Review of Stardock's TweakVista

mikemuch writes "The new TweakVista utility from Stardock surfaces some of Vista's more obscure settings, giving access to diagnostics and making suggestions for services that you should be running. ExtremeTech's review of TweakVista generally likes the software, and though it's called version 0.9, it is for sale — $19.95 — and feels feature-complete. More suggestions on system optimization, however, would be helpful. From the review: 'According to TweakVista, on July 1st, the "Windows Shell Services DLL service took 651ms longer to shut down than usual." That's nice. Other than this stark presentation, there's no digestible information as to why the shell services DLL took over half a second longer to shut down. And there's no hint as to what to do about it.'"

I hate that usage of "surface"

[catbutt]

just feel like burning some karma to say that

It's called debugging.

[Short Circuit]

Other than this stark presentation, there's no digestible information as to why the shell services DLL took over half a second longer to shut down. And there's no hint as to what to do about it.

It's called debugging. You recognize a symptom, identify the problem, fix the problem. The software solves step 1; It recognizes when your computer is running slower than usual. Then it helps you with step 2; It gives you an idea of where to look to fix it.

Without the software, you'd still be wondering why your computer took a half-second longer to shut down, not why a particular process took longer. With the software, you can focus on the process, paying less attention to the computer as a whole.

The software doesn't fix your computer, it's a diagnostic aid.

slashvertisement tag

[damn_registrars]

Anybody?

Re:It's called debugging.

[Ant P.]

If they hadn't been running this software, would they have cared about that 651ms delay in the first place?

Amazing...

[misleb]

It is amazing what developers can sell in the Windows world. $20 for a pretty interface to features that are already in the OS? WTF? Have I just been spoiled by using Linux for 11 years, or what?

Not that things are much better on the Mac (which I use mostly now on the desktop). I downloaded this program, RDC Menu, to launch multiple instance of Windows Remote Desktop Client. There's the standard "trial" and "paid" versions. The author wanted money just to enable the "bookmarks" feature so you could save your connection profiles and select them from a list in the statusbar. I said screw that and I just wrote my own damn program to do it. Took me all of a few hours to get it working the way I wanted. Only functional difference between the two programs is that RDC Menu is more polished (graphics, icons, language translations, etc).

Don't get me wrong, I think programmers should get paid for their work if they want and they're certainly free to charge whatever they want, but how much are we paying of "polish?" Doesn't it seem strange that a simple GUI front end for standard OS features is like 1/5th the cost of the entire OS itself (depending on the version you buy) which probably has 1,000 times the man-hours behind it?

I dunno, when you look at the trivial utilities that people pay $20 or more for, it makes Microsoft products seem pretty damn cheap! That is, if you compare lines of code...

-matthew

 

Re:Amazing...

[MontyApollo]

They have to charge $20 since not many people (relatively speaking) will purchase it. If they knew 50 million people were going to purchase, then they could charge a lot less.

Re:CMD shell here is about same as the XP power to

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but can I click in an open window with a view of the directory I want and say "Open Command prompt here"? Why in god's name do I have to navigate up a level of directory so I can click on the directory name to open a command prompt in the directory I had been in?

slashdotforsale

[nuzak]

How the fuck was this even remotely newsworthy? Shall I just take every announcement on nonags and pipe it here?

Re:Amazing...

[plague3106]

Took me all of a few hours to get it working the way I wanted. Only functional difference between the two programs is that RDC Menu is more polished (graphics, icons, language translations, etc).

So how much do you normally get paid an hour? Unless its $10 or less, you've spent more money writing it yourself than if you just paid $20.

Re:slashvertisement tag

[Dachannien]

Better than slapping "defectivebydesign" on it, considering that Defective by Design refers to the inclusion of DRM in a product intentionally, rather than just writing software that accidentally sucks.

Re:Amazing...

[Senjutsu]

The author wanted money just to enable the "bookmarks" feature so you could save your connection profiles and select them from a list in the statusbar. I said screw that and I just wrote my own damn program to do it. Took me all of a few hours to get it working the way I wanted. Only functional difference between the two programs is that RDC Menu is more polished (graphics, icons, language translations, etc).

I don't know about you, but I bill at $89/hour for software development. At "a few hours to get it working the way I wanted", it would be a far more rational for me to just throw the guy a $20 and use my time more productively.

I'd also say that the idea that "polish" isn't worth paying for, and is something optional and unnecessary is one of the biggest problems remaining problems with the FOSS software development community.

Re:People are funny.

[misleb]

Depends on your priorities in life I guess, but IMO two hours of my time is worth much more to me than $20.

Another thing that amazes me is how many people put a price on their time as a general rule. It is as if they can't do something in life without consciously or unconsciously keeping a running tab of how much it is all going to cost someone in the end. Sad, really.

Amazes me sometimes that someone will spend hours of time to save $20,

Did it ever occur to you that saving money had nothing to do with it? I did it out of principle... to prove to myself just how trivial the product was. I did it to learn a new type of programmimng (Cocoa/Objective-C). I did it for fun.

This is Slashdot! You'd think more people would UNDERSTAND the spirit of open source!

-matthew

Re:Amazing...

[75th Trombone]

The real reason they charge $20 for all their programs is so people will look at the $50 price on their full Object Desktop suite for a year, and say "Hey, I get about twelve dozen more programs for just over twice as much; that's a good deal!"

The people they con into buying the one program for $20 are just easier money than they're used to; they still want those people to upgrade to the full suite.

I was a subscriber for a long time. It's not a bad little suite, but every program has its quirks, and I finally found it less trouble to just use the default interface. I still use WindowBlinds, though (Velvet Waves [wincustomize.com] forever!).