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Item: Spring Cleaning 2.0 Manufacturer: Aladdin Systems Price: About $50 |
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Here is the Spring Cleaning screen.
This is the main screen for the program. Here you select the searches to be conducted.
This is the preferences window. You can set them for some of the searches. An example would be the option of placing a backup copy in the trash before deleting.
As Spring Cleaning searches, you are informed about the progress by a status bar.
Here are the results for a Fat App Slimmer Search. Notice at the top the action button. At the bottom is file information.
This is part of the file information in a result window. This search was a Font Remover. Notice the sample text provided.
This is the result of searching for StuffIt Deluxe. There were many files related to the program, including translators and archives. You have to be careful when deleting files. Each StuffIt archive is related to the program.
Notice the category which the files fall into. Just select the file and action, then click.
Here is where you can add exceptions to the list of files not to search. You can also add them in the search results window. |
Introduction Spring Cleaning does almost what it states. This program will clean up your hard drive by removing old, duplicated, unneeded, or other not so good files. When you add up all these files, they can take up megabytes of your hard drive. Most people would like to know what files they can trash and what files may be causing conflicts. Spring Cleaning finds these files by using the eleven searches. Details Spring Cleaning has a modern user interface, much like OS 8. After launching the program, a window appears and you simply click on one of the eleven search buttons. You can search using the Alias Fixer, Document Finder, Duplicates Remover, Fat App Slimmer, Empty Folder Remover, Font Remover, Help Remover, MacUninstaller, Orphan Adopter, Orphaned Prefs Remover, and Storage Items Remover. After that you select the drive, and it will search for the type of files you are searching for. A great feature in this program is that you have many options after completing a search. Notice the word, search. Spring Cleaning will not immediately delete a file in the search. It will only look for the files. After the search is done, another window appears with action commands. These actions are duplicate, put in StuffIt archive, move, trash, replace, exclude from search, none, and more. You should easily find something that you like in the list. If you aren't sure about a file, you can stuff it in an archive. Later you can determine if you need to unstuff it, or to trash it. Also displayed in the result window is information for specific file. You can view the file size, date, version, etc. You can make a list of files to be excluded from specific searches. If you know you want a file, you can remove it from the search results. Or simply, you can just view the search results and perform no actions. The results will inform you on possible files to remove, but no actions must be done. Keep in mind megabytes of your hard drive space may be used by these files. There are a total of about twelve possible actions for you to perform by simply clicking. The actions vary depending upon what search you have done. Details: Alias Fixer The Alias Fixer does just that. It scans the hard drive for aliases. If the alias does not point back to a file, there is a problem and this will tell you about it. After the search is done, the result window will pop up and you can control the documents from there. You can also easily point the corrupt alias to a different file. Details: Document Finder This search will allow you to select a file and search for similar ones. Displayed in the search result window will be files of the same type and files of the same type but not created by the same application. This makes easier organization of the searched files. Details: Duplicates Remover Many files can be found to be duplicates. This is where you will probably save the most hard drive space. However, the drawback is that the search is slow and takes a few moments. We ran the test on a PPC and searched five digits worth of files. It took a little while to get the results. The results will be in one of two categories. They can be the same file or the same file name. If it is the same file name, that means that the contents of the files are different. You must be sure when deleting these files. Details: Fat App Slimmer You may be surprised how much hard drive space the extra code can take up. This search will remove 68K or PPC code in Fat Binary applications. In a tested file of 3.7 MB, 1 MB was of 68K code. The fat size for each file is displayed in the results window. It is important that you make sure that you will not need the code. If you upgraded your computer, you may want to keep the code. If you ever take the upgrade out, you will need the old code. But if you know you are not going to change machine types, you can trim the fat off the programs. This can save you megabytes of space. Details: Empty Folder Remover Empty folders will not take up much space, but they can be useless. If you have extra folders, this search will find them and allow you to delete them. If you do have custom folders that you want to keep, just select them in the exceptions. Details: Font Remover The Font Remover will search for fonts anywhere on you hard drive. Different style fonts of the same type will be categorized together. The file information also provides sample text of what the font looks like. All this gives you easy control of your fonts inside your system folder and outside. Details: Help Remover This search will look for many types of help files including engines, documents, and Readme files. Usually when you install something, help files are place on your hard drive. If you have installed many pieces of software, all the help can quickly add up. You could delete it or place it on removable media. Details: MacUninstaller The MacUninstaller search will start by scanning applications, control panels, and extensions. After selecting a specific file to uninstall, it will search for all the files relating to the application, control panel, or extension. So you can remove the application and all of its relating files including plug-ins, documents, and more. Details: Orphan Adopter An orphan file is a file that can not find the creating program. You may not have the program or the program is not in the correct location. This search will find those files and allow you to act upon them. However, many of those files are probably needed for your system to run. If you do find a file you want to keep, you can assign it a parent application. You may have programs to open other files, that is what this feature will do. Details: Orphan Prefs Remover The Orphan Prefs Remover is similar to the Orphan Adopter. This search only searches the applications and then the preferences that do not relate to any applications. You could easily find unwanted files here, but some of them you may want to keep. If you have launched programs from a CD-ROM or other removable media, you will want to keep those prefs. Although you can search multiple volumes, you may not have the volume connected to search from. Details: Storage Items Remover After using the other searches, you may have found files that you were unsure about. You can place those files in a storage folder and deal with them later. This search will find the storage folder and display the contents. Now you can deal with those files. Conclusion Spring Cleaning can clean up your hard drive and save you megabytes of space. If you ever want to remove a software package, you can be sure to remove all of it. This program also displays the results in categories and has a list of action commands. You can find an action to your liking. So if you want to trash your unwanted files, run the eleven searches Spring Cleaning provides. Rating 
8/10
This review was published by the CCPlace Staff. No duplication of this review or any part of this review is permitted. |
