Smartphones, however, are different. As they are relatively new, virtually all the software is early in its lifecycle, and that includes benchmarks. Still, there are some free apps that can be used to have a look at the performance of your new Android.

Quadrant

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Quadrant is the most widely recognized and used benchmark currently available for Android smartphones. Once you start to use Quadrant, it’s easy to see why.

This benchmark has everything you’d want. It doesn’t take very long to run, so you don’t have to spend time babying your phone just to judge its performance. The benchmark also consists of various different tests that focus on different parts of a phone’s hardware, such as the memory, the processor and the GPU. Finally, there’s a results browser, so you can see how your phone stacks up against others.

For basic use, the free Standard version is excellent. If you’re looking for more control you can pay $2.99 for the Advanced version, which provides a detailed list of sub-scores and lets you change some of the benchmark’s settings.

NenaMark

Although Quadrant does perform a number of different tests and compiles them into a file score, in my experience it’s a bit tilted towards CPU performance. If you’re interested in isolating the GPU, NenaMark is a great choice.

NenaMark puts your phone through its paces by asking it to render a pre-determined scene. The camera flies through 3D terrain along a predetermined path and records the number of frames rendered each second. This is then averaged to provide a final result.

There’s actually two NenaMarks  - 1 and 2. The second is a more complex scene that’s designed to task some of the new high-end phones now available, as many of these will zip through the original NenaMark with ease.

Rightware Browsermark

As the name implies, Browsermark is meant to benchmark browsers. It’s not an app, but a webpage you can visit on your mobile device. However, since the benchmark is standardized and relies on hardware performance, you can use this to benchmark various Android phones if you use the same browser on each.

Browsermark only takes a few minutes to run, and it provides a good overall glimpse at how quickly a phone might perform during web browsing. Since there’s no app to download or install, it’s an easy benchmark to run on a phone you don’t own – for example, you could very easily run this on a store’s demo unit for comparison against the Android you already own.

This benchmark will also run on PCs, although you’ll end up with absurdly high scores. While my HTC Thunderbolt usually obtains a score of around 37,000 in Browsermark, my PC scores around 650,000! Peacekeeper is the browser benchmark of choice for desktops and laptops.

A Word About Battery Benchmarks

Currently, there’s not a free app that provides battery benchmarks for Android phones. To attempt this, you’ll need to be a little creative.

One easy way to benchmark battery life is to have your phone play a video that’s extremely long. YouTube, for example, has many videos on it that span for 10 hours or more. Since your phone can be set so that it will not sleep or turn off the display while playing video, you can use this as a means of benchmarking the battery.

If you want a less intense usage cycle, media players and looped MP3 files can do the trick. Of course, you may want to keep the display on but not hear the music, so be sure to turn the volume down or off.

You can also, of course, simply use your phone normally. This isn’t a standardized test so it’s not a great benchmark, but it will help you peg your personal real-world usage. Whatever method you use, be sure to download the Battery Graph app. This will keep track of your battery use so you can see just how long it lasted.

Conclusion

While there aren’t as many free tools available for benchmarking Android phones as there are for benchmarking PCs, the apps available are decent. If you’re interested in gaining a clear, objective perspective on your phone’s performance, these apps are the way to do it.

Having given ioBit Advanced System Care a test run, I can confidently say it’s a great free solution for – indeed – many of your Windows problems. The app makes a thorough effort at both cleaning and optimization, though it did seem a little alarmist during the scan, insisting there were thousands of things that needed fixing with my perfectly operational gaming PC. Despite its tendencies to overreact, it’s more than capable and certainly worthy of the MakeUseOf seal of approval. Read on to find exactly what Advanced System Care (free version) can do for you.

Don’t forget, we have a Best of Windows software page with tons of other great system utilities and apps, and Tina’s fantastic Windows on Speed Guide that you can download for free if you’re looking to optimise your system. Before you do all of this, you might want to run some benchmarking apps too so you can see what a difference it makes.

