The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    System Management Tools : Which one is better and why?

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by zambie, Aug 28, 2007.

  1. zambie

    zambie Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    45
    Messages:
    187
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Since I've recently converted from Windows to MAC ... and since i was a power user in windows and generally have a compulsion to keep my system as free from clutter (both visually and inside with respect to temporary files ... caches ... getting rid of bloating application files ) ... I figured that I needed some way to achieve the same in OS X ...
    I'ld be obliged if you guys could tell me which tools you use for system management and uninstalling applications and what are their advantages over the other...
    I'ld like you to also take a minute and think of whether you've experienced any system instabilities / freezes/ hangups or any such issues upon using the tool and also enlist whether you find the tool "risky and lacking adequate manuals for the tasks"
    Okay ... so the options are for the timebeing -
    System management tools
    1. Tinkertool & TinkertoolSystem
    2. Onyx
    3. c o c k tail (excuse me for having to type it like that.... the forum was automatically converting the first four letters into **** !!!!! ) :)

    Application Uninstallers
    1. AppDelete
    2. AppZapper
    3. CleanApp
    4. Yank
     
    zambie, Aug 28, 2007
    #1
  2. taelrak

    taelrak Lost

    Reputations:
    860
    Messages:
    2,979
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2389287&postcount=12
    I listed a bunch more of App Uninstallers there, and there's a link to a nice comparison chart of the more popular ones.

    I personally use AppCleaner atm. The other main free alternatives are AppDelete, uApp and AppTrap. AppCleaner offers a nice list of installed apps, plugins, widgets, etc. (AppDelete offers the same thing, but missed a few from what I saw, although you may be able to edit the directories it scans - not sure). Also lets you lock certain files from being removed - basically all in all, it seemed to have slightly better results than AppDelete mainly because of the GUI. I also like how it lists the files it deletes first, whereas in AppDelete you're forced to check the Trash or the log. No "undo" feature that I could find though, but the ability to check the items you want to remove beforehand does make up for it (slightly).

    AppTrap actually tries to integrate into your Trash bin - and when you delete something, it'll ask if you want to remove other stuff. I ended up not using uApp and AppTrap simply because I couldn't be bothered to try out even more uninstallers and they didn't seem to have as robust a support community (ie.. not well known).

    None of the app uninstallers seem innovative to the degree that I'd want to pay $10 for them (except the journaling ones perhaps, but Yank is no longer in development, and I'm not sure I want to pay for CleanApp).
     
    taelrak, Aug 28, 2007
    #2
  3. zambie

    zambie Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    45
    Messages:
    187
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    neat... appcleaner looks like a great application ... have installed it ...
     
    zambie, Aug 28, 2007
    #3