SPRING CLEANING 4.0

by Smith Micro Software Inc.

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005LDN9
• Item model number: SC4BX
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 1, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,420 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Spring Cleaning makes a simple promise: it will let you get rid of the garbage on your hard drive--files and apps that are duplicates, damaged, unused, or otherwise useless--and have a happier, faster computer, slimmed down to fighting trim. Spring Cleaning definitely delivers, flagging countless megabytes of suspect software that might be clogging up the works. But be warned that this isn't the fire-and-forget simplicity of Norton Utilities and the like--for the most part, you'll actually need to get your hands dirty and make the final call, file by file, on what stays and what goes. And that means novice users, while they can still get a lot out of this package, might be a little intimidated by some of the choices.

With 15 programs in one package, Spring Cleaning guides you through a set of sophisticated searches grouped under different headings: Cleanup, Maintenance, Organize, and Internet. (You also get a restore function for undoing any over-enthusiastic cleanings--a saving grace especially for those novices.) A full Cleanup pass might take an hour or more, while Maintenance, Organize, and Internet functions can take considerably less time (this varies wildly, of course, depending on the size and status of your drive). Each of the 15 searches rounds up a different sort of potential culprit: for example, Duplicates Finder points out similar and identical files (great for chucking duped-up help engines and fonts); File Checker finds damaged files; and Alias Fixer pulls up aliases that don't point anywhere. In all cases, you're given several choices of what to do, from trashing files outright to archiving them. MacUninstaller proves especially useful, allowing you to completely clean out all traces of a particular program from your hard drive, and the Internet-specific searches identify hidden (and often large) e-mail attachments and cache files.

As a diagnostic tool, Spring Cleaning is hard to beat: nothing else is more effective for nominating candidates for a speedy deletion. Just realize that, while it might have been easy downloading all that software over the Internet in the last few months, taking out the trash might prove considerably less fun. And then you'll have to ask yourself, "So... how much does a bigger hard drive cost these days anyway?" --Paul Hughes

Amazon.com Product Description

Spring Cleaning 4.0 gets rid of hard drive clutter and wipes away Internet tracks to reclaim disk space and increase your Mac's performance.Completely uninstall old software and space-wasting files that becomescattered all over your hard drive. Quickly clean out hard-to-find Internetcookies, cache, and history files that clog disk space and risk yourprivacy. Easily restore items you've removed if you later change your mind.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars helpful and thorough- it's a must for computer clean up, March 14, 2002

By 

"halstead1" (Campbell, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SPRING CLEANING 4.0 (CD-ROM)

Spring Cleaning is a great way to help get your Macintosh organized and cleaned up. Follow the easy guide and choose a cleaning utility like MacUninstaller to find folders, Apps, fonts etc. associated with a particular application, you can then choose to move them to a backup archive using StuffIt (I have all my Read Me files in one spot now), or a storage folder, or just plain move them to the trash. If you aren't sure, move them to a storage folder first, if everything's running smoothly after a couple weeks, then empty your storage folder. The iClean utility is awesome for getting rid of your Internet surfing tracks to get rid of cache, cookies and other junk (I use mine weekly).

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This really does what it says it does, March 26, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: SPRING CLEANING 4.0 (CD-ROM)

I have been using this for a while now and I really like it. I don't go much beyond the standard mode because everything I use is right there, plus I like that everything I do there can be undone. I have gotten rid of lots of junk I didn't even know I had and now my Mac runs better. It doesn't seem to crash as often and finds go quicker. I really love the mail cleaner tool. I had no idea that Eudora kept a copy of all of my email attachments. Some of the cartoons/pix my friends send me are kind of racy and even though I forward them on to others I don't want to keep them on my Mac - too embarassing. I was shocked that even though I thought I deleted them, Eudora still kept a copy of them hidden from my view.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars It will clean alright - but you will regret this broom !, September 27, 2001

By 

Eddie Russell (Coogee, NSW, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: SPRING CLEANING 4.0 (CD-ROM)

This is one of those classic faux pas of the software world like Dbase IV, Dos 4, Delphi 4 - the cursed 4 number. So many bugs you will need two hands to swat out all the bugs in this release.

First off the interface is just plain awful. Hard to navigate, difficult and unfriendly to use, impossible to set the configuration the way you would like to.

Once you somehow manage to set the configuration the program proceeds to ignore your settings completely and totally as though you never entered them. I specifically set the program to ignore all Speech Type files. I ran the Uninstall option and there lo and behold were all the speech files cluttering up the window. I then went through and pinpointed just four specific files that I wanted it to ignore. No good. Their they were sitting pretty staring me in the face.

At the same time applications that I wanted to unintstall such as Office 2001, the Uninstall was completely blind to. How can this program be blind to such a large application as Office 2001 I will never understand. Office 2001 fully installed is an elephant. Spring Cleaning never saw it.

Then I came to uninstall Personal Web Server. It found the app but it wanted to uninstall Control Panels along with the app. I was horrified. It was trying to uninstall Modem control panels that had nothing to do with Personal Web Server - not even remotely !

Then I came to uninstall Dreamweaver Ultradev 4. Never saw it - not once.

I wrote up all this information to Aladdin. Never heard from them. I then wrote to Digital River, the company that is responsible for the download process and they were quite willing to refund me my money.

This is a cursed 4.0 program. Use at your own peril I would suggest.