Main Functions:

The app promises to speed up, clean your registry, fix your Windows problems, perform a full privacy sweep and paint your nails. Okay, not that last one – but it does promise a lot. Thankfully, the interface is very tidy and unintimidating:

Quick Care:

Performs:

• Malware scan
• Registry fix
• Shortcut fix
• Privacy Sweep
• Clean junk files

The Quick Care check-up ran through in about 5 minutes and immediately showed me a huge list of possible problems. I’ll be honest and say that the majority of “problems” it reports are akin to saying there’s a pencil on your desk when it should be in the pencil holder, and aren’t likely to cause you any problems really. However, it did unearth a number of old registry entries for programs I could’ve sworn I uninstalled. If you’ve been using the same Windows installation for a while now, constantly installing and uninstalling apps – then I suspect it really could have a benefit to your system to cut down on all the unwanted bits left lying around. The shortcut fix just removes broken shortcuts for old apps, and the cleanup of junk files for me consisted of 500mb of internet explorer caches, which is quite surprising because I rarely use the internet on that PC at all. Just goes to show, I guess.

Deep Care:

On top of the quick care functions, Deep Care adds a selection of optimizations, vulnerability fixes and a disk defragment. Optimization basically means disabling services that the majority of users won’t need to be running, so I was pleasantly surprised by that option.

The “passive defenses” option sounded a little suspect to me, but it does secure your system from a variety of known malware and viruses – so if you’re type of computer user who insists on running an anti-virus, you should really appreciate this section. It certainly offers peace of mind for those of us with family who aren’t quite as selective in their choice of internet destinations.

Just so you know, each time you run the quick or Deep Care routine, the program creates a rollback in case some of the changes had a less than desirable effect. Given how the app actually does slash and burn through your registry and list of running services, this is a welcome feature.

Turbo Boost:

Finally is the Turbo Boost mode, a quick set of optimizations that disables a whole load more core Windows services. I do suggest you run through the wizard and read each item carefully though, as it does disable quite a lot. For giving your system a quick boost for the latest game though, it performs well. In fact, to test it I ran 3DMark Vantage before and after – though bear in mind I had already ran a complete deep care of the system prior to testing speed boost mode, so it was already already performing fairly optimally. I’m pleased say that my 3DMark score jumped from 5654 to 5710 – definitely some gains in there, and I suspect even more so on aging systems.

Conclusion:

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the free ioBit Advanced System Care actually performed, and it’s going straight on my list of “here, install that” app for relatives with computer pains. While some of the optimizations and fixes are somewhat suspect artificial solutions, the majority are based on logical techniques of disabling bits of Windows that most people never need. The software also recommends switching your Windows theme to the “basic”, as all those pretty colors and backgrounds really does eat a significant portion of memory – which impressed me as it’s the first thing I ever do with a sluggish PC.

If you get a chance, why not download the 3DMark Vantage benchmarking tool before and after running a deep care / speed boost and post your results in the comments – we’d love to hear how it works out for you.

Browser performance has a big impact on how you experience all of this. A slow browser might skip or stutter while a fast one breezes through without batting an eye. If you’d like to learn how to judge browser performance for yourself on your own computer, read on.

Peacekeeper

Among the most well rounded and professional browser benchmarks currently available, Peacekeeper is the creation of Futuremark, the company behind industry-standard benchmarks like PCMark and 3DMark.

Unlike most benchmarks, which are very bare-bones, Peacekeeper has great presentation and wraps the benchmark into a tidy score at the end. You can even directly compare that score to other browsers, view statistics, and read tips on how to improve your score.

Peacekeeper’s final score is based on an array of test groups. The social networking test, for example, throws your browser through JavaScript tests meant to replicate the navigation and features of a social networking site. Due to Peacekeeper’s diversity, presentation and in-depth benchmarking, it’s my personal favorite, and the one I turn to first.

SunSpider JavaScript

This very popular browser benchmark is focused exclusively on JavaScript and replicates a number of potential Javascript usage scenarios such as 3D content and code decompression. SunSpider doesn’t have a library of results available for easy comparisons, but it does provide you with a link to your results when you are done.

SunSpider’s specificity makes this a poor benchmark to use as a sole determination of browser performance, but it does allow for consistency. Using Google Chrome 10, I received results between 262.9ms and 269.2ms after ten runs. That’s a very tight range that inspires confidence in the validity of the results.

V8

This benchmark tests your browser using the V8 Javascript engine. As the name implies, V8 is designed to be big, powerful and fast. It was also developed by Google and is a part of the Chrome browser, so this benchmark is a bit of a showboat for Google’s technology.

