clean

Downloading files, installing and uninstalling software, and other daily activities create messes that take up space and impact performance. Wise Disk Cleaner is a housekeeper of sorts, making sure that things are tidy and functioning at their best.

Wise Disk Cleaner has an attractive, well-organized interface that arranges its features in four tabs. The Common Cleaner is a quick scan that gets rid of the most obvious junk, while the Advanced Cleaner digs a little more deeply to find more space-wasters. The Slimming System feature gets rid of unneeded Windows files, such as music samples and Windows update uninstallation files. … Read more

The Windows registry is often considered forbidden territory for newbies. Only the most experienced users are encouraged to peer into its contents. Wise Registry Cleaner claims to offer a tool that even the least experienced can use without fear of wreaking havoc upon their computer. While the tool is indeed easy to use, it doesn't offer anything extra to help put new users at ease with their registry.

Wise Registry Cleaner presents a simple, easy-to-understand interface with three tabs at the top that walk you through its cleaning features. We started with the program's main selling point, its … Read more

Nowadays, cookies, temporary files, and various other means of tracking your Web footprint are par for the course. Some of these trackers are useful, while others can be potentially intrusive. Thankfully, there are myriad freeware cleaners out there that help keep your system in check. CCleaner is one of the better ones for its ease of use and powerful cleaning capabilities.

CCleaner's simple and intuitive layout will appeal to users of all skill levels. Its four features -- Cleaner, Registry, Tools, and Options -- are prominently displayed on the left side of the window. We started with the Cleaner … Read more

Every year, countless vacuums fall to the wayside after accumulated hair clogs the rapidly spinning brushes at the base of the appliance and tangles up within its attachments. My significant other and her copious amounts of long hair can spell out at least five minutes of tediously cutting away tangles from the brush after a floor sweep.

Dyson recently unveiled a new attachment -- labeled the "Tangle-free Turbine tool" -- for its expensive line of vacuums that promises to reduce hair entanglements that occur while cleaning. Instead of a horizontal spinning brush, Dyson's $69 accessory uses a vertical axis of movement. The device features two flexible counter-rotating heads with built-in brushes that actually send hair past the spinners and into the vacuum bin. … Read more

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that's especially true when it comes to spyware; wouldn't you rather protect your system than spend hours trying to rid it of malicious visitors? SpywareBlaster is a simple program that provides protection from ActiveX-based software and unwanted cookies for both Firefox and Internet Explorer users.

SpywareBlaster has a simple interface that will be easy for even novices to navigate. The main screen shows the protection status for Internet Explorer, restricted Web sites, and Firefox. By default, protection is disabled for each of these, but you can easily … Read more

CleanMyDrive goes beyond being a simple cleaning app: it combines all the features Finder lacks in drive management. Helped by its nice design and clever user interface, the free app feels like native OS X, providing information about the available space on all mounted drives; users can also eject all drives with just one click.

After installation, CleanMyDrive takes its place in the Menu bar and pops up its sleek user interface showing all mounted drives, and even disk images. The app provides information about the storage capability of each drive, as well as monitoring free space and junk on … Read more

ARO 2012 is the latest version of a longstanding Registry cleaner and optimizer. The look is familiar, but ARO 2012 offers several upgrades over previous versions, such as improved browser cleaning and user-friendlier settings as well as new tweaks that can yield better NTFS performance, faster startups, and improved CPU utilization. ARO 2012 also backs up and optimizes the Registry. You can schedule automatic cleanings, too.

ARO 2012's installer informed us that it would scan our PC as soon as it closed. The first scan is always important with software like ARO since it establishes a baseline, and ours … Read more

It was with great skepticism that I approached PhoneClean. I received an e-mail from the developer, iMobie, claiming that this free Windows app would magically allow me to reclaim storage space on my iPhone and iPad without jailbreaking and without deleting any apps or photos, videos, music, or other media content. As iMobie explained it, PhoneClean works its magic by removing long-term caches, cookies, and temporary and junk files generated by many apps or the result of failed iTunes syncs.

It sounded too good to be true.

However, since I have the smallest capacity iPhone 4S and iPad 2 and install many apps each week in an attempt to bring you, dear reader, reports on how to use the latest and greatest and most helpful apps, I am always up against the limit. Thus, I submitted my iPad to the mercy of PhoneClean.… Read more

Facebook reported that its greenhouse gas emissions from data centers, office space, employee commuting and air travel, data center construction and sever transportation totaled about 285,000 metric tonnes in 2011. It takes the same amount of energy to serve each active Facebook user as it would to produce one medium latte, three large bananas or a couple glasses of wine, according to the post.

Facebook's energy sources were 23 percent clean and renewable, 27 percent coal, 17 percent … Read more