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Uninstall Manager 1.01
From Roy
Perry
Reviewed by David Eaton
How many of
you have ever downloaded and installed a wonderful piece of software on
your PDA that was “fully functional demo” that expired after 15
days? How many of you, like me, removed the software after the trial was
over and re-installed it only to find that is still said the demo period
was over? That’s because the program left a little bit of itself
behind in your RAM – either a hidden file or a reference to itself in
your Saved Preferences. Wouldn’t it be nice to get rid off all those
when you remove a piece of software you no longer need?
Back when I
first upgraded to Windows 95 on my home PC I purchased and installed a
program called Clean Sweep to monitor all my software installs and assist
in completely removing all of it (including registry entries) when it was
no longer needed. With the newer installer (and more importantly
uninstaller) capabilities of Windows, that program is no longer needed.
Unfortunately,
it is still needed for the Palm PDA. As a software reviewer I tend to
install (and usually remove later) a lot more programs than the average Clie user – probably 150 or more in the past two
months alone. All these tend to save preferences and some even create
additional files in your ram while they are being used. Simply deleting the
application file (and whatever data files you can find) is not good enough.
You end up with all kinds of database files orphaned on your system and a
Saved Preferences file that is bloated beyond belief with un-needed
application references.
Well, Uninstall
Manager takes care of all that for you. It, like Clean Sweep for your PC,
will monitor your program installations and files to assist in the removal
of them later. It not only monitors the installation but also the creation
of additional files by the applications that it monitors. This is important
because many times these are created using a different Creator ID than the
one assigned to the application. These files and preferences are the ones
typically left behind by removal of an application (and its related
databases) by a file manager program or third party launcher.
Uninstall
Manager has two tabs across the top. One will let you remove any monitored
applications with their databases and preferences and the other tab looks
for Leftovers. These could be associated for example, with applications
that are currently installed but reside on a Memory Stick other than the
one that is currently installed.
Uninstall
Manager is only designed for OS 5.0 but never fear: If you have a device
running an older OS, there is a version out there for you as well. It is
called Uninstall Hack and requires a Hack Master program to operate. Both
products are available from PalmGear.com.
But
let’s say that you already have a PDA full of programs and have just
installed Uninstall Manager. How about all those orphaned files and
references that are already filling up your RAM with junk? Is there any way
to get rid of these? Sure. It’s called “Cleanup” and is
designed to clean up the orphaned files and preferences left behind by
previously deleted programs. It, too, was developed by Roy Perry. While you
may be able to track down most of your orphaned files (many have names
which will assist in associating themselves with the parent program), the
preferences are an entirely different matter and, just like your Windows
System Registry, better left for the experts.
Let me give
you an example. According to the Statistic screen, I currently have 72
existing applications in my NX70V. Of those, only 30 were installed after Uninstall
Manager and are thus being monitored by it. There are, however 80 different
monitored items, however, including files and preferences. After deleting
all the garbage in it the file size of my Saved Preferences shrunk from 82k
to 50k.
One final note:
if you like this program, please take time to register it. Not only will it
assist the developer in his efforts to develop more products but you also
get free upgrades for life.
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