It might be worth wondering if the benchmark is a fair assessment, and indeed, Chrome does rule the roost here. But then, Chrome stomps most browsers in most benchmarks, so that’s no big surprise. Given that this is a quick benchmark, it’s not a bad idea to give it a go.

Dormaeo

While V8 is associated with Google, Dormaeo is associated with Mozilla. It was created by John Resig, who works for Mozilla as a JavaScript Tool Developer. This is not just a JavaScript test, however. It’s actually a collection of a number of benchmarks which are broken up into two main categories – JavaScript and DOM.

Some of the browser benchmarks in Dormaeo are those which were already explained above, such as the SunSpider and V8 JavaScript benchmarks. Dormaeo also includes a number of JavaScript library benchmarks, CSS benchmarks, and unique Javascript benchmarks found only in Dromaeo. Due to the huge number tests in this benchmark, running the whole thing can take a half hour or more on slower PCs, so be prepared to give your computer some alone time.

Acid3

Unlike the other benchmarks in this article, Acid3 is not a performance test. Instead it is a compliance test created by the Web Standards Project. It checks a browser’s ability to properly render a complex series of instructions.

Acid3 is actually a number of individual sub-tests which, as they are completed, will cause the test page score to rise. The maximum score is 100/100, but unlike a high school math test, that’s the only score that counts. Anything less than a perfect 100 is considered a “failed” test. In fact, even a 100/100 may not be enough to pass, because the completed test page must also match the reference rendering and be completed without any protest (error messages) from your browser.

Conclusion

Benchmarking your browser can be fun, and it will help keep you informed about how your browser performs and keep track of performance when new updates are made available. You can also use most of these tests (except Acid3) as a means of testing computer performance, as browser performance is tied not only to the browser itself but also the hardware it is running on.

Let us know what benchmarking method you prefer and why.

Taking advantage of the power can be difficult, however; doing so without spending a lot of money on benchmarks and games is even harder. Fortunately, there are some game demos that have benchmarks built into them, and they’re a great way to benchmark your gaming PC for free.

Crysis

Released in 2007, Crysis was and is among the most graphically demanding games ever made. At the time of its introduction most computers struggled to play the game with more than a few details turned up, and even a modern gaming rig may struggle significantly with this game when the settings are at maximum.

This makes Crysis a great benchmark. Even today, the question “Yeah, but can it run Crysis?” is relevant, as there are very few computers capable of showing everything this game is capable of. If your computer has been bad, load Crysis and crank it up to max. That should show it you’re the boss.

In order to use the free game benchmark you’ll need to download the Crysis singleplayer demo, then download the Crysis Benchmarking Tool. You can run the benchmark without this tool, but it’s substantially more difficult. Do yourself a favor and download the extra file.

Just Cause 2

Although primarily a console game, Just Cause 2 (like the original) has no problem making use of the graphical power available on a modern computer. Scenic vistas, detailed models and massive explosions are all part of this game’s visual spice, and they all look better on the PC.

Just Cause 2 is only available on Steam, so you’ll have to sign up for a Steam account to download the demo. The demo benchmark is not as detailed as what is available in the full game, but it does feature a reasonably long gameplay loop that shows off Just Cause 2’s ability to render a massive landmass with little performance degradation.

Mafia II

Essentially a Grand Theft Auto clone with its own dash of style, Mafia II was released to the PC without much fanfare and to average reviews. Despite that, the game’s graphics were concrete shoes to many PCs, particularly those with older processors.

Mafia II isn’t the most beautiful game, in my opinion, but it does offer some very detailed character models and a few cool graphical effects. I’m particularly enamored by how fire and explosions are rendered in this game. The free game benchmark is simple to use and accessed directly through the game’s main menu.

As with Just Cause 2, Steam is the only way to download this game or its demo, which includes the benchmark.

Tom Clancy’s HAWX2

A relatively recent release, Tom Clancy’s HAWX2 is notable for the game’s ability to render huge amounts of high-detail terrain. After all, HAWX2 is a flying game – whenever you’re not in a dogfight you’ll be staring into the distance, admiring the scenery, which is textured using high-resolution satellite images.

HAWX2 supports DirectX 10 and, with the proper settings, can make heavy use of tessellation. This makes it a great benchmark for testing the features of newer graphics cards. This benchmark seems to run particularly well on Nvidia cards in comparison to those from AMD, so you might be a little disappointed if you’re part of the red team, although the most AMD cards made in the last year have no problem with this title.

