Description:
Spring Cleaning makes a simple promise: it will let you get rid of the garbage on your hard drive--files and apps that are duplicates, damaged, unused, or otherwise useless--and have a happier, faster computer, slimmed down to fighting trim. Spring Cleaning definitely delivers, flagging countless megabytes of suspect software that might be clogging up the works. But be warned that this isn't the fire-and-forget simplicity of Norton Utilities and the like--for the most part, you'll actually need to get your hands dirty and make the final call, file by file, on what stays and what goes. And that means novice users, while they can still get a lot out of this package, might be a little intimidated by some of the choices. With 15 programs in one package, Spring Cleaning guides you through a set of sophisticated searches grouped under different headings: Cleanup, Maintenance, Organize, and Internet. (You also get a restore function for undoing any over-enthusiastic cleanings--a saving grace especially for those novices.) A full Cleanup pass might take an hour or more, while Maintenance, Organize, and Internet functions can take considerably less time (this varies wildly, of course, depending on the size and status of your drive). Each of the 15 searches rounds up a different sort of potential culprit: for example, Duplicates Finder points out similar and identical files (great for chucking duped-up help engines and fonts); File Checker finds damaged files; and Alias Fixer pulls up aliases that don't point anywhere. In all cases, you're given several choices of what to do, from trashing files outright to archiving them. MacUninstaller proves especially useful, allowing you to completely clean out all traces of a particular program from your hard drive, and the Internet-specific searches identify hidden (and often large) e-mail attachments and cache files. As a diagnostic tool, Spring Cleaning is hard to beat: nothing else is more effective for nominating candidates for a speedy deletion. Just realize that, while it might have been easy downloading all that software over the Internet in the last few months, taking out the trash might prove considerably less fun. And then you'll have to ask yourself, "So... how much does a bigger hard drive cost these days anyway?" --Paul Hughes
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