The Mop 5.0.29.0

Overview

A regular user needs to spend at least a few times per month cleaning his computer from junk files, and he’ll have a really hard time doing that unless he uses a cleaning software to do all the work - like The Mop. This tool will search your computer, find useless files and proceed to delete them without giving too much weight on the user’s level of experience, meaning that novices will be able to use it without problems.

Installation

There are no weird steps while performing the installation, which won’t take more than a few seconds overall. The setup package contains no malicious items (viruses, spyware and other kinds of malware) and won’t install any additional 3^rd party software (e.g. toolbars).

Supported operating systems are Windows XP, Vista and 7.

Interface

The first time you open the program you’ll see a window that asks you to choose interface language, and afterwards the First Launch Wizard will come up. It will help you get started and make a few basic settings, however if you aren’t experienced enough you can click “Use default settings” and skip the wizard. Those settings include defining whether you want The Mop to run on system startup, allowing automatic updating of the program, receiving news from its developers, using online help and setting up a proxy server (optional).

When you finish with the wizard you can finally take a look at the program’s main window, which has a light-blue theme that is really neat. At the top you can see three big boxes: “Step 1”, “Step 2” and “Step 3”. The first step is where you select scan type (Express, Regular or Thorough) and the second is the step where the scanning process takes place. The third step is the cleaning step, where all found items are going to be removed.

Pros

The three scan types allow you to make a quick scan, a standard scan or a deep scan according to your situation. If you’re in a hurry or just want to clean your drive from junk files found in particular files only, Express scan is what you’d perform. If on the other hand you want to scan the whole system and find every piece of junk there exists, pick Thorough scan type. For any other occasion Regular scan is recommended.

Found items can either be moved to the recycle bin so that you can recover them at a later time, or they can be deleted directly. If you want to be sure that they won’t be recovered in the future with special software, there is an option (“Use strong erase”) that deletes found files using a special deletion method, although there are no further details about it.

The program is available in 5 languages: English, Belarusian, Armenian, Russian and Ukrainian.

Cons

The Mop has actually a pretty big con. You can’t use it unless you pay for it. The trial version that’s supposed to last 15 days expires from the very first usage of the program.

Alternatives

CCleaner (free), BleachBit (free), Auslogics BoostSpeed (free), Kingsoft PC Doctor (free) and WinSysClean X4 (paid) are all similar alternatives that can do a fine job maintaining your PC.

Conclusion

Let’s forget for a moment that you can’t actually use it unless you purchase a license; this program is nothing more than a typical cleaning tool. You could find better ones in the web and with a lower cost.