http://www.premiumbooster.com
Reviewed August 2008

What’s It Do?

Optimizes and compacts the Registry, scans for unknown errors, searches for solutions to correct found problems, allows the user to fix all errors with a single mouse click, has a large database of known programs to provide information for autorun/startup applications and gain free memory by eliminating spyware/adware modules from the autorun list. It also protects one’s system against known malware ActiveX components so they cannot be loaded into memory using known Registry keys.


Does it do what it promises?

Reviewer 1. Yes and No. Yes, because overall it will boost PC performance . No, because there are Registry errors it will not detect or fix and startup programs it cannot stop from starting up.

Premium Booster responds: Premium Booster is not an ultimate magic tool that can find and fix absolutely ALL problems on your PC. It searches for known problems and lets you fix them, making the search and fix process a fairly quick deal.

Reviewer 2: Premium Booster claims to backup and scan the Registry for problems (and fix them),
defrag the Registry removing broken links and optimizing access, optimize a number of settings for faster operation, protect a list of applications from use by rogue ActiveX, provide information about and allow control of start up items, and it provide a Scheduler for automation of various operations. In my testing, all the functions appeared to work acceptably and fairly fast.

Reviewer 3: No. Premium Booster’s Web site leads one to believe that the use of this program will somehow result in faster operation by “… treating … how your Windows wants to be treated in a particular way…” (whatever that means). Furthermore, the use of Premium Booster “… will take care of your Windows erasing any remaining doubt whether your system performs at its best.” The use of Premium Booster will not generally increase the speed of your system and certainly will not “push its performance to the limits” as it also claims. Premium Booster is essentially a Registry cleaner with a few miscellaneous tools added to differentiate it from being just another Registry cleaner and to attempt justify the use of the word “booster” in its name, and even then it is not as safe to use as it claims.

Premium Booster responds: Well, I would comment on the safety: it’s 100% safe as long as you do backups!

Reviewer 4: To follow this review, readers might like to check this link for a good description of the Windows Registry: http://www.answers.com/topic/registry. In the lead paragraph, there are additional links which give you a clear idea of the Registry itself, and what Registry cleaners can do. Premium Booster does examine one’s Registry and finds entries that are useless and should be cleaned out. After finding and listing these “problems”, “solutions” are given which Premium Booster can then carry out. It has some additional tools which help you to control the programs that automatically start when the computer boots up, as well as a “Protect"” function which will block known malware programs from installing themselves in the Registry. The claim that Premium Booster will significantly increase the speed at which one’s computer runs is not supported by my own experience with this program.

Premium Booster responds: Pretty honest. I agree.

Was it easy to install?

Reviewer 1. Yes, the 4.8 MB downloaded file installed quickly and easily without any conflicts or glitches.

Reviewer 2. Yes, it installed easily, offering to place icons in the quick start and on the desktop. This is selectable. On the first run, it checks for updates if the box is selected to allow it to do so. This can also be done from the Start screen at any time with an Internet connection.

Reviewer 3: Yes, it is a relatively small 4.5MB download that is typical for this type if utility. The program installs quickly and easily using its own but generally familiar Installation Wizard. The program uninstalls relatively easily but leaves, ironically, a lot of empty keys and “junk” in your registry—presumably, I guess for the next registry cleaner you buy. In fact, there were a total of 32 items left in the registry in addition to 12 other remnants of the program left scattered throughout my system. I would think that a program with the primary purpose of cleaning the Registry of such left-over and unnecessary debris would then make sure that it did not do the same? One other more serious note: the EULA (End User License Agreement) is one of the more stringent I have seen. Not only is this license good for use on only a single computer, it restricts even making a single copy for backup. Additionally it provides updates for a single year, after which time you will be charged for updates.

Premium Booster responds: As for the update fee, it’s our choice which can be partially explained by security changes and partially by our desire to make some money, which will support further product development.

Reviewer 4: Yes. It is a standard Windows installation procedure which allowed me to place the program and the shortcuts where I wished. Immediately on starting, it did a check for a more recent version. The update is downloaded to a temporary file, then it asks whether the user desires an upgraded version At each step of the process, the user is prompted for input. All installations should function like Premium Booster; this way the user maintains control over the organization of his own machine.


Good points

Reviewer 1. Premium Booster is a Windows Registry cleaner and optimizer and with all applications that make changes to the Registry. It is very important to make a backup up of the Registry before any changes are made to avoid any negative effect on one’s PC. Negative effects can range from some program not working properly to Windows not being able to boot up. This is a safety issue and any good Registry cleaner will include Registry backup in the program. Premium Booster shows its awareness of this safety issue and includes backing up of the Registry as its first step in both the manual and automatic modes. It makes the backup procedure very easy for the user and includes an equally easy restore function. My tests of this backup/restore function showed that even after changes to the Registry the restore function could effectively restore the Registry to its pre-change state. Such a functional feature makes users feel safe in allowing the program to make changes to their Registry.

