by Stacey J Miller
McAfee Utilities 4.0 offers a few goodies that make it a strong contender in the Windows utilities market.
The most innovative feature in this new release is Active Tune. Like all utilities packages, McAfee Utilities 4.0 enables you to defrag and optimize your hard disk. Active Tune goes a step further by allowing you to defrag your hard disk in real time as you install new files. This won’t eliminate the need to defrag your hard disk, but it does mean you’ll do so less frequently.
The utility suite also introduces a number of less innovative but still useful features, such as McAfee Print Directory. This feature prints out the contents of any selected folder from Windows Explorer via a right-click menu. Other features have been beefed up or otherwise improved. Shredder, for example, is now considerably faster, and allows you to obliterate multiple files as well as files in the Recycle Bin and IE cache.
McAfee Utilities 4.0 still provides tried-and-true functions such as optimizing Windows, repairing and recovering files, and securing and managing data. A nice touch is the ability to run the core utilities, such as Disk Tune, Disk Minder, and Undelete, directly from the CD. You don’t have to install the software, freeing up hard-disk space. Also, the McAfee Utilities 4.0 installation CD serves as a bootable Rescue CD.
All in all, McAfee Utilities 4.0 is a solid addition to your arsenal for surviving — and maybe even avoiding — computing disasters. The current version only supports Windows 95, 98, and Me. McAfee Utilities 4.0 might just be worth the upgrade.
MCAFEE UTILITIES 4.0
MANUFACTURER: McAfee Antivirus; 888-712-1477; www.mcafee.com
PRICE: $30
REQUIREMENTS: CD-ROM; 32MB of RAM; 100MB hard disk space; Pentium or higher CPU; Microsoft Windows 95/98/Me;
PROS: Defrag as you install; highly customizableCONS: Doesn’t support Windows 2000
RATING: 89