The latest version of this uninstaller packs a useful collection of extra tools as Roland Waddilove discovers
Let's get this straight from the Start: Uninstaller 6 is not just an uninstaller and it does not cost £40. It is actually a collection of nearly 20 clean-up and tune-up tools, one of which is an uninstaller and its creator, Ashampoo, is one of those companies that, if you do not immediately buy a product, will make increasingly tempting discount offers. Immediately on installing the fully working 40-day trial, I was offered Uninstaller 6 at £16, which is a saving of £25 on the full price.
The home screen shows the uninstaller, which is the main utility in this multi-function toolkit. There are four large icons and these are used to uninstall software, install it, create snapshots, or turn on monitoring. When Uninstaller 6 is left running in the background it automatically detects when software is installed if words like setup and install are in the filename. It then monitors the installation and logs all files written to the disk and changes made to the registry. This enables it to uninstall the software thoroughly if you decide to remove it. Not all installers have obvious names and to monitor the installation you can manually start monitoring the system for changes.
The monitoring and logging of installations works fine, but Uninstaller 6 can also remove software that hasn't been monitored too. It displays a list of software similar to Programs and Features in the Control Panel, but there are a few extra features, such as a Rating for each program. This is a crowd sourced rating that indicates people's opinion. This can be used when browsing the installed software list and deciding what to remove and keep. The uninstaller provided with software is run and then the system is scanned for left-overs. It worked well and spotted leftover files and folders.
The list of installed software can be organised into groups. You create the groups and then assign programs to them. You could have Games, Tools, Testing, or whatever you want. The software in a group can be listed and it makes it easier to find programs you want to remove. System snapshots can be created and saved to disk. Two snapshots can then be compared, such as before and after installing or running software, to see what has changed. It is less useful than you might expect because a large number of changes are made and you are overwhelmed with information.
Selecting the Tools tab displays a list of tools categories and these consist of System Maintenance, Administration, File Tools, General, and Windows Tools. There are 18 utilities across these five categories and to list just a few, there is a drive cleaner, registry optimiser, disk defragmenter, a startup tuner, font manager, duplicate finder, file wiper, undeleter, and more. You will probably find that these tools are used more than the uninstaller and it is a good collection of extras.
An mere uninstaller that costs £40 would not be recommended, but this is actually a collection of nearly 20 useful utilities with a discounted price of £ 16. That is very tempting indeed and, at that price, good value for money. Roland Waddilove
Packs in more than you'd expect.