Download May 2010 - Center

Aero test results and Direct3D capabilities, in addition to links to tasks like changing font
settings, color calibration or even disabling the Desktop Window Manager on startup.
The Power category gives you detailed battery information, such as rate of charge and “low
battery” thresholds. You can enable or disable Hibernation or build an estimate of the
machine’s carbon footprint. The Performance category is split into CPU, Memory, Disk and
Internet sub-categories. Besides showing tons of details about your hardware, you can also
set Prefetch and SuperFetch settings, disable paging for the kernel and drivers, check for
memory problems and tweak your Internet connection for better performance based on
your typical usage.
The Usability category lets you change context menu items, disable shell extensions, move
your Windows profile information to an alternate location, and disable confirmation
notices, such as the warnings you get before emptying the recycle bin. Finally, the
Miscellaneous category wraps it up with six sections:
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Environment lets you tweak your system and user environment variables.
SMARTGuard shows you detailed information about your drives if they
support the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology.
File Locks lets you drag a locked file onto the UI and then shows you what
program or process has grabbed onto the file.
Events shows you the detailed timing of your startup, shut down and resume
cycles, broken down into the different areas such as “kernel startup” and
“prefetch duration.”
Search Engine lets you pick your default Internet Explorer search box
reference.
System Tools gives you quick links to the Task Manager, Resource Monitor,
System Restore, and the Reliability and Performance Monitor.
There’s an almost full-featured (you can’t move your Windows profile nor skip confirmation
dialogs), free 30-day trial available for download. A single license for Tweak7 will run you
$19.95 direct. If you want a central place to do your basic system tweaking on your
Windows 7, you might want to take a look at adding Stardock’s Tweak7 to your system.
Greg Steen is a technology professional, entrepreneur and enthusiast. He’s always on the hunt
for new tools to help make operations, QA and development easier for the IT professional.
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