Download of the Week: Soluto

[Jos]

Soluto bills itself as an anti-frustration software that leverages the collective knowledge of users to tell you which specific applications are bogging down your computing experience. Although eventually the developer plans to offer more functionality, for now the frustration they’re targeting is slow Windows boot times – and they do an interesting job. Rather than merely listing the programs that are set to run whenever your computer starts, Soluto analyzes the boot process and shows you exactly which applications are starting on boot and how they affect your overall startup time.

Once you've installed the software and rebooted your PC, Soluto will perform a first-run boot analysis and then display startup items in three categories: no-brainers (the ones you should remove from startup), potentially removable (recommended for more advanced users), and required (the ones that cannot be removed). Each software component is displayed with the corresponding time in seconds it adds to your startup time, and for those in the no-brainers and potentially removable categories, you’ll have the option to pause the automatic startup process or delay it.

Choosing the delay option will get you to a working desktop a little quicker but you’ll pay a slight performance penalty later when the program actually launches. Whenever available, Soluto provides detailed information for each program as well as statistics that show what other users did with it. Depending on how lean you keep your computer you’ll be able to shave off a few seconds, or even minutes, from Windows' startup process. A message on your desktop tells you exactly how much time you’ve saved and the program’s history page will display a graph of your boot times over time.

Soluto’s software is lightweight and unobtrusive. Ironically, it will delay your startup by just a few seconds but you’ll likely make up for it by reducing your boot time elsewhere. It’s worth noting that the program sends some information about your PC back to Soluto's servers in order to analyze your system, but they claim this is limited strictly to data about the processes, drivers, and system components – no personal data. Care to give it a try? You can download Soluto here.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/41282-download-of-the-week-soluto.html

 

[LNCPapa]

Just gave this a test and was pretty impressed by how easy it was to use. You really don't need to know much at all about computers to make this piece of software useful.

 

[Guest]

Clearly...as you were able to use it! Kidding

 

[princeton]

Guest said:
Clearly...as you were able to use it! Kidding

I lol'd. On another note it seems like a great program.

 

[Guest]

For a Beta, i'm very impressed with this little software. Works well in Win7 64Bit.

 

[Guest]

Im amazed how people get all crazy about fast boting, for me this is worthless, learn to think and use hibernate noobs.

 

[Timonius]

It shows some promise, while I'm not obsessed about fast boot times because my computer is usually always on, I do appreciate an easy to use and understand interface that explains what processes are going on while I boot and which ones I might not need to be running right away.

 

[gwailo247]

I tried it, and it supposedly cut 20 seconds off the boot time, but the stuff I set to load delayed took ages to start loading up.

It says that it runs the delayed programs when the computer is idle, but I had it running for about 10 minutes, and still had that little box in the corner showing stuff is loading. And then 5 minutes after that, while I was in the middle of something, my Nvidia hardware monitor loaded up.

I like the interface and the way it shows you how much time each process takes, but at least on my first experience I found the actual execution to be poor. I might tinker around with it some more to see if I can get it to run a bit better.

 

[mystic420]

Now I have a POWER PC, Built myself, AMD 940 Black edition "(3Ghx X4) with 8 gig Ram... It takes a little tweaking but this program is really handy. It took me a couple boots to get things working the way i wanted but it does work well!

P.S. I have a lot in start up and when finished i'm at 38% Ram used... Not bad... from 1:04 to 44 sec., i'm impressed!!!

 

[Guest]

I attempted to use Soluto on an older machine with serious performance problems - and the interface for selecting items to delay or bypass on startup was laggy to the point of being utterly unworkable. Trying to select one item would hang my entire PC for close to a minute.

The premise is great, but they need, absolutely need, a lighter-weight user interface.

 

[TeamworkGuy2]

I by far prefer google and 'msconfig' (google it)
No middle man program to slow down the boot time even more.
But, for some users this could be helpful...

 

[bugejakurt]

TeamworkGuy2 said:
I by far prefer google and 'msconfig' (google it)
No middle man program to slow down the boot time even more.
But, for some users this could be helpful...

Yep I absolutely agree.

The only feature which may be useful is the number of seconds a startup application takes on boot. Windows 7 MS Config should implement this feature because it can be useful. On the other hand the application has a very well designed interface, which I feel attracts a number of users, although for this UI, boot up launch time might suffer.

 

[ET3D]

Guest said:
Im amazed how people get all crazy about fast boting, for me this is worthless, learn to think and use hibernate noobs.

I wanted to use hibernate noobs, but unfortunately the local store was all out of them. I heard they're available for cheap on some Chinese wholesale stores so will try there.

 

[gwailo247]

Well, the little box disappeared after I rebooted a few times, but taking another look at the program, my boot time somehow got increased from 1:39 to 2:02 despite me removing 19 seconds worth of boot programs.

This program must have been designed by a politician.

 

[miska_man]

ET3D said:

Guest said:
Im amazed how people get all crazy about fast boting, for me this is worthless, learn to think and use hibernate noobs.

I wanted to use hibernate noobs, but unfortunately the local store was all out of them. I heard they're available for cheap on some Chinese wholesale stores so will try there.

eBay actually has a ton of auctions for them right now after people went out to buy them at Walmart on their Black Friday sale and then realized they didn't want them.

 

[negroplasty]

Great idea for an application. I will still be doing the old fashioned way: not letting it get to that point by disabling programs running at startup after the initial install.

 

[Guest]

What brand of hibernate noobs would you recommend?