The HAWX2 benchmark is extremely easy to use and can be downloaded as a standalone executable. You will need to set up an Ubisoft account to run the benchmark. You can also access the benchmark via the game demo available on Steam.

Conclusion

These four games will push your hardware to the limit, but they’re not the only benchmarks available. If you have a favorite – and free – game benchmark not listed here, let us know in the comments!

A new version of SiSoft Sandra is released yearly, and the 2011 build was made available recently. As usual, the full SiSoft Sandra software is a paid program – but a free Lite version, which doesn’t seem very lite at all, is also available. Let’s take a look at what the latest version has to offer.

PC Benchmarks Galore

Computer benchmarks are often used by hardware reviewers as a standardized way of determining performance. However, benchmarks can be handy for everyone. They give you a way to determine how your computer’s performance measures up to others. This can point out areas where you need to upgrade, or can give you definitive proof that a certain component is not working right.

SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite has thrown in a number of new PC benchmarks including GPGPU Cryptology, Media Transcoding, and Blu-Ray. The later two are arguably the most interesting for most users, and media transcoding in particular is a great benchmark to have. It’s common to convert videos from one format to another, usually in order to port them over to a smartphone, but sometimes for other purposes.

The new version of the software makes continued improvements to SiSoft Sandra’s excellent hardware comparison results. Most benchmark software will only give you one result – the result from your own computer. This is useful, but you have to find and compare the result to others manually. SiSoft Sandra, however, provides a huge library of hardware benchmarks. This information will provide you with an instant comparison between the hardware you have and other comparable components. The continued refinement of this feature in SiSoft Sandra 2011 makes choosing a hardware upgrade easier than ever before.

Computer Information Station

Another function that SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite continues to serve is that of gathering information about your computer. This is a problem that usually evident until you actually try to find out certain information exclusively through Windows. What chipset does your motherboard use? What is the clock speed of your RAM? What builds of Microsoft .NET Framework do you have installed?

SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite lays out this information in the Hardware and Software sections. There doesn’t seem to be anything of great importance that escapes the grasp of SiSoft Sandra 2011, and the information provided rivals my personal favorite PC information software, PC Wizard 2010. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some users prefer SiSoft Sandra 2011 for this purpose. It is generally a more intuitive program thanks to large, clearly labeled icons.

Another useful section of the program is Tools. In this part of SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite you’ll find a few broad utilities including a burn-in test that can be used to see how your hardware manages under heavy usage. The report tool is also handy. This lets you create a text log of a computer’s current specifications, which can be reviewed at a later date. Logging this sort of information is handy if you’re trying to resolve issues on a computer that you don’t always have access to.

Conclusion

I think that SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite is a must-have download for computer enthusiasts. It can handle a wide variety of benchmarking and PC information needs, and the comparison tools are incredibly helpful if you’re looking to upgrade your computer’s hardware.

If you are ever faced with the task of repairing computers – either professionals or as an amateur – it’s important to have the right tools. This includes software that can help you pinpoint and solve system errors. Let’s have a look at six programs that can save you a lot of time.

PC Wizard

Properly diagnosing and repairing a computer requires knowledge about what is inside it. Some information, like the processor that a computer has and the amount of RAM installed, is extremely easy to come across. But other information, like the exact model of motherboard or hard drive, can be more difficult to determine. This is particularly true in pre-built systems from companies like Dell, as they often do not include technical information about their PCs.

PC Wizard is the easy solution to this issue. This software scans a PC and returns detailed information about the components inside. This includes everything from the audio controller to the motherboard chipset. You’ll also be able to see the temperature of the processor, video card, and hard drive (provided the system has those sensors installed).

OCCT and Furmark

Many computer problems are caused by stress placed on components as they reach maximum load. It is not hard for a processor to run well when it is only using 25% of it’s potential, but when maxed to 100% it begins to generate significantly more heat and draw far more power. This can expose problems with a computer’s cooling solution or power supply that are otherwise not an issue.

Controlled stress tests reveal these issues. My two favorite programs are OCCT (for the CPU) and Furmark (for the GPU). Each program can put a load on a processor or video card that will replicate what happens when a program demands everything these components have to give.

MalwareBytes Anti-Malware

Malware is one of the most common causes of computer problems. Unsuspecting folks download the wrong file, and now suddenly their processor seems to be running at 80% or higher usage no matter what they’re doing, or their homepage has been changed to llamas.com.

