Recently I was able to test out and review Disk Expert from Nektony.

Disk Expert is a hard-drive management program for Macs, and assists you in locating the files which are taking up the most room on your Mac’s hard drive. This is our first video review, and I had to edit (and record) this a few times until I was happy enough with it.

I really liked Disk Expert. The UI is very smooth, yet displays so much information. It’s one of the best looking maintenance utilities for Mac that I’ve seen in a long time. It won’t be leaving my hard drive for a while that’s for sure.

I didn’t mention this in the video review, but Disk Expert is able to scan external drives too.

Enjoy the video!

Back in September we wrote a review about MacKeeper which looked at how to clean up a Mac with MacKeeper. Well, since MacKeeper is such an indepth piece of software we thought we’d take a look at some of the other parts of the program. Since our last post covered MacKeeper’s cleaning utility, for this post we’ll take a look at optimization, and all the wonderful ways you can keep your Mac like new.

As you can see, the optimization section of MacKeeper consists of three items – Update Tracker, Login Items, and Default Apps. Let’s take a look at Update Tracker.

Update Tracker in MacKeeper

Update tracker works by checking each application installed on your Mac and seeing if there’s a new version. The applications on your Mac which are marked as up-to-date are seen as green, and any out-of-date application is seen as red. Any out-of-date software on your Mac can be updated by clicking on the update button. Here’s how my Mac looked before running Update Tracker:

So, I clicked on the Update All icon and began to have some issues. My intention at this point was to show you how my apps looked once they were all updated. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

I had about 38 pieces of software which required updating, so I clicked the Update All button. The first piece of software I had problems with was Comic Life – MacKeeper froze about 3.5 MBs into the download. I then quit the application thinking it was a software issue, then went through the same process – the same issue occurred. I tried to update another app, and at this time, the progress bar and all subsequent updates froze. Enough was enough at this point so I contacted the Live Chat from within MacKeeper (which is an awesome idea). Unfortunately, the best they could give me was to shut down the MacKeeper process from within Utilities and to try again, and if this didn’t happen, then just download the programs from their developers website.

Since there are some apps on this list that I only use once every few months, this was a pretty futile solution, so I decided to go through the apps which I use most and update them from within MacKeeper. Unfortunately, this was inconsistent. Some of the programs updated, and some didn’t, freezing about 10MBs away from downloading. Very frustrating.

Login Items in MacKeeper

The Login Items part of MacKeeper allows you to control which programs start when you login to your Mac, and which don’t.

You can control these programs via the checkboxes on the side, or even add/remove items from the list. I didn’t have any issues with this part of MacKeeper, and I found that it worked great. It actually allowed me to remove items which I never even knew were starting up whenever I logged in.

Default Apps in MacKeeper

When you run Default Apps for the first time it will scan your Mac’s hard drive to look for associations between programs and file types. It allows you to define which program opens which type of file. It also shows current associations between all file types and applications which open them.

You can select which software is applicable for the file type, and then also choose from a range of different filetypes to which you want to associate that program with. When I reviewed the list MacKeeper gave me, I was pretty happy with the current programs and associations, so unless there’s anything you just have to have changed, leave things in here as they are.

Conclusion

Aside from the issues I had with the Update Tracker, the rest of MacKeeper’s optimization section worked pretty well. However, it truly won’t be an optimization piece of software until they fix the issues with downloads timing out and freezing up.

MacKeeper is available for just $39.95. Even with the issues I had, this is still a great deal, especially when you consider all that you get a whole suite of tools bundled into one program.

When I made the switch from PC to Mac four years ago, I was amazed by how effortlessly I could maintain my Mac (I still am). But four years later, I’m almost sure that I could do a better job in maintaining and cleaning my Mac. One of the many reasons I’m a Mac user is that there are some very creative and talented developers who strive to make the Mac computing experience even better.

Enter MacCleaning. MacCleaning is a nifty menubar utility that effortlessly monitors your hard drive for free space, cleans up system junk, and offers ejecting mounted drives with just one click. Instead of over promising and under-delivering, MacCleaning does a very efficient job.

MacCleaning Options

In the preferences, there’s an option to be warned when you free space drops below a certain percentage. Currently, those percentages are at 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%. What I like about this is that you can set to be warned and then run the program to help you free up some space. I probably wouldn’t set it to 10%, so I’d say the least you need to be warned at is 20%.

MacCleaning lets you choose which places you wish to clean. Those places are:

• System Caches
• User Caches
• System Logs
• User Logs
• User Trash
• User Downloads folder.

There’s also the option to launch MacCleaner at login. I’d say that this isn’t really necessary because you probably won’t be cleaning your Mac every day, but I’d like an option to launch every two weeks to run some cleaning.

There are two versions of MacCleaning available. I used the Pro version for review purposes, but there’s also the free version. However, the free version only offers fast clean and real time disk monitoring – there is no option to eject mounted drives with one click, and the warning to be reminded when your hard drive space drops to a certain percentage is removed.

The requirements for MacCleaning are minimal – Mac OS X or later, 512 MB of RAM or more, and 2.8 MB of HD space available.

Get MacCleaning Free!

MacCleaning are currently offering their Pro version for just $4.99 – reduced from the normal price of $9.99. But guess what? We have 15 copies of MacCleaning to give away! The first 15 people who leave a comment on this post (with a legitimate email address) will receive the Pro version of MacCleaning. Contest ends Tuesday 27th December, 2011 11:59pm CST.

