Startup Guru 2.2

Personally I am a great fan of software applications and what they can do. The problem is that as you install more and more programs on top of your operating system, the strain will start to show. The computer that used to boot up in a few seconds now takes forever to start up. This is because most if not all the applications you installed load during startup. Consequently the operating system will be sluggishly when booting up

Waiting around for the operating system to boot up is never fun – nor is it profitable. I remember reporting on a case where several employees took their employer to court because they had to wait around for the operating system to boot up and shut down. You see, the employees were paid by the hour. To clock in the hours they needed, they had to come to work early and leave late – all because the operating system would take forever to boot up and shut down. So the employees decided to ask for overtime – when the employer refused, they sued.

If only they had known about a specialized piece of software called Startup Guru. Downloading and installing the application should take but a moment. After all, the download weighs in at little over 2MB, so it should complete in about a blink of an eye. The installation process is just as fast – I had to go trough about three mouse clicks and the software was already up and running.

Once installed on your system, you can use Startup Guru to manage all the applications that load at startup. The fewer applications the operating system has to load, the faster it will be up and ready for use. Removing applications that load at startup is as simple clicking the mouse button. Uncheck the box next to an application and it will no longer load at startup.

Even though it took some time to figure out how it works, I came to appreciate the Keystroke Monitor feature. Thanks to this feature you can assign specific keys to launch applications, which I found quite nice.

Pros

• Easy to use

Cons

• Free to use only during the trial period.
• The Help menu provides basic descriptions for each feature, which could be annoying for novice users.

Startup Guru has been reviewed by George Norman on 05 Mar 2010. Based on the user interface, features and complexity, Findmysoft has rated Startup Guru 4 out of 5 stars, naming it Excellent