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(More customer reviews)As a Norton Utilities user for more than 15 years, you can tell that it takes a lot to get me to change utility software. But the Symantec products, as good as they are, seemed to get `fatter' every year and seemed to be al contributor to a slowing PC, so I started playing with alternatives. While you give up some of Symantec's integration, there are simply superior tools out there these days, and Diskeeper is clearly one of them.
First, I started trying a number of `trial' versions of various products before settling on Diskeeper. I had just completed a trial period on version 9 and was ready to buy Diskeeper 9 when the new version 10 came out. Since I have not used v9 for a lengthy period of time, I cannot confirm what the various improvements are, but I can confirm that everything that had me ready to buy v9 in the first place is there in v10, plus some. And vs. my tried and true Norton Speed Disk, Diskeeper wins hands down. Some of the key features that Speed Disk cannot match include:
1.Speed: A full manual defrag takes significantly less time with Diskeeper. What used to take hours with Norton was done in less than half the time.
2.Thoroughness: On one of my PCs I ran Norton's Speed Disk just before running the trial version of Diskeeper to see if there was any difference between how the two `saw' the hard drive. After Norton reported a fully defragged disk, Diskeeper clearly reflected some remaining fragmentation that Speed Disk did not. Perhaps the difference is not significant, but Diskeeper clearly found more fragments and handled them.
3.Intellegence: Diskeeper's `Set It and Forget It' feature is so superior to the simplistic scheduling function in Speed Disk. It will defrag quietly in the background on a continuous basis when your PC is not active, keeping your disk less fragmented all the time vs. just defragging on a set schedule. It allows you to select different levels of defragging as well as two different `schedules' so you can do quick defrags all the time to keep things relatively clean and do a deep, comprehensive defrag occasionally to insure the best defrag possible.
4.Communication: The screens for Diskeeper allow both novice and power user to have all the information they want. You can see not only what files are fragmented but which are causing the most performance drag and what level of improvement is possible with a full defrag by Diskeeper.
5.Registry Defrag: Not possible with Speed Disk at all, Diskeeper allows you to run at start up to defrag the important registry files. Since the registry `tells' Windows how to operate and since years of use will cause the registry to often fill with junk, cleaning the registry (not a Diskeeper function - see note below) and defragging the registry (Diskeeper does do this) can help speed your PC up. In fact, this may be more important for many older PCs than defragging the disk itself.Diskeeper 10 now includes a function that helps protect the registry from becoming fragmented in the future, too.
Overall, I am thoroughly impressed with Diskeeper. What you give up in Norton Utilities' integration is more than made up for in a superior overall product. Sometimes having software focused on doing one thing well is better than a Swiss Army knife approach and this is such an occasion. And if you are unsure, you can download a trial version and see for yourself before you buy. (FYI, Kudos to Amazon on my purchase. I ordered on Friday, Dec. 30th and had my Diskeeper on Tuesday, the next business day after New Years. And that was using the free freight option!)
As a side note on Registry management, specifically registry clean up, I would also recommend TuneUp Utilities 2006 as an outstanding and complementary product to Diskeeper. TuneUp '06 (I think it may be only downloadable from their web site?) provides a ton of tools to speed up your PC along with a true registry clean up utility that, again, blows Symantec away. Having had Norton Utilities on my PCs for years, I was shocked to see how much junk was sitting in my registry that Norton had not cleaned up for years. I do not like to play with the registry on my own, but TuneUp '06 is as easy to use as Norton and it is far more thorough. Again, you can download a trial version to see if it works for you, but the combo of TuneUp '06 with Diskeeper will do more for your registry (and other things) than Norton by a very wide margin.
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Diskeeper 10 Professional - 1 UserDiskeeper 10 provides new adaptive that wrings every last drop of performance out of your machine. It keeps your PC running at peak speed and performance with "Set It and Forget It" simplicity and ease. It's the same defragmenter tool that professionals use to keep their systems running at peak performance. Now you can use it, too - and keep non-networked PCs healthy and running at top speed.Set It and Forget It operation automatically defragments according to the schedule you set Allow Diskeeper to intelligently schedule itself with Smart Scheduling Multi-pass defragmentation maintains maximum PC performance with no long waits or slowdowns or excessive system resource usageScreen saver mode defragments your drive while your system is idle
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