The interface is well-organized and keeps things simple so the user can fix one set of problems at a time. Its five key functions are maintenance, performance, problem fixing, customization and something called “turbo mode.”

Maintain system: Maintenance addresses registry problems, removes orphaned shortcuts and unneeded files and moves data on the hard disk for optimal performance and defragmenting. Maintenance functions can run automatically or manually.

Increase performance: Analyzes system performance, Internet settings and visual effect settings for unused programs, identifies functions slowing down performance, and optimizes hardware and other settings.

Fix problems: Repairs frequent Windows problems and display errors, restores needed deleted files, reviews the hard drive for errors and improves running programs.

Customize Windows: Windows customizations can contribute to slow performance. This function helps customize Windows to your liking, while ensuring optimal performance.

Turbo mode: This new feature in the latest release lets you configure the software so that when you need the computer to perform fast, you can quickly switch to Turbo mode, based on your customized options.

I knew I had some applications being loaded on startup that didn’t need to be there. But to go through them one-by-one would have been very time consuming. TuneUp Utilities simplifies this by listing all the startup programs by the program names — something you don’t get in Window’s System Configuration Utility’s startup list — and whether they’re necessary, optional or unnecessary.

Those identified as unnecessary are redundant startup applications, like iTunesHelper and Adobe Acrobat Quick Launch. Every startup program contains a description to help you judge whether to keep it or remove it from startup. I made the changes and it sped up my computer’s startup without any errors.

My newish computer had issues shortly after I received it, and TuneUp Utilities can only do so much in repairing performance. It performs best with computers that have had software installed and removed many times, something I haven’t done much of with my computer yet. In spite of this, I ran a performance benchmarking application before and after running TuneUp Utilities and it showed improvement.

I give TuneUp Utilities 2010 kudos for its simplicity and providing enough information so users can make informed decisions whether to make changes. It only recommended a couple of changes that I didn’t accept while I let it fix the rest. My computer has had no new problems after running the application for several weeks. We always must use caution when running performance applications like this, but TuneUp Utilities gives you what you need to make sound decisions. A full version of the app retails for $49.95, while an upgrade from earlier versions for $29.95, and a 30-day trial download is available.

Have you tried TuneUp Utilities? Did it speed up your computer?

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RocketDock is an animated application launcher that works very much like the Dock in Mac OS X. It’s specifically designed to run on computers that aren’t speed demons, and sticks to simple animations such as icons that bounce as you hover over them. It’s a very handy way to launch applications, particularly on a netbook’s small screen.

TinyResMeter provides a pop-up summary of the system resources that you have in use. Since many netbooks have limited resources, this can be handy in warning you to shut down processes or applications that are hogging resources. It’s not the prettiest resource monitoring application, but it’s not meant to be. It’s lightweight, and stays focused on essential system processes.

VLC Media Player is an open-source media player application that is much more lightweight than its competitors. I use it all the time, and love it. It supports most popular audio and video formats, and has a very active open-source community that constantly improves it.

USB Thumb Drive. While a USB thumb drive isn’t exactly a software utility, it’s one of the most essential sidekicks you can get for your netbook. They have risen in capacity and fallen in price: you can get a 64GB thumb drive that fits in your pocket for under $100. I highly recommend downloading PortableApps, which delivers a huge collection of useful open-source applications and utilities that you can keep on your thumb drive. Netbooks generally have limited storage space, so you can’t hoard large collections of apps. It’s reassuring to know that whenever you need to carry out a task, it’s highly likely that there will be something in the Portable Apps collection on your thumb drive that will be able to do it.

Share your netbook tips in the comments.

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When you first visit the Permatime site, you’ll be asked to pick your own timezone – you can type in something like “PST” or “Central” or “Belgrade” and a dropdown list will help you choose. Then, you’ll see your current time in your local timezone. That’s not much – but if you then add “London” and “Moscow” you’ll see the time in all three zones. The site remembers you timezones across visits, too, so if you have a spread-out team you can set it up once and then just go there for current times whenever you want.

But that’s not where the “permatime” comes in. There’s also a button on the user interface to create a new permatime, and when you click it, you get to pick any arbitrary date and time, as well as one of your default timezones. The system will then cough up a URL for you. For example, I’m likely to take my kids trick-or-treating around http://permatime.com/America/Chicago/2008-10-31/17:20. You can see from the URL when that is – and if you visit that URL and set your own timezone, you’ll get the time translated into your local zone.

There’s nothing earth-shattering here, but my experience has been that timezones lead to missed meetings more than anything else. So any service that makes it easier to treat time as a constant rather than a variable has my vote.

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The first thing you need to do is install 1Password on all the computers where you want to keep the same passwords. (Yes, this only applies to OS X users at the moment – though it seems that you can at least view the password file contents on a Windows box if you know the master password). Next, you need to step up to the most recent beta version of 1Password: open Preferences, go to the Updates tab, and turn on “Include Beta versions”. Then click the “Check Now” button and upgrade your copy of 1Password to the current beta. Remember to do this on all of the computers where you’re running 1Password.

After installing the update, you need to turn on the new Agile Keychain format in 1Password. Open a command prompt and run the command “defaults write com.1passwd EnableAgileKeychain -bool YES” (without the quotes, of course). Now reopen the 1Password Preferences and go to the Keychain tab. Click the “Switch to Agile Keychain Format” button. 1Password will take all of your existing data out of the Apple Keychain and put it in their own data format.

This is where Dropbox comes in. Click “Change Location” in 1Password preferences and move your new agile keychain into your dropbox (you can also use other sharing utilities like SugarSync or FolderShare – the key is to pick something that does automatic bidirectional synchronization).

Now, move to your other computer. Make sure that 1Password is upgraded to the beta version and that the agile keychain is enabled. Then open your dropbox in Finder and double-click on the synchronized keychain file. Confirm to 1Password that you want to load this file, and voila!: all of the passwords from computer #1 will be available on computer #2. If either one adds a new password, it will synchronize to the other via Dropbox.

There are, as we’ve pointed out before, many options for password management. To my way of thinking, this setup – using a native client-side password manager with encrypted synchronization over the web – is one of the slickest ways to set things up.

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