With the reliability of 11 years of experience, Ashampoo’s WinOptimizer series makes Windows maintenance fast and easy – and it works for Windows XP, Vista (32/64bit) just as well as it does for the new Windows 7 (32/64bit). The One-click Optimizer does what it says and you can run it automatically so that you don’t need to think about it at all.

Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2010, available for free from V3 Software Store (otherwise paid). Do note that you will need to register for the serial. Just about everything from the previous iterations of WinOptimizer continue here, only better and more faster. WinOptimizer has a very sleek interface, with one-click cleaning for disk, privacy and registry cleaning tasks. It also has a nice option of a full scan, which gives recommendations for disabling unnecessary services, tweaking system settings, as well as the one-click cleaning features. I also like “Did you know?” tips, some of which I found quite useful. However, WinOptimizer is the only product that requires registration. Also, no further updates are provided. However, this is the best choice if you want something simple that can clean your computer with a few clicks, with no ads.

WinOptimizer offers a very basic disk and privacy cleaner; in particular, it does not clean the history of most programs. The disk defragmenter is very fast, but seems to be a bit too quick to offer good file placement. The file erasing utility is very comprehensive, with wiping options up to Gutmann and the ability to rename the files and folders before it is erased. The registry cleaner also seems very basic, detecting very little items. (Of course, registry cleaning is not simply a case of the more the better, but the result was far less than even some very conservative registry cleaners). It also has a tweaking utility with over 450 tweaks, and it’s the best I’ve seen out of these products. WinOptimizer also has a detailed process manager, a startup manager, a system information utility, a benchmarking utility and various other tools.