iPod + iTrip + Sony Ericsson W800i = Makeshift ROKR

We just discovered a neat little hack for the Sony Ericsson W800i. I’ve found that having an FM radio built-in to your phone can be fun. Hell, other than trying to take out the Memory Stick, there’s little about the Walkman that isn’t fun. Still, I was having a bit of ROKR envy when I realized that the answer is there, plain as day. I proceeded to tune the radio in the phone to my iTrip (the FM transmitter for the iPod) station, and bingo - all 20GB of my iPod tracks were ready to be played on the W800i. I must have sat there slackjawed for a minute or two as I marvelled at the little surprise. Sure, it’s a hack, and not the same as the real thing, but the phone does cut off the radio when a call comes in. It won’t pause the song, obviously, but otherwise, the functionality is just about the same. The quality is also not as good as a native MP3 player, but it’s more than tolerable - especially knowing that I am not limited to 100 songs.

It’s pretty clear now that the ROKR is a still-born platform. Sadly, it’s still going to sell, because people just don’t realize that there are better, less crippled options available.

TuneUp Software - TuneUp Utilities 2007 review

Computers are - let's face facts - a complete arse to work with. They've got a mind of their own and sometimes it's so completely illogical it would give Mister Spock a double coronary. Anything that helps in the battle to keep your PC under control is very welcome in our books, and TuneUp Utilities 2007 aims to be just such a program.

It comprises a suite of tools which are designed to keep your PC (a) tidy, (b) running optimally and (c) customised to your liking. The latter might seem a more trivial concern, but it's actually pretty useful to have a host of Windows tweaks all nestled under a single button.

This SystemControl button lets you customise everything from your mouse settings, Internet Explorer and Outlook options, taskbar, desktop appearance, boot screen and more. As an example, under the Font Smoothing tab you can turn ClearType on, then configure its optimal settings using a simple three-step process that asks you to choose which text looks the best from a number of options. There's nothing technical here; it's all highly user-friendly, with the options clearly explained inside a compact and tidy interface.

TuneUp 2007 is like this throughout. The Startup Manager function lists all the applications loaded on boot-up in a more detailed fashion than the traditional "msconfig" menu. It actually gives you details of what the various programs do, to assist you in determining whether you need to run them upon booting. This is superb info for computing novices and it discovered an invalid startup entry from a long uninstalled program that even we had missed.

Disk cleaning and repair is offered by TuneUp DiskCleaner and DiskDoctor respectively. These do pretty much what they say on the tin, and they do it thoroughly and quickly. The DiskCleaner tidies the usual temporary and cache files, although it also uses more in-depth measures such as searching out old backup files left behind by applications.

You can further streamline your hard drive using the Disk Space Explorer utility, which analyses the drive and produces a full report on what's taking up the most space. This can make for some interesting reading: for example, we discovered an old game had left a large archive file post-uninstallation that we were completely unaware of. A powerful registry cleaner is also provided, which is again very thorough, along with a registry defrag utility and a registry editor (which boasts a handy search feature for locating specific keys).

On the PC optimisation front, MemOptimiser runs in the background and frees up memory if system resources start to run low. The System Optimiser tool provides tips on how to improve your machine's performance. Some of these are fairly basic, but it can be useful, pointing out problems such as when Internet Explorer has been set with too large a cache size. There are also tools to analyse and automatically adjust your system and internet settings. They make fairly minor tweaks, but every ounce of speed is welcome.

Any changes made to your machine are backed up in the program's recovery centre, so your system can be restored if anything should go wrong. Even large changes, like junking a whole heap of files during disk cleaning, can be backed up in archive form if you so wish.

A one-click maintenance button is provided: this rattles off an automatic analysis and tidy process, and can be scheduled to run at a specific time every week. The package is rounded off with a shredder for secure and total deletion of files (apparently employing a method developed by the US Department of Defence - hopefully this doesn't mean that a small tactical nuke is launched at your house). There's also an undelete utility so you can recover all those files that you didn't delete securely...

TuneUp Software - TuneUp Utilities 2007 features - Verdict

This is an excellent set of utilities for keeping your PC in shape. It's a thoughtfully designed and compact program that's easy to use, slick and powerful.