Open Letter to Piriform

[Digerati]

As a regular volunteer helper on many tech support forums, I often recommend CCleaner for cleaning the clutter from our systems. I use it all the time myself.

 

It is the ONLY registry cleaner I ever recommend because (1) it is conservative, and (2) it prompts to back up the Registry. By conservative I mean it does not try to glean every last bit, but rather just the clutter. Sadly, some dedicated registry cleaner are so arrogant they don't even provide the option to back up first.

 

Systems that have been running for a couple years may have been through a couple hardware changes, should have had many OS and program updates, and may have had many new programs installed and some uninstalled. Registry cleaning that is too aggressive often results in broken applications, non-functional hardware, or Windows itself breaks. CCleaner's registry cleaner, because is not overly aggressive, effectively cleans out the clutter (orphaned entries, missing shortcuts, etc.) without breaking anything in the process. Do NOT Change that philosophy!

 

Even so, some well known sites prohibit mentioning CCleaner because they lump it in with the more aggressive Registry cleaners, simply because there is always a risk more harm than good will come from cleaning the registry. Other sites tolerate it because CCleaner's focus is hard disk cleanup, not registry.

 

My point is CCleaner sells itself for what it does so well. To that point, I would ask your marketing folks to stick to facts and not use technically incorrect "fluff descriptors" - it is a turn-off for the technically inclined, and misleading for those who aren't. Specifically, CCleaner does NOT perform "system optimization" - it does not "tweak" anything - and that is GOOD! Don't add any bloat!

 

What CCleaner does is free up disk space and clear the path for an "optimized" defragging. It speeds up anti-malware scanning, and it lets you manage your Cookies. It does not optimize the system. In fact, after you run CCleaner, your next reboot is likely to take longer, and your performance may actually go down until any reset prefetching is re-determined.