Cyber Monday refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the ceremonial kick-off of the holiday online shopping season.

For 48 hours ONLY we are offering a 50% discount on all our software. Visit our order page between November 29 and December 01 to purchase any of our software with a massive 50% discount.

Pointstone Order Page

We’ve been getting great reviews for System Cleaner and Total Privacy and a great number of emails from our customers with testimonials like “System Cleaner is a product I am totally satisfied with and one in which I have every confidence using. This is a very intuitive, feature rich, professionally designed product for which the developers deserve to be highly commended.”

We’re feeling generous for all the great reviews, and we’re passing this generosity on to you with a great discount.

All our software now comes standard with 1 license for up to 3 PCs.

If you have been running Windows Vista for some time and do not have ridiculous amounts of hard drive space at your disposal, you are probably close to capacity on your C: drive.  Aside from running out and buying another hard drive, here are some tips on ways to clean up yours.

1. Run Disk Cleanup. Microsoft provides this tool but even I will admit that I don’t run this as often as I should.  The only thing it doesn’t do is let you schedule a weekly cleaning so you will have to try to remember.  If you are running low on space though, it could be a constant reminder.

2. Add/Remove programs is your second best friend after Disk Clean-up.  Unfortunately, unless you are installing games and apps like crazy, this is a onetime fix.  However, it could free up a lot of space.  We all know how much extra “stuff” Microsoft or our PC manufacture like to provide when we get the machine; did you go and get rid of it all when you bought your machine?

3. Do a Temp File purge then don’t let it happen again.  When was the last time you cleared out your Temporary Internet Files?  Honestly?  Do you run Google Earth or its Microsoft counterpart?  Go into your browser, clear the temporary files and then clamp down on the size.  If you have a fast internet connection, 250 megs is all you need.  Google earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth both have the potential to use gigs of space.  If you are a power-user, it makes sense to let them store data on your machine.  If you use it infrequently, set the program to delete caches upon exit and make sure to lower the maximum cache size allowed.

System Cleaner allows you to schedule all types of cleanups and optimizations. If you prefer to automate everything give System Cleaner a try.

4. System Restore can be cleaned up too.  Under Disk Clean up, there is a button labeled More Options.  You can delete all but the latest system restore points.  You can go into an admin command prompt and type the following (minus the quotes): “vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /On=C: /For=C: /MaxSize=15GB” to limit the size of your System Restore to 15 gigs as well.  Also note that the drive name is listed.  If you have multiple drives (a slower storage drive, for instance) you can set the system restore to save to D: instead.

4a. If you have service pack 1, and are happy with it and are sure you won’t be going back to non-service pack one, you can nuke the restore point to going back to your non sp1 days.  To do this, from the administrator command prompt type: “vsp1cln”.  You get 2-3 gigs of space back and you are now fully committed to service pack one.

5. Desktops don’t need to sleep.  If you have a desktop, you can choose to turn off hibernation and retrieve hard drive space equal to the amount of RAM your system has.  At the admin command prompt, type “powercfg –h off”.

6. Finish cleaning what Disk Clean-up missed.  Disk cleanup misses files in the TEMP folder sometimes so you will have to get back to that command prompt to fix it.  Type in “cd /d %TEMP%” then “cd ..” to move up a folder then “rd /s temp” .  Type in “dir temp” to verify your temp folder’s deletion and “md temp” to create a new one.  If the TEMP folder is still there, it’s ok, just skip that last step.

If you prefer to not fiddle around with this more technical step, give System Cleaner a try. It targets this a many more locations where junk and obsolete files are stored.

7. WinDirStat is your next best friend.  First of all this is open-source freeware so I’m not trying to plug a friends company.  I am trying to plug a great product.  It will find overly large folders that don’t need the space they have as well as seeking out unduly large log files, then fixing them with only a few mouse clicks.

8. When in doubt, compress.  If you have large amounts of data stored that you don’t access often, compression is a good way to free up space.  Vista makes it easy too.  Move all your important but not often accessed files to one folder, right click then go to Properties.  Select Advanced then click Compress and you are done.

9.  Tricking unfriendly apps to do what you want them to do.  This is not for the novice and could mess up your system so be careful.  If a program stores temporary info but won’t let you specify where it stores it, you CAN trick it into storing it elsewhere by having the folder point to another folder on a different drive.  Go into the folder that is currently used to store and clear out the contents.  Then go to an admin prompt, get to the folder and type: “mklink /d “FILE YOU WANT IT TO GO TO” “d:\ FILE YOU WANT IT TO GO TO” “ (with the interior quotes).  If the program understands this, you have successfully moved more of your temporary storage to an alternate drive.

