It’s inevitable: the more you use your PC, the more it’ll slow down. Junk files clutter your hard drive, file systems fragment, unwanted startup programs extend your boot time, and performance heads in a steady downward direction. It’s depressing, but there is hope – TuneUp Utilities 2010 is a suite of maintenance tools that promises a way to fight back against this performance degradation. It has plenty of tools to explore, and they’re split into four main sections.

“Maintain system” contains all the usual functions that you’ll find in this kind of suite, with modules to defragment your hard drive, remove broken shortcuts, clean and defragment the Registry.

There’s also a Startup Optimizer, which looks at your startup programs and services and recommends changes. This generally offers sensible advice, but in a couple of cases asked us to remove security tools (Comodo Verification Engine and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware), which didn’t seem like such a good idea.

The “Increase performance” section includes an excellent Uninstall Manager. This organises your list of installed applications, so it’s easy to see which are rarely used, or consume the most drive space, a handy way to identify candidates for removal.

The “Fix Problems” section features a Repair Wizard, where you choose the problem you’re having – “font folder is not working”, “desktop and taskbar do not work” – and the program tries to fix them for you. It’s a nice idea, but there aren’t too many fixes and you probably won’t use it very often.

Things picked up in the “Customise Windows” section, though, which comes with two handy tweaking tools. The first provides many ways to change the look of Windows (boot screen, startup logo, logon screen, desktop, icons and more). And the second modifies how Windows works in many different areas, from logon and memory management, to the startup process, security and network settings.

The suite is rounded off with two real-time functions, new to this version.

Turbo Mode temporarily turns off unnecessary programs and services, so a resource-hungry application like your favourite game can get the maximum possible RAM and CPU time. It’s a simple idea that works well.

And Live Optimization runs in the background, automatically preventing other programs from using all your system resources. We’re less convinced here – in our experience, this type of program causes more problems than it solves – but there’s no harm in trying this, you can always turn it off if the module doesn’t work for you.

Parts of TuneUp Utilities 2010 do little more than duplicate functionality you’ll find elsewhere, then. And we don’t always agree with the optimisation advice the program provides. There are plenty of excellent modules that do provide something new, though, certainly more than enough to justify the price (especially as the licence covers installation on up to 3 different computers). If you’re not happy with your current PC maintenance tools, then take a look at TuneUp Utilities 2010 – it could be just what you need.