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My Mac Magazine #35, March '98

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By John Nemerovski

Spring Cleaning 2.0
Aladdin Systems, Inc.
Price: $30 - 50 street (U.S.) depending on the bundle or rebate offer.
http://www.aladdinsys.com

Spring Cleaning Picture 1 Aladdin Systems has released version 2.0 of Spring Cleaning. It's a powerful, yet straightforward, utility designed to help users maintain maximum storage and performance capability of hard disks, or "clean up your hard drive and regain wasted disk space," in Aladdin's words.

Version 2.0 has a new look, several additional features and procedures, plus fresh windows and dialog boxes. A new "View By" menu makes searches especially flexible. The appearance is clean, and performance is speedy in most of the search components.

Spring Cleaning 2.0, or SC2 as I'll call it, is not for everyone. Please stick with me as I explain its benefits and target market.

THE APPLICATION
Spring Cleaning 2.0 includes eleven separate modules, each one capable of doing SEARCHES, displaying RESULTS, and then doing ACTIONS. For example, if you have a PowerPC system, and want to strip the "fat" applications of unnecessary 68k code, you run Fat App Slimmer, then search for the appropriate items on your drive, and decide which ones to trim.

The ten additional functions of Spring Cleaning 2.0, with brief descriptions, plus my opinion on their relative importance, are:

Alias Fixer (for corrupt or invalid aliases) - minor

Document Finder (to locate files by type) - minor

Duplicates Remover (to eliminate unnecessary identical files) - useful

Empty Folder Remover (to get rid of 'em) - useful

Font Remover (helps keep track of all fonts) - useful

Help Remover ("looks for help files, engines, documentation and Read Me files") - useful

Mac Uninstaller (for uninstalling all related files) - ESSENTIAL

Orphan Adopter (finds files "that were created with an application not in the specified location") - minor

Orphaned Prefs Remover (identifies unused preference files) - useful

Storage Items Remover (for taking care of items stored by one of the other SC2 functions) - ESSENTIAL

The entire suite is comprehensive and robust. Different users of SC2 will probably consider the "minor" features to be much more valuable than I do, but just about everyone should agree that the Uninstaller alone is probably worth the cost of Spring Cleaning.

Once SC2 has searched your drive (or volume, to be precise) under any given criterion, the search results are displayed, as shown in the picture below:

Next you have a choice of fifteen different actions to perform on an item. They are: Delete, Move to Trash, Move to, Duplicate to, Move and Leave Alias, Replace with Alias of, Move to StuffIt Archive, Duplicate to StuffIt Archive, Point Alias to, Assign Parent, Trim Fat, Launch with, Run Script, Except from Future Searches, and Move to Storage Folder.

Some of these actions are operative by default, and others need to be selected in the Preferences, or de-selected in Exceptions. I realize that SC2 appears to be rather complex in description, but in actual operation it is surprisingly intuitive and logical. Additionally, every step takes place very quickly, except searching for duplicate items.

Installation and Documentation
Aladdin provides a basic printed manual with SC2. It is informative, with plenty of screen shots. A thorough Apple Guide helper is always available from the Menu Bar.

The User's Guide mentions the "Spring Cleaning CD," but my software arrived on a floppy diskette. Installation is quick and easy: "Click the Install button for a full installation of all parts of the Spring Cleaning package. There is no custom or partial install available." The entire SC2 folder fills 2.3 MB on my small hard drive.

Aladdin maintains a very comprehensive Web site, which is worth visiting for changes, especially with OS8.x updates coming regularly. Tech support informed me, via email that: "The performance of Spring Cleaning will improve if you have Macintosh Easy Open enabled. If users make a custom set of extensions with only Macintosh Easy Open enabled and all of the other extensions are off, it will help the SC application to run faster and better."

Requirements:
Macintosh System 7.0 or later, with at least 1.5 MB of RAM. Full performance requires system software 7.5 or later.

Registered owners of Spring Cleaning 1.x (and LaundroMac) are eligible for free upgrades. See Aladdin's Web site for details.

Recommendation
Before doing any serious removing and deleting, users of Spring Cleaning should be VERY careful.

I would buy Spring Cleaning 2.0 for two major reasons:

To get as much extraneous flab and useless garbage off my hard disk as possible, and

To totally remove unneeded applications, including every associated invisible file, control panel, extension, help document, and whatever else is parked on my drive.

Many Macintosh users have tons of empty space on their volumes, or are not particularly fussy with respect to hard drive storage maintenance routines. If you need every available bit of capacity on your system to be available, or you have high standards for the upkeep of your computer, Spring Cleaning 2.0 is for you.

John Nemerovski (nemo@mymac.com)

Websites mentioned:
http://www.aladdinsys.com

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