I started using PC Pitstop about 3 years ago, and I’ve been very pleased with their free testing tools. They helped me fix slow downs several times when I had my desktop running Windows XP, and I found out my graphics card was bad. I haven’t been to there site since I got my new laptop, until today. I get an email announcing a new bandwidth test, so I had to go check it out. I was pleased to discover that I didn’t even have to log in.

As you can see, PC Pitstop results where 1.5 megabytes download speed and .5 megabytes upload, which is actually what they’re supposed to be. The test was completed in less than a minute, so I decided to see if the Pitstop has upgraded or added any other online testing tools. I was also glad to find out I could run their tools with the Firefox browser (yea it’s been a while).

As you can see, there’s a link to a Free Optimize Scan. You have to download and install the application, but only the scan is free. If you want to use the optimizer, you’ll have to pay $30.00 per year. Here’s some of my results.

Internet related settings can be tuned for faster throughput and may provide up to a 200% increase in Internet performance. Wow. Sounds good.

A list of unnecassary startup programs that run every time the computer is started. To be honest, I didn’t even know about these.

As you can see from the results, the PC Pitstop Optimizer found 6 unwanted programs running at startup; they found 25 settings that could be tweaked to improve Internet performance; some temporary files (which I can get rid of); and 84 incorrect or unneeded registry entries from failed program installations. All this on a 4 month old Windows Vista machine.

Well, I’m sorry to tell you that I’m not going to purchase the optimizer at this time. I can’t afford everything I want. If any of you do have a subscription to this tool, please give us your opinion.