Very often, when a software company sends me an upgrade to an existing product, I yawn and file it away, realizing that I will never really see any difference between the new version of their product and the old, reliable one on my computer.

But this time it was different.

You see, the folks at Executive Software actually listened to their users before releasing the new version of Diskeeper. Diskeeper 7.0 ($29.95 for the Home Edition and $49.99 for the Professional Edition) is actually faster and more reliable than its predecessors, which is a significant improvement. But it doesn't stop there.

Back in the bygone days of computing,Diskeeper was only tobe used with computers running Microsoft Windows NT. It did its job well and was one of the few products available that would continually monitor the fragmentation levels of NT servers and (with the use of a separate product) workstations. Now it works with almost every version of Windows and a basic version of the software is included in every copy of Windows XP.

Defragging hard drives is essential in maintaining computers that you always want running at the peak of efficiency. In fact, running a good defragmenter regularly - about once a month - can improve a system's performance by up to 200 percent. Just think of it as giving a sluggishly performing computer a dose of Geritol on a regular basis.

One of my main complaints about older versions of the product was that it was annoyingly slow. In fact, there were many times I would be convinced that my computer had locked up - or crashed - as Diskeeper was doing its job. Apparently my anxiety attacks were caused by the many operations it performed as it worked on the first 12 percent of my hard drive.

It still does those things, but significantly faster than in the past, although I still become frustrated when the "counter" that tracks the defragmentation operation stops at 12 percent and stays there for a while. Maybe they could devise a way for it to track that phase of the operation by slowly moving from zero to 12, reducing the psychological effect of a long wait.

That aside, I can't emphasize enough the importance of running a program such as this on a regular basis. A fragmented hard drive can significantly impair your computer's operation and can often lead to system crashes.

Significant features of Diskeeper 7.0 include:

• - According to the National Software testing Lab, it does its job 300-to-500 percent faster than "built-in" defragmenters.
• - You can set it and forget it so that it runs invisibly in the background.
• - Smart Scheduling constantly monitors disk performance and customizes the defragmentation operation to maintain peak performance.
• - Frag Guard helps prevent fragmentation of your critical system files.
• - It can be set to defrag critical system files every time you reboot your system.

For more information - and to purchase a copy of Diskeeper - you can go to the company's web site at www.executivesoftware.com.

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