Computer users can be roughly divided up into two groups – those who prefer to stick with default settings and those who enjoy tweaking, customising and personalising their PCs to work the way they want them to.

If you fall into the latter category, then you’ll no doubt be intrigued by XP Tuning Suite 3.0. The little application makes hundreds of different options available to Windows XP users from one, easy-to-use interface.

It’s not much to look at, but the developer has made sure that anyone familiar with the way XP works will instantly feel at home.

A set of icons along the top of the program window provide access to different areas of interest (Speed, Security, System, Desktop, etc), while an XP taskbar on the left-hand side of the screen displays a list of sub-options are available in each category.

It’s true that some of the utilities included are little more than re-packaged versions of tools already provided in Windows (the disk defragmenter and System Restore for example), while others (such as desktop icon customisation) can be downloaded for free in the shape of Microsoft’s Tweak UI Power Toy.

But XP Tuning Suite goes well beyond these with tools for file shredding, registry cleaning, performance optimising and password management. Particularly useful is a utility for synchronising folders, which can be used as a simple method of backing up important folders to ‘mirror’ folders on an external hard disk.

Ironically, among the first tweaks users are likely to find useful is the one that turns off Tuning Suite’s own animated ‘Merlin the Magician’ help assistant. He’s truly annoying and, by and large, unnecessary.

While the program might be easy to navigate, some of the options are way too techie for the average user. And occasionally it’s all too easy to inadvertently alter a setting that should probably be left alone.

The option for turning off Windows automatic updates, for instance is ticked by default in the XP Tuning Wizard, which is something we wouldn’t necessarily recommend.

That aside, XP Tuning Suite 3.0 is a great one-stop shop for tweakers to get hands-on with their PC’s various options and settings.

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