When programs are uninstalled often some Registry keys are not removed. These leftover keys is a major reason why a Registry cleaner is needed. Both Quick and Smart scans were very fast with the longer Smart scan taking only one minute 45 seconds to perform on my system with over 25 GB of programs and files; however, I do have a high end fast system. Premium Booster displays the found bad Registry keys and marks the severity of the Registry error; however, the severity rating is debatable as to what is or isn’t a high priority. The displayed bad Registry keys do explain why the key is bad. I manually checked over 200 of these tagged keys and found in each case the key was in error. This speaks highly of Premium Booster as a Registry cleaner. The last thing a user wants is a Registry key tagged as bad when it is a needed functional key.

I like the defragmentation feature that allows defragmentation of the Registry files. This makes good sense in that once bad keys are removed, the Registry files will be fragmented. Defragging the files improves the use of the files and thus the performance overall. Since the Registry is very small in comparison to all the files on the HD, this defragmentation is very quick.

The Optimize function of Premium Booster consists of a few well known Registry edits that improve the performance of the Windows operating system as compared to Window’s default settings. The list of optimize functions available in Premium Booster is very small compared to all the known Registry edits that will provide optimization; however as an avid Registry hacker I would say that the list consists of the best Registry edits that will result in the most performance boost for the fewest edits. Premium Booster has made these edits extremely easy for a novice by just selecting On or Off for each optimization and providing a simple explanation as to what the optimization is for.

Reviewer 2. The program was easy to install and register, worked fast, is flexible and includes a scheduler for unattended operation. There is somewhat useful information about startup programs. This is limited by what the start up item provides and is rather cryptic. After doing the Registry scan, problems can be repaired one at a time or in batches based on the severity assigned by Premium Booster. There is also an undo function if repairing a problem creates still another problem.

Reviewer 3: Unfortunately, I found little to recommend this program. Its scanning process to detect Registry errors was quite fast and relatively thorough; its startup manager seemed to find all items in the startup folder and did do a nice job of identifying those items; and, it is always nice to be able to add a few more known Active X malware sites to the Internet restricted zone. Otherwise, Premium Booster seems to be suffering from an identity crisis, not knowing exactly what it is.

Reviewer 4: It is certainly helpful to have a one-click access to the main functions of a Registry cleaner -- backup of the current Registry, analysis, deletion of useless entries, and a defragmentation of the Registry. This was not really a one-click operation because it requires the user to point the program to the folder where the backup is to be stored and ultimately restored if necessary. The process can be broken down into individual steps listed at the side of the main window in the order that they should be performed. Again, the backup is at the top, and should be run before doing a cleaning-defragmentation. There is a scheduler built into Premium Booster with which regular backups can be set to occur automatically. It is also easy to restore any of the backups by selecting one of the “checkpoints” in the list. Old checkpoints can be deleted so that the backup folder is not cluttered up with out-of-date backups.

One interesting function which is included in Premium Booster is a “Protect your-PC” module. The current version of the program can block 1427 ActiveX malware objects from including themselves in the Registry. Although anti-spyware programs usually block them, this would add an extra layer of protection against these items which would cause trouble if they could execute themselves.

Weak points

Reviewer 1: Premium Booster performs two different kinds of Registry scans, Quick and Smart. The difference between the two is searching the HD to verify that a program for which a Registry key refers to is there, thus the key is useless and serves only to take up space in the Registry.

The Repair function allows all detected bad keys to be fixed (removed) or allows the user to select which keys are to be fixed. This dual function for repairing allows this program to be used both by novice and experienced users. I performed a manual check of the Registry for keys that were fixed. Most of the keys were fixed, but some were not. I tried to manually delete these keys and found that I could not do so even when I had full control under permissions. Several attempts at rescanning and trying to repair these keys were unsuccessful.

The Protect function revolves around known threats utilizing the ActiveX feature in Internet Explorer. Although this is a nice extra feature, most users are aware of the dangers of running ActiveX controls at an untrusted or unknown web site. Many users have switched to Firefox to avoid ActiveX dangers or use Internet Explorer with its default settings which has turned these controls off. Thus, for most users this feature provides very little extra protection.

The Startup Manager of Premium Booster is much like many other start up managers and allows one to turn off or delete startup entries. Like most start up managers Premium Booster can’t stop all programs from starting up. I have a few programs that can’t be stopped, because the Registry Run keys can’t be deleted.

Premium Booster responds: Some programs can have higher privileges than Premium Booster and can monitor the presence of such autorun keys in the Registry. If so, you won’t be able to change those entries unless such a resident application is turned off.

