Looking to tweak Windows? There are plenty of tools to choose form if you don’t fancy the idea of editing the registry, but you have to sort the wheat from the chaff in order to find something half decent. The world of tweaking tools is divided into two camps – utilities that are free, and those that are not. Paying for a program is not necessarily an indication of quality, and with PowerSuite Lite 2013 you have the option of sticking with the free version or paying a bit for a range of extra tools.

Whichever route you decide to go down, the latest build 4.1.4.0 introduces two important new enhancements – a PC startup manager and PC Resource Optimizer. The free, lite version of the program features the PC Resource Optimizer component and, when enabled, this component of the suite aims to improve the performance and responsiveness of your system by balancing processor and disk resources so demand is never too high at any given time.

Uniblue PowerSuite 2013

This is the sort of claim that is easy to view with suspicion – as you should – and results will vary from one computer to another, but in tests we found that it did seem to make a noticeable improvement to the general feel of the running of Windows. If you’ve parted with the cash for the Pro version of the program you can take advantage of the PC startup manager, and there’s a clue in the name as to what you can expect here.

This, oddly, is a less impressive update to the tweaking suite, but it does – as you have probably guessed – make it possible to manage the programs that start automatically with Windows. In itself this is nothing out of the ordinary, but the ability to view Startup shortcuts, registry autoruns and more all in one place is a helpful timesaver. The program can be used with all versions of Windows from Windows XP all the way up to Windows 8.

The commercial Pro version offers access to many more tools such as the new PC startup manager, registry defragging, system tweaking, junk file removal and much more. You can buy the Pro version from the Downloadcrew Software Store for $29.95.

To test the free Lite version, pay a visit to the Uniblue PowerSuite 2013 download page.