Advanced SystemCare v4.0.1-29MB
Advanced SystemCare Free 4 wants to be it all when it comes to keeping
your system clean. It gives you a wealth of tools, rolling many of
parent company IOBit's better-known system utilities--or at least those
utilities' engines--into one convenient package.
The program'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's no
accident that to make the process even faster, with even less of a need
for user input, that you can configure it to run on system start-up.
The Deep Care option adds several features to Quick Care. These include a
deeper Registry clean, disk defragmenting, a "Windows vulnerability
fix" and a "Passive Defense" that don't readily define what they do, and
a system optimization option with several optimization presets.
Advanced SystemCare Free has a fantastic range of features, but its
Quick Care options are most transparent with how they'll affect your
computer. Fortunately, the program's log records all of its activities.
We'd just like to find out how a program like this is going to change
our computer before it effects those changes.
Scan times will vary depending on which options you choose, although we
found a Deep Care scan with all the options activated to be blazingly
fast. It completed in less than 10 minutes, which isn't a long time for a
system-invasive program like this. Much of the performance is owed to
the new scanning engine, which can fix up to 10 problems simultaneously.
The previous version could only handle eight.
There are a several new skins in version 4, along with a new
performance-monitoring bar so you can more readily observe and gauge the
program's progress. The Utilities section has been replaced with IOBit
Toolbox integration, which is sort of confusing. Some of the options
take you to IOBit's program download page, such as the Disk Defragmenter
options. Other choices simply open a power user's configuration window.
One part of the program we recommend new users avoid, or at least use
with extreme caution: the Turbo Boost. Turbo Boost will disable core
system services in an attempt to accelerate your computer's performance.
Some of these include Windows Update and keyboard hot keys, and we wish
that this section of the program was more explicit about how it can
affect your computer.
To its credit, though, Advanced SystemCare Free includes a Rescue point
creation tool, so it's not hard to undo changes if you've had the
foresight to make a rescue point. A smaller problem is 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.
Overall, we like Advanced SystemCare Free's toolset, performance, and
convenience, yet still wish the program was more explicit about how it
changes your computer.
