Norton Utilities Ultimate - Keep Your Device Purring

I used to do my own oil changes.

Admittedly, it was my first car - a brown 1974 Honda Civic I bought from my mother for $1000 - and I was a poor school-leaver. It was all I could do to afford my rent each week. I certainly wasn't going to be splashing out on paying someone else to unscrew a bolt at the bottom of my engine, let the contents drain out, then fill it up with the cheapest replacement oil I could find.

Unfortunately, it turns out a car needs a bit more regular maintenance than that to continue running smoothly.

I eventually ended up with a warped head gasket and a broken-down Civic going nowhere fast.

So why would I assume I could do any better with my computer?

For under NZ$60 a year, Norton Utilities Ultimate promises to, "Keep your devices running like new."

In much the same way as a qualified mechanic has the tools and know-how to get peak performance from your vehicle year after year, the idea behind Norton Utilities Ultimate is similar; a cyber-toolkit you can use to scan for and deal with the common causes of device slowdowns.

For example, how many startup processes do you think run automatically every time you turn on your computer? I don't know about you, but I had over thirty on my Mac. Installing Norton Utilities Ultimate took minutes and scanning for startup processes took seconds. The app then makes it very easy to review the list of those processes and turn off any you don't need - which is obviously quite a lot of them.

System junk is another category of files that yes, you can hunt down and get rid of manually - but take it from me, it's a lot easier to just press the scan button on the Norton Utilities Ultimate dashboard and let it root out all those deleted items, installation files and the like for you.

Then there are all those apps that came preinstalled on your device - many of which are double-ups of the apps you actually choose to use. Who needs more than one browser, for instance? Norton Utilities Ultimate can be set to list any app you haven't used in the last month. Or year. Or whenever. Then you can nuke them.

Doesn't this already feel so freeing?

Like decluttering your wardrobe.

Actually, speaking of your browser, that's something that can really bring your day to a standstill if it's not chugging along on all cylinders. Norton Utilities Ultimate can help clean up there too.

Another file type I didn't realise was piling up in the background was duplicate and low-quality photos and videos. Depending on your settings, every time you post a pic on social media, or send someone your latest vid via Messenger or WhatsApp, there's a good chance you're saving a compressed version of that media file somewhere.

And that's before you include the multiple selfies you took before you got just the right angle that made it look like you were holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or the series of burst shots you saved as your daughter crossed the finish line.

Utilities Ultimate hunts down these unwanted pics and lines them up for your review. Even if your pictures, videos and files are stored off-device, in the cloud, you can grant Utilities Ultimate access to your Google Drive, Gmail, OneDrive or Dropbox accounts and it'll trawl through your backups there as well.

All sounds pretty comprehensive, right? I've certainly been very impressed by how quickly Utilities Ultimate can scan all for all those potential slowdown issues and how easy the dashboard makes it to remedy them.

And it had an immediate, real effect. One particular example is the way I use iMovie to edit the silly videos I create for these reviews, like the one below. Because these vids are kind of one-and-done and I don't really need to archive them or come back to them, I just leave iMovie open, delete one set of media files out and add in the new ones. The problem with that is you eventually end up with a lot of undo information and this tends to stop iMovie working smoothly after a while.

Utilities Ultimate cottoned onto this immediately and cleared everything out, including finding large video files that were just sitting around taking up valuable space on my SSD.

It's certainly a comprehensive clean - even if you just leave the various settings at their defaults. The fact you can use the app on up to 10 devices is fantastic, although frustratingly, not all features are available for all devices. The Uninstaller that targets unused apps works on Mac, Windows and even Android - but not on iPhones. Meanwhile, the media cleaner that tidies up your photo and video libraries DOES work on iPhone (as well as Android and Mac) but not Windows.

There's also a Data Recovery tool - but that ONLY works for Windows. I get there must be technical reasons why these things can work for some gadgets and not others but it's still a bit messy.

In saying that, my only major peeve with an otherwise extremely effective productivity boost is it doesn't include a driver updater. At first, this seems like a crazy omission - until I realised Norton sells this separately as a standalone tool. Quite an expensive tool too; NZ$79.99 a year - and it only works on Windows PCs.

That aside, I've been stoked with how easy Utilities Ultimate is to set up and use and I've certainly seen measurable results in how much faster and more smoothly my Mac now runs. Just as I learned to leave car my maintenance to the professionals, this is an app that takes care of a lot of complicated computer clean-up without me having to get my hands dirty. 

Click here for more information and pricing on Norton Utilities Ultimate.