Virgin Media carries an advert for Error Smart, which promises to fix the large number of errors found by its free scan. It will do so for $9.95 subscription. Has anybody tried it?
Edengland Fri 25/07/08 12:31
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I have just been to their web site.
They say they can "increase PC performance by up to 70 percent"
Now I have to say there is NOTHING you can do to a computer to increase performance by 70%. Even a new CPU and more memory would be hard pressed to increase performance by 70%.
And if all they are doing is tidying up a few things and deleting a few entries from the registry then I would say the MOST you could hope for is a performance increase of 1% or 2%, which you would hardly notice.
It is very unlikely that any entries in your registry are causing problems, and personally I dont believe these programs that offer to do all these things
It is up to you, but I think you would be wasting your money.
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oh, and by the way, any program that runs a free scan and finds loads of errors is LYING.
Lets face it they are hardly going to run a free scan and say "Great, we did not find any errors so you dont need to pay us any money".
They are ALWAYS going to say "Hey, we found over 400 errors on your computer, pay us some money and we will fix them".
Many of these type of programs are scams.
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If you ARE getting problems with your computer then the best way to fix them is a complete reinstall of Windows.
That will get rid of all the crap and WILL improve performance (a bit).
I know it is a big step, but I think everyone should re-install Windows every 6 months or so.
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One final thing.
I have just searched for some reviews of Error Smart and I think most of these reviews have been "planted" by the people who write and sell Error Smart.
They all seem to start "I thought Error Smart was a scam, but then I downloaded it and it was fantastic etc etc etc".
DONT believe all the reviews you read.
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I agree reinstall Windows if you`re having a few problems.
It`s not as daunting as it sounds when you google it. My computer was in a bad state when I tried it the first time, and I was amazed at how simple it was. I too now do it about every 6 months or so.
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what vhg said .... spot on
far better value is ccleaner (it's free).
no wild claims ... might not make that much difference ... but it will do it's best to keep your PC free of cr@p
http://www.ccleaner.com/
use it weekly, monthly or just when you remember
run defrag - and check your disc for errors every so often
and that's about as much as you can do
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This "up to 70%" is a comon ploy used by advertisers. This covers everything from 0% to 70%
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Question Author
Very many thanks to vhg, trish,ACT, and squarebear for a comprehensive reply. I was, as ever, sceptical, but, as ever, optimistic. I really should stick a note on my p.c.: there's no such thing as a free lunch. Thanks again.
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