Piriform CCleaner Pro 2017

Technical Specifications

CCleaner has more useful tools than a Swiss Army knife. It's my go-to utility whenever my PC is creaking under the weight of temporary internet files and browser extensions, and has prolonged the life of more than a few of the PCs we prod, tweak and experiment on here at Top New Review.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I upgraded to CCleaner Professional only to find that its paid-for features barely added anything to the free version of the program I'd been using for years.

Nothing to see here In truth, I was fearing as much as I read Piriform's description of what to expect from CCleaner Professional. The first two entries in its bullet-point list of features. Faster Computer and Privacy Protection are both included in this version.

Exclusive to the Professional version are Real-time Monitoring, Scheduled Cleaning, Automatic Updates and Premium Support, which sound useful but aren't particularly enticing upon closer inspection.

Real-time Monitoring, for example, just means that CCleaner will run in the background and prompt you whenever it's possible to free a certain amount of space (you can set the amount by clicking Options and Monitoring).

However, having the program running at all times slows your system and makes it take longer to boot, which largely defeats the point of installing CCleaner in the first place. Untick the three boxes within Monitoring to stop CCleaner running in the background

In the end I switched the feature off altogether by clicking Options, then Monitoring, and removing the ticks next to 'Enable system monitoring', 'Enable browser monitoring' and Enable Active Monitoring (see screenshot left).

Scheduled Cleaning and Automatic Updates do just what you'd expect: the former lets you schedule scans for a convenient time, while the latter allows CCleaner to update itself automatically as new versions are released.

These are slightly more useful than Real-time Monitoring, but they're hardly worth paying $20 for.

Besides, I can already run a scan when it 's convenient in the free version simply by ticking 'Shutdown after cleaning' click Options, then Advanced to find it (see screenshot above). This allows me to start a scan when I'm finished with my PC in the evening, knowing it'll shut down automatically when the scan has finished.

As for Automatic Updates, CCleaner practically begs you to keep it updated by placing a 'Check for updates' button at the bottom-right of every menu screen, so you're only ever a click away from the latest version.

Use the 'Shutdown after cleaning' option to have your PC automatically shut down once CCle aner has finished scanning

At last, a reason to be cheerful The final added extra, Premium Support, is more useful. It moves you ahead of people using the free version when you need help from CCleaner's support team.

That said, I've managed all this time by visiting Piriform's Community Forum (https://forum.piriform.com) for advice.

It's home to plenty of knowledgeable CCleaner users and the advice is free. One other feature that Piriform doesn't list is the expanded Users menu.