Premium Booster has a Scheduler function that allows automation of the functions it provides. This is a nice feature; however the total amount time required for Premium Booster to do all that is does is so small that I don’t see the need to schedule it for unattended running.

Premium Booster responds: If you don’t need a reminder to defrag your Registry from time to time, or if your memory is good enough and if the Registry size is not that large, thus making the process short in time, then you may simply omit using it. Yet, we think many people have found it useful.

While Premium Booster is an easy to use, safe Registry cleaner, defragger, and optimizer; it performs only a superficial cleaning. I performed Registry scans with both Premium Booster and jv16 Power Tools registry cleaner. Premium Booster found 309 bad keys and jv16 (in normal mode) found 642 bad keys.

Premium Booster responds: Each cleaner will display a different high score. Some will even manually add errors to your Registry. We’ve provided a search for the most common and vital errors. Of course, there may be more items to find, but they are just junk and not really what the cleaner thinks are programs that can bring your Windows down.

The Help section of Premium Booster is quite small and the online data of their Web site provides little more. This is not a major drawback as the program is very easy to use; however, it provides absolutely no help (other than contacting the developer) when it can’t remove some Registry keys.

Premium Booster responds: The inability to remove some Registry keys may have lots of reasons, so there’s no need to overload the Web site or help.

Reviewer 2. At first, it is not obvious the backup operation is only for the Registry, not selected files, folders and directories. The program runs in a “windowed” mode and cannot be enlarged to full screen. This increases the need to scroll around on the fields to see everything. I would rather see a full screen mode, at least as an option. Many programs allow concurrent installation on a desktop and a laptop. Premium Booster does not appear to allow this. I like to test software in different environments to allow for variations in the Operating System that may cause the program to act differently.

Premium Booster responds: Premium Booster installs both on a desktop and on a laptop with no problem. As for the “windowed mode that can’t be enlarged”, this program uses skins, so it’s either a good-looking skinned GUI or a standard window but with the ability to scale it.

Reviewer 3: The program opens with a poorly designed and unintuitive GUI (Graphic User Interface) that looks like it was designed by the Fischer-Price toy company with a Sponge Bob Square Pants-like entity. The interface has four large buttons to initialize the Registry cleaning functions of the program and to perform a backup, and no additional tools without first clicking on one of the Registry cleaning functions even though the user might not desire to use one of those functions. On the second screen is a menu of several items; however, to return to the main screen one must close the program and restart it as there is no back button to navigate between screens.. There are two Registry scans available, a “quick scan” and a “smart scan” but I could find no difference between the two other than the warning that the smart scan will take longer because it “… will also try to find solutions for problems which appear as a result of incorrect file/folder path. This scan procedure may take a while depending on your PC configuration and size of your HDDs.” Does this mean then that the quick scan does not try to “find solutions” and simply deletes errors it finds? And what does the size of my hard drive have to do with this? Are there “solutions” stored on my hard drive of which I am unaware, and if so why would I not want to make use of those “solutions” for either the “quick” or the “smart” scan? I can’t answer those questions and neither would/could customer support. In either case, both Registry scans were very suspect as each repeatedly found items that both the highly respected jv16 Power Tools on even its most aggressive mode nor Registry Mechanic could find. I chose not to see what would happen when Premium Booster, and only Premium Booster, found 28 registry entries it wanted to delete , all having to do with my DSL service. Many of the special system “tweaks” that are offered to optimize one’s system are quite dangerous, will make several changes to the look, feel, and operation of one’s computer, and some cannot be undone even with a system restore. Examples of these are the optimizations offered to DSL or Cable connections and to tweaks for “Memory Optimization. If the user does not understand Rcv windows, TTL settings, or TCPIP means in regard to modem and/or Internet connections, or adjustments to AGP and PCI buses, then these tweaks should be avoided. What’s worse is that Premium Booster offers no real explanation of what the tweaks do or how they do it. They claim to optimize one’s cache without saying how or whether by increasing or decreasing its size, and they offer one tweak identified as an optimization to the “Windows Server Service” that I had no idea what was meant. I am not opposed to tweaking one’s system—my own system is tweaked to the maximum—but either know enough about a computer to be able to do it yourself, hire an expert to do it, or use one of the many reputable programs that specializes in system tweaking. Support is by email or online email/ticket system with a promise of a 24-hour turnaround time, which was met in my request; however, the help was incomplete . There is also a FAQ consisting of four or 5 questions/answers, and the help files are very limited in scope or thoroughness. Premium Booster is a program that is trying to do too much and, as a result, is doing nothing well. There are much better Registry cleaners and system optimizers available and all are competitively priced with Premium Booster.

Premium Booster responds: Strange that the reviewer hasn’t liked the GUI. It has been designed by professionals on our request. Thus, if you don’t like it, what can I say … sorry. In case of system tweaks, if you don’t know what they do, then you may simply not use them. Still, you may back up your Registry and then apply the tweaks.

