The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group McAfee QuickClean Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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McAfee QuickClean (QC) is a simple utility that benefits your PC's performance. QC achieves this by identifying and safely removing unused, redundant, and unwanted files, folders, shortcuts, and temporary files that accumulate over time. These days PCs come with large hard disks, typically well over 120 MB, sometimes over 200 MB. An unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your point of view) consequence is that potentially 10 percent of the space is reserved for debris such as deleted files, cache files, temporary files and so on.
If you have sensitive personal and financial information that you need to delete before unwanted eyes can get to it, McAfee Shredder offers secure file erasing features. If you are concerned about your Web surfing history, QC's privacy controls help remove it and recently accessed files created with Microsoft Office. QC also provides e-mail cleanup support for Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express and other MAPI-compliant e-mail programs.
In Use
QC first compiles a list of folders on your PC and marks them as ones whose contents will never be deleted. This activity can take a long time, depending on the size of your hard disk and the number of files. They are designated as Protected Folders. You can modify this at a later date.
I keep my PC fairly clean and have set low upper limits for the Recycle Bin, so I recovered only about 128 MB, mainly from the browser cache. As QC does its job very quickly and thoroughly there isn't a lot one can say except that it certainly does what it claims. I could not find the 2006 version in Australia, but it is available from http://us.mcafee.com/root/store.as for US$30 for download.
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Reprinted from the June 2006 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
