one with more than 30 million users. Wow, that's enough to fill a pretty large country, so let's see why so many computer users have chosen to use Advanced SystemCare Free, shall we?

Setup

Since downloading a 7.5 MB setup package should be a big problem to most Internet users, let me point out something everyone should beware of - installing the Yahoo! Tolbar and Yahoo! being set as the default search engine are both checked by default in the install program, and if you click through the screens too fast, you may miss unchecking those boxes.

Why uncheck them? Don't tell me that you ever knew someone really using the Yahoo! Toolbar, because I won't buy that, OK? On the other hand, I knew a lot of people having it installed, simply saying "I have no idea how did it appear there. No, I don't use it." when asked about it and moving on with their bloatware-loaded computer user life...

Just for the record, I am playing with version 3.3.4 now, and the setup process was smooth and without any special things to do, except what I already mentioned. Good... let's move on now, shall we?

Interface

Just as expected, this piece of code looks good. There's plenty of eye candy added in the pot, but just enough to make things look nice, without making the whole deal look like a kitsch, as it happens with some system utilities for Windows.

Unfortunately, I think the interface of this program is not consistent at all, since the main window can be customized to use a white or black theme, but the tools you'll launch using that window may look different, depending on the theme your Windows is using. Some may not consider this such a big problem, and I don't think it is a really big deal, either, but when a program is used by so many people, I expect to see a flawless interface!

Oh, yeah, one more thing - the HTML file coming with the program looks HORRIBLE, and the online documentation is really useless to those having a slow Internet connection. Why not include that in the setup package? That's a big mystery to me, so let's move on to the features now, I am sure it can only get better during that part!

Features

Advanced SystemCare Free brings together a lot of useful tools, but it also comes with the flaws most programs from this category have, like adding various system tools that come with Windows to its own interface, instead of having improved versions of those tools. One example -

If we go through the list of utilities included with Advanced SystemCare Free, there's a lot to play with, everything being nicely arranged in three large categories, suggestively called Maintain Windows, Diagnose System, and Utilities.

Each of the categories mentioned above comes with its own platoon of tools, and if you're going to the Home screen, you'll spot what you're missing by not registering - the exclusive features include automated care/update/sweep, as well as the one-click system optimization tool. What a pity, what a pity...

... but don't worry, there's still plenty to mess with here, since defragmenting your drive or cleaning your registry are also operations that need to be done from time to time, and I am sure that most home users won't ever need to automate this kind of tasks - at least that's what I like to think, because I always try to put myself in the same situation as those people I talk about.

These being said, I will get back to Advanced SystemCare Free, maybe I'll discover some tricks to share with you. Other than the above, there's still plenty to say about the program, but I think a third degree encounter with it will do more than anything, so...

Tips & Tricks

1. You should enable System Restore to be sure everything will be fine, even if something goes wrong...

2. To quickly open the memory optimizer, right click the Advanced SystemCare icon in your system tray and choose Action>Optimize Memory. Be sure to notice the other tools available here!

3. To destroy temporary/junk files, be sure to enable secure file deletion in the Options window (the option can be found in the Junk Files Clean section).

Strengths

Advanced SystemCare Free can take care of virtually all cleaning and maintenance tasks any average Windows user needs completed, looks good, and it's free. Even more, it's not that hard to use, and it works great!

Weaknesses

The documentation could be much better, and leaving System Restore aside to use a custom backup solution would also be a good idea. Even more, having those Yahoo!-related things disabled by default in the setup program would be much better.

Final Thoughts

Advanced SystemCare Free may not be the best solution for some users in my case CCleaner gets the job done like no other!), but it's surely a piece of code worth trying. Once you try it, it's your decision... I only tried to show you the way, and I hope I did it right. May your computer fly like an eagle, with or without Advanced SystemCare Free! ;)