10.  After even doing one or two of these steps, you will want to take the time to run Disk Defragmenter to make sure all the space you freed up is usable.  Once you’ve done this, your hard drive should be ready to go.

Microsoft’s Vista operating system experienced a less than enthusiastic welcome among PC users—a scenario that Microsoft is working hard to avert with Windows 7.  While the new Windows 7 will pack a punch in terms of improved efficiency, Microsoft’s goal is not to revolutionize the operating system world; instead, the goal is to provide an incremental improvement to the Vista operating system.  In that vein, consumers should not expect anything too groundbreaking with the release of Windows 7, but rather an important effort by Microsoft to fix some of the serious issues that have arisen from Vista.  In the words of Bill Gates, Windows 7 aims to be “more user-centric”, and focuses specifically on performance improvements.  At the same time, there are a number of interesting and significant improvements and new features that Microsoft has rolled out.  This article aims to take a look at some of the new features that Windows 7 brings to the table, as well as how the latest Windows release will differ from Vista.  All in all, Windows 7 represents a significant improvement over Vista—fixing some of the glaring problems and offering a broad range of new features.

Performance Improvements
The jury is still out, but the preliminary results seem to show that Windows 7 has been successful in reducing start up and load times.  In particular, Windows 7 has been able to reduce load times for many common office apps, such as Word.  Windows 7 also allows you to clean up your computer and improve overall performance more efficiently by allowing multiple hard drives to be defragmented at once.  For those who have spent hours waiting for Windows to defragment their hard drive, only to realize that defragmenter only defragmented one drive—this improvement is a welcome one.  Microsoft has also rolled out a beefed up and improved Resource Monitor that replaces the old Task Manager.  Resource Monitor is a sort of Task Manager on steroids, containing  many of the same features and some new and helpful ones.  Resource Monitor provides more detailed information on all of your resources; how the CPU is being used, how RAM is allocated, hard disk space and how network connections are operating.

Microsoft also made an important about face with the planned release of Windows 7, by making Windows 7 fully compatible with Vista and supporting all Vista files.  Many Windows users were disappointed when Vista was released without support or adequate integration with previous operating systems.  Although Windows 7 is only designed to offer integration with Vista, it is certainly a step in the right direction.

New Features
Beyond the performance improvements and common sense changes, Windows 7 also has a number of unique features that set it apart.  Most of these features center around security and ease of use.  One of those features Guest Mode.  This feature can be particularly handy for the family computer, where less experienced users might be downloading software or where your computer is at a high risk for spyware or adware.  Guest Mode could also be useful in the classroom, or in libraries, where many people will be using the same computer.  As soon as a user logs off, Windows deletes any files the user saved and restores the computer to its defaults.  Obviously, users will have to be careful with this feature, since it has the potential to delete important saved files!  Beyond Guest Mode, 7 also offers parents and computer administrators the ability to regulate which applications different users have access to, and even what they can do with those applications through its AppLocker feature.

Another feature that Windows 7 offers is the Problem Steps Recorder.  This feature sounds innocuous enough, but it is easy to see how it could quickly become somewhat controversial.  This new application allows those who are having trouble with a program or doing a task to press the Problem Steps Recorder button.  Windows will then record every keystroke that the users makes, and take screenshots of user activity.  Finally, the application packages everything up into a convenient MHTML file that can be emailed or easily exported.  While this could clear up some tech support headaches, users should be careful with this application, since it includes a key logger.

Overall, Windows 7 seems to be an improvement over Vista in terms of performance, as well as new features.  Only time will tell how well Windows 7 will actually hold up—we can only hope that it represents a step in the right direction towards a less bloated, more user-friendly and better performing operating system.

If you’re still worried if your computer may be infected with the widespread Conficker worm, the Conficker Eye Chart can diagnose it with ease. Conficker blocks access to some 100 security web sites, and the eye chart displays images from several of those sites. If your browser loads with the right configuration of dead images, then there’s a very good chance you’re computer’s infected—meaning it’s time you rid your self of the Conficker worm.

Check if your computer is infected with the conficker worm: Conficker Eye Chart