Advanced SystemCare Free 5 uses its powerful arsenal of optimization
tools to keep your PC feeling fresh and clean. It also includes a couple
of features that could help boost performance for either gaming or work
purposes--your choice.
Advanced SystemCare's Quick Care option
includes the ability to clean your registry, perform a rudimentary
malware scan, fix and remove broken shortcuts, delete junk files, and
erase browsing tracks. It works in a flash, requires almost no user
input, and to make things even easier, can be configured to run on
system startup.
The Deep Care option, on the other hand, takes
system care to another level. It performs all of the Quick Care items to
a much deeper degree, plus it adds several other scans and fixes to its
checklist, including disk defragmenting, a Windows vulnerability fix,
and a system optimization with several presets. Understandably, this
kind of deep digging can sometimes make a user nervous. Fortunately, the
program's log records all of its activities, letting you see how each
affects your computer.
Scan times for the Quick Care and Deep
Care options differ significantly, yet, both processes still seem
blazingly fast. For instance, we completed a Deep Care scan in
approximately 15 minutes, which is an impressively short time for a
system-invasive program like this.
Brand-new to version 5 is the
Active Boost function, which runs in the background and automatically
improves PC performance by managing your system resources. We recommend
enabling it, as it even keeps a log of all the active processes that it
manages to speed up. Also important, Version 5 connects to the cloud in
order to keep its database up to date.
As for Advanced
SystemCare's user interface, we were impressed, to say the least. The
main dashboard is superclean, with nifty icons and intuitive navigation.
Plus, there's an unimposing smiley face always at the bottom of the
screen, indicating your PC's overall health. If you click the Status
button next to the smiley, you can also get more detailed info from the
system performance monitor.
One part of the program we recommend
new users approach with extreme caution is the Turbo Boost, which can be
set to optimize for either gaming or work purposes. It sounds fun, but
you must first configure the tool by telling it which core system
services to disable in order to accelerate your computer's performance.
Since the Turbo Boost section doesn't spell out how disabling these
services might affect your computer, we highly recommend doing your
research before exploring. To its credit, though, Advanced SystemCare
can create rescue points, so it's not hard to undo changes if you end up
making any mistakes.
One small problem we found was that some
of the program's options open in new windows, while others open in the
same window. Those in the same window have convenient back-navigation
buttons in the upper left; those in new windows are sometimes overlaid
directly on top of the previous window and make it hard to see how to
return to the previous screen. Also, we were a bit turned off by the
cleverly disguised ad for Roboform Password Manager during installation.
It looks a bit like a terms-of-service sheet, so be sure to read
carefully before your instincts kick in and you automatically click
Accept.
Overall, we love Advanced SystemCare's toolset,
performance, and convenience. Sure, we wish the program were more
explicit about how it changes your computer, but we still think it's an
awesome all-in-one system utility, and we highly recommend downloading
it.
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