Back in February I wrote my initial thoughts on MacKeeper. I was recently contacted by someone from MacKeeper asking me to take another look and to publish my thoughts – I agreed.

Since MacKeeper is such an indepth piece of software, one review probably wouldn’t do it justice. For those of you unfamiliar, MacKeeper is a full suite of maintenance and utility tools for your Mac, and is comprised of four different areas. Those areas are:

• Security
• Data Control
• Cleaning
• Optimization

For the first part of the review I’m going to take a more indepth look at the cleaning part of MacKeeper.

This area is made up of five different components:

• Fast cleanup
• Duplicates Finder
• Files Finder
• Disk Usage
• Wise Uninstallation

Fast Cleanup

The idea of Fast Cleanup is that it will find and remove junk files on your hard drive to free up space. Several months ago I upgraded my hard drive to 300 GB so I was pretty eager to see how much room I could free up. Initially, MacKeeper will perform a scan where it will look through your system. When it’s doing that it will identify all files that are safe to delete (they will be checked) and you can remove those files with one click.

As you can see from the screenshot, Fast Cleanup was able to identify 2.8GB worth of junk files that it would be safe to remove.

Duplicates Finder

I use my computer for both work and personal use, and since I’ve been doing that since 2007 I was really looking forward to seeing how much space I could free up by deleting duplicate files on my Mac. MacKeeper scans your hard drive and groups any identical files even if they were renamed, allowing you to remove  them. At this point, you can either select all files, or choose which ones you want to keep.

MacKeeper found 3.3GB of duplicate files located on my Mac. Needless to say, I got rid of them and I’ve experience nothing untoward happening with my machine (I know some people are wary of just deleting files arbitrarily).

Files Finder

The Files Finder in MacKeeper scans your Mac’s hard drive for all different types of files. For instance, if you want to know where all of your media files are, you can create your own filter. There are preset filers such as Video, Audio, and other – see screenshot below for what kind of sorting you can expect.

I honestly didn’t feel like this would be a feature I would use, but the more I think of it, the more I can see myself using it. I use Quicksilver and Spotlight to help me locate individual files on my Mac when I need them, but there are situations involving work projects when I would want to locate all files involved with that project (then perhaps I would upload them directly to DropBox).

If you’re someone who keeps your Mac really well organized, then this is probably a feature you wouldn’t use all the time, but if you’re like me and your hard drive becomes cluttered, then Files Finder could come in handy.

Disk Usage

Disk usage is useful because it helps you to visualize the size of your files and folders located on your Mac. This helps you to pinpoint and detect large items on your hard drive (in case there are any you didn’t know about, or wished to delete some). Your hard drive is scanned and your folders are sorted and color co-ordinated by size. Green are the smallest files, then yellow, then orange, then red.

Here’s how my largest files were sorted:

Wise Uninstaller

Wise Uninstaller will completely remove applications, widgets, preference panes, and plugins (emphasis on completely). Often times when you drag an application to the Trash there are files remaining which were associated with the deleted program (since those are no longer needed, there is no need to keep them). There are other third party apps which do a good job of removing these files – AppCleaner and AppZapper – but having everything centralized through MacKeeper certainly makes it just that little more efficient.

For example, if I wanted to remove Growl, I would select it, click on the remove button, and the program and all associated files would be removed.

Note: Before you use MacKeeper for the first time I would make a backup of your hard drive. It is always recommended to make backups before deleting files of any kind.

MacKeeper has been recommended to me many times, both on a personal and professional level. I haven’t tried it, but after reading more recommendations on Twitter, I’ve decided to download the free trial (you should too). MacKeeper claims to be 911 for your Mac here’s a quote from the overview section of the website:

MacKeeper is like 911 for your Mac. It’s an easy way to manage routine tasks and keep your Mac secured, clean, reliable, fast and attended!

The software offers security, data control, cleaning, optimization, and geek on demand (support). The free trial last for 15 days and is a fully functional trial with all features (including the support).

I like to think that I keep my MacBook Pro pretty clean and tidy, but it’s four years old now, and it definitely needs a helping hand now and again. I most recently upgraded the hard-drive to 300GB, so I need all the assistance I can get maintaining data, keeping everything organized, etc.

Have you used MacKeeper? What do you think? Would you recommend it? If you use another piece of software to help you secure, manage, and organize your files, which software is it?

Keeping your computer clutter free is a challenge at the best of times. Your Mac probably has at least a 120GB Hard Drive – that’s a lot of room to try and keep organized. If you don’t uninstall programs on your Mac without deleting all the erroneous files, it can become quite a mess. Sure, emptying everything into the recycle bin is a great solution, but what about the files you can’t see, or the files you don’t really need? How do you know if it’s safe to delete those?

Check out CleanMyMac – maintenance software for your Mac. One of the things I like about CleanMyMac is that it removes a lot of the unnecessary files. So you have the files that accumulate with use, but there’s also the files that you don’t need, stored on your computer’s HD which can be erased. The software includes a Cache Cleaner (for cleaning out your cache which can get quite considerable in size), a Log Cleaner (which removes useless log files), a Universal Binary Cleaner (removes unused binary code), a System Junk Cleaner (to remove the left over files), and a Language Cleaner (removes languages you don’t need installed on your machine). This is not all though – there are many more features!

There are over 50 plus features in total that are user friendly – CleanMyMac does all the heavy lifting. Don’t know much about Binary Files or Log Files? No problem. You can tryout this maintenance software for your Mac for free, or you can purchase a six month license for only $14.95.