Digital Valdosta

Soluto: Provide PC support with ease

Do you maintain and support computers for your friends and family? Ever wanted a simple, free solution to maintain them from one place. That is exactly what Soluto provides. Soluto is a free web service that lets you help your friends, family and colleagues with their PCs no matter where they are.

The Features

• See what applications have crashed or been non-responsive recently
• Remotely install Skype, Dropbox, etc.
• Configure default browser, homepage and search engine
• See CPU temperature, fan speed, etc.
• Receive alerts about rare or problematic drivers
• Remove browser toolbars and other add-ons
• And more and more and more…

So how does Soluto work?

Soluto — free for download — runs as a background service that watches your PC as it works, detecting slowdowns and trying to analyze the cause. By comparing those events and possible causes against a database of apps, drivers, and other software (cleverly called the PC Genome), the software can suggest solutions that you can implement with a click or two.

It shows you details about each application and service, by category of whether they can be removed, and lets you determine whether you want to allow the program to remain in the Windows boot, whether you want to Pause it (which means you’ll have to start the program manually), or whether you want to delay it, which means that Soluto will allow the program to load, but not at boot time. In that way, you’ll boot more quickly, but the program will still be available after several minutes.

My experience

I installed Soluto on a Sony Vaio and Dell Netbook. On both systems there was not any noticeable perfomance changes after the install. Soluto required that I rebooted both systems. After doing so and logged back into the Soluto website. I was now able to see a few programs that I could remove from the boot sequence, along with other stats. After removing those programs from boot and restarting, there was only a noticeable performance boost in the Netbook (the Sony Vaio was performing great already as it has plenty of RAM and stills runs like new).

Conclusion

Soluto’s software is lightweight and unobtrusive, although, ironically, it notes that it delays startup by a few seconds. On the two systems where I’ve installed it, I’ve seen no untoward side-effects, and its recommendations have been reasonable and conservative. Soluto definitely would be software that I would recommend for the tech minded person that wants a free way to keep tabs on computers.

Soluto: Website