This is where a free malware program like MalwareBytes is handy. You can install it free of charge on as many computers as you’d like and use it to try and find and remove the malware that is causing innocent folks so much trouble. Cleaning up malware on an already-infected computer is tricky, so don’t expect this (or any other) anti-malware software to perform magic, but this program will give you one more tool for tackling the problem.

Revo Uninstaller

One problem that often confronts computer repair technicians is a program that won’t uninstall properly. The program may be consuming disk space, or interfering with other programs, and you’d like to remove it. Yet the built-in uninstaller fails every time.

Revo Uninstaller is a program tailored to defeat such problems. It can track down the different components and registry entries of a program and kill them. In my experience it can remove about 80% of the programs that have previously failed to uninstall through conventional methods, and you may want to simply use Revo Uninstaller by default, as it cleans up after programs more throughly than the default uninstallers usually do.

SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite

You can learn a lot about a computer by benchmarking it. Hardware is hardware – it is made to precise specifications, and there is very little variation between various examples of a similar product. This creates a good baseline to compare the performance of a computer to, which in turn makes it easier to find where problems might be occurring. Benchmarks can also be handy because, in some cases, a problem assumed to be a hardware defect isn’t one at all. Instead, the problem is that the hardware just isn’t up to handling what the user is demanding from it.

There are a lot of useful free benchmarks, but SiSoft Sandra remains one of the most full-featured and robust examples.  The benchmarks included can be used to gauge the performance of hard drives, processors, video cards, memory and more. In addition, SiSoft Sandra offers some comparative examples of benchmarks run using similar hardware. This can help you determine if a computer is behaving normally.

While I find SiSoft Sandra’s benchmarks to be the most compelling feature, the program offers a number of other tools and hardware information utilities. I find other options to be better in these areas, but the extra tools are handy to have, and some users may prefer them.

Conclusion

The 5 must-have apps listed here are ones that I’ve used in the past. They’re great programs – but given the expansive universe of programs available, they’re surely not the only ones around. If you know of a program that would be useful for computer repair technicians feel free to throw some love on it in the comments.

While that rule seems simple enough, it isn’t always easy to follow. Laptop manufacturers have a tendency to overstate laptop battery life, and sometimes by no small margin. A manufacturer who claims ten hours of battery life rarely confesses that the stated battery life can only be achieved if you leave the laptop running at idle with the display a minimum brightness and WiFi off.

The only way to know what your laptop is really capable of is to benchmark it, and no program is better suited for this task than Battery Eater, one of only two free battery benchmark programs currently available and updated.

The Maximum Load (Default) Test

Once you’ve installed Battery Eater you’ll find it is very easy to use. Opening the program will display a main menu that shows your current battery status. Hopefully the battery will show that it is fully charged and AC adapter is currently plugged in – after all, testing a half charged battery won’t provide very good results!

Click the “Begin test when disconnecting AC” checkbox and then unplug your laptop whenever you’re ready.

Battery Eater will swing into action as soon as you’ve unplugged the AC adapter. The default benchmark is a simple 3D rendering of a battery that moves around your laptop’s display. This will task both your laptop’s CPU and GPU. As the Battery Eater test states, this benchmark is designed to give an indication of the minimum battery life that you can expect. If your laptop achieves three hours, for example, you’ll know that your laptop will last at least three hours no matter what kind of crazy task you throw at it.

The Reader’s Test

If you’re interested in how your laptop battery might hold up during less intense use,  however, you can use the included Reader’s Test benchmark. This can be accessed by clicking on the Options button and then changing the Benchmark Mode to Reader’s Test.

Once that’s done, click on the Load Text button at the bottom of the window and select a text file. The Reader’s Test, once activated, will open the text file and automatically scroll through the file time and time again until your laptop’s battery gives out.

You can also test your laptop’s maximum battery life by using the Idle test, which is again accessed through the Options menu. The Idle test is exactly what you’d think – it just keeps tabs on your laptop battery life while the laptop remains at idle.

Viewing Results

Testing your laptop’s battery will, of course, cause it to run out of juice. When the battery does finally kick the bucket everything on your computer will be shut down and the laptop will automatically go into hibernation.

Battery Eater is one step ahead of your laptop, however. The program automatically generates a report once your computer’s