Reviewer 4: Although I do clean my Registry from time-to-time with other programs, I left my computer alone for a couple of months, so that Premium Booster would have something solid to work with. I then ran the two different scans available in Premium Booster. The “lighter” Quick Scan found 132 “problems” whereas the more aggressive Smart Scan found 178 . Both of these results were far below the 356 errors found by the lighter “Normal” scan of the program that I usually use to clean and manage my Registry.

I do not particularly like the design of the GUI (Graphical User Interface) of Premium Booster. It is not really suitable for the functions of the program, but would be more appropriate for a game for youngsters. This is unfortunate, for I am sure that the developers have put a lot of time and effort trying to make a rather boring task more attractive. Maybe this was done to entice people to do what is, in fact, important but rather uninteresting computer maintenance.

Premium Booster responds: Yep, designing a GUI is always a time-consuming deal.

There is an “Optimize” section that allows selecting a number of Windows tweaks intended to speed up one’s system. They can be toggled on or off, but I was unaware that they had all been turned on by default. Some of them did not apply to my hardware and/or software, so were not appropriate to have turned on. Some I would not like to turn on at all. This module should be revised so that the user is aware of the possibility of these tweaks, and to have the choice to turn them on. In other words, the default setting should be off, rather than on.

I found the support to be a bit sparse, and somewhat inconsistent. After several attempts to contact them without any apparent response, I decided to use my Gmail address. These received answers quite quickly, whereas I never received any response when I used the mailbox associated with my ISP (my “main” email center). This was odd, as when a message fails to be properly delivered, I receive notice to that effect. I did point this non-delivery problem out to Premium Booster. Usually I find that support people want to be sure that they can provide their support without it being hijacked by errant mail servers, and we then mutually try to solve the problem. This was not the case with the Premium Booster’s support staff, who seemed content to send me brief answers via Gmail.

Premium Booster responds: Sometimes spam filters go crazy and we really face problems with not receiving valid emails from our users. Still, turning those filters off results in such an amount of spam that our boxes are just heavily overloaded and we’re unable to manually filter out all non-spam emails.

Other Comments

Reviewer 1. Premium Booster is an easy to use Registry cleaner that has some nice Registry edits which will result in better performance of a system; however, a user could obtain jv16 Power Tools for just $3.00 more and get a more through Registry cleaner and other tools as well. It is interesting to note that the comparison chart to other Registry cleaners posted on Premium Booster’s Web site doesn’t compare it to jv16 Power Tools.

Premium Booster responds: I think when we did that comparison, the jv16 Power Tools haven’t been that popular.

Reviewer 2: Premium Booster appears to do a lot of things to “optimize” one’s system, but it is difficult to say if what it does actually improves the performance. The speed up of a few milliseconds here and there is hardly noticeable in the scheme of things. Using the Registry defrag utility supposedly reduced the Registry size by a trivial 1%. This may be somewhat deceptive as I keep my machines tuned up. what with all the various software we test. A user may note a greater impact if he does not stay on top of the maintenance as he should. This program could be a real boon to someone that wants a simple and easy to use solution.

Premium Booster responds: It’s always up to the user what cleaner to use.

Reviewer 3: Instead of being provided a full license for this review, I was provided with a two-month license and was advised that this was a full license. I assume that a full license is a license for a one year or 12-month period, but the prospective purchaser might want to make quite sure that the license is, in fact, a one-year license.

Premium Booster responds: We always give a temporary key at first in order to avoid fraud situations, etc. Believe me, people find lots of reasons to get their license key for free.

Reviewer 4: At first I was puzzled why a program to maintain one’s Registry would need to have a renewable license. Both the programs that I normally use are solid and reliable, and have worked for a long time without any further payments on my part. They did have to be upgraded, of course, when Windows came up with new Operating Systems; but, once installed, they have done their job consistently, even through the patches, updates and Service Packs that we suffer through. I have used one of these programs since 1997, and any upgrades to the Win XP version are included in the original purchase price. The support has also been excellent. It was when I found the module in Premium Booster that provides protection against the ActiveX malware objects that I understood why the program needs frequent updates. But I would not like to have to renew a Premium Booster license year after year solely for that purpose.

Premium Booster responds: I have no idea why a comparison to Windows XP is done at this point. It’s just inappropriate.


Will you continue to use it?

Reviewer 1. No. I consider the Registry cleaner and optimizer I have now (jv16 Power Tools) to be a much more through cleaner.

Reviewer 2: Yes, it’s quick and easy to use. I’ll keep it in my arsenal for now.

Reviewer 3: No.

Reviewer 4: No. I already have good Registry maintenance programs.

OPERATING SYSTEMS USED IN THIS REVIEW
Windows XP Pro, XP Home

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