LITTLE ROCK — The best new fix-it program we’ve seen in a bunch of harvest moons has brought a 13-year-old Toshiba laptop back from the dead. (Or at the very least, a coma.)
It’s called TuneUp Utilities 2013, and it’s $50 for Windows from tune-up.com. And here’s the really good news: There’s a 15-day free trial. This isn’t one of those free trials where the program identifies all the problems on your computer and then says: “And now if you’ll just give us 50 bucks, we’ll fix them.” No, it fixes them right away.
This 13-year-old Toshiba laptop had so many problems it wouldn’t even start cleanly; we would have to reboot three times to get past the first screen. After the Tune-Up treatment, it boots the first time, every time. This is the first time it has booted cleanly in a decade. (No, we weren’t using it all that time; it sat doing penance on a shelf.) Oh, and by the way, it also now runs several times faster.
Now this is not the end of the tale; it’s just the remarkable part. (Like, that old Toshiba was dead, dead, dead.) We also ran the TuneUp program on our other computers, one of them purchased just a few weeks ago; they all started running faster.
TuneUp speeds the system in several ways, but the most important is it stops standby programs from running in the background. For example, when you’re working on a video editing program, which takes a lot of processing power and memory, Windows should put other stuff, like Skype or iTunes, on low priority. (It should tell them: “I’m working on something; go way kid, ya bother me.”) TuneUp quiets them down without shutting them off. It’s a silent guard; on our new laptop, the music service Spotify was pushed back 35 times in two weeks.
TuneUp has economy, standard and turbo modes. “Turbo” makes your computer run at maximum speed and is a good choice when you’re working with HD video or large games (or if your computer is old). “Standard” is for ordinary use. “Economy” mode will increase a laptop’s battery life by around 30 percent. There will be times when that matters.
TuneUp comes with so many extras we don’t have the space, and there’s also the danger of boring you right out of your socks. But OK, a few: It speeds your boot time by disabling unnecessary start up programs. It adds a “shredder” and an “undelete” button to your recycle bin. It defragments your drive. It gets rid of traces left when you surf the Web. To sum it all up, we have tried many fix-it utility programs over the years, and while most worked to a certain extent, they left us dissatisfied; but this one covers all the bases.
A READER’S WARNING
We recently recommended Freemake Video Downloader, a free program from freemake.com that downloads YouTube videos. An alert reader pointed out potential problems.
He’d been using Freemake for about a year on the advice of the information technology department of his company. They said it was a good way to download the company’s training videos. Then one Saturday morning, his computer locked and the screen displayed an FBI anti-piracy warning. Further, the message said he was going to have to pay a $200 fine to “MoneyPak” to regain control.
MoneyPak, it turns out, is a virus, and it’s not from the FBI. An alternative to the Freemake YouTube Downloader is the iVideo Converter, a free program from iVideoConverter.com. No FBI reports yet.
CHROME SHORTCUTS
Our favorite Web browser is still Google Chrome, though Firefox is a close second and coming up fast on the outside. Here are some handy keyboard shortcuts:
Ctrl-j: Hold down the “Ctrl” key and tap the “J” key to see your recent downloads.
Ctrl-Shift-b: See your bookmarks.
Ctrl-h: See the history of your clicks on the Web.
Ctrl-t: Open a new tab.
Ctrl-n: Open a new window.
Ctrl-w: Close the current tab.
PAPER-SAVING TIP
If you use the Chrome Web browser, here’s a paper-saving tip. Instead of printing out a receipt or anything you want to save from the Web, open the print dialogue box (go to the file menu and choose “print”) and change the destination from printer to “PDF.” That will save the document as a file on your computer.
GETTING NIMBLE
We all tend to forget about the thousands of e-mail and social-networking contacts we have, but a new program called Nimble brings them together in one place.
It’s a business-oriented program, something like Salesforce, but more social. The chief executive officer is Jon Ferrara, who founded the contact management software company Goldmine and sold it for more than $100 million several years ago.
The heart of Nimble is a messaging window with tabs for e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and FourSquare. Click on the FourSquare tab to see where your signed-in friends are now. Click the “all” tab to see recent posts, messages and activities. If you remember a conversation but not the name of the person, search by keyword. (Who knows, maybe it was about “Cleveland.”) Nimble also brings in a Google calendar and allows you to make task lists and set appointments.
The business version is $15 a month after a 30-day free trial (no credit card required). There’s also a free personal version, but you’re limited to 3,000 contacts. (The trouble is, we have 3,001 contacts. Somebody’s gotta go.)
BOOKS
My MacBook, Mountain Lion Edition, 3rd Edition, by John Ray, $25 from QuePublishing.com.
This book has everything you need to make the switch from Windows to Mac, which can be confusing at first. It steps you through with plenty of illustrations, so it’s easy to stay on track. A troubleshooting section shows you how to thaw out a frozen system, disable programs running in the background and fix errors on the disk. The book covers everything from entertainment options to sharing a printer or scanner over a network.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Readers can search several years’ worth of On Computers columns at oncomp.com. Bob and Joy can be contacted by e-mail at bobschwab@gmail.com and joydee@oncomp.com
Business, Pages 22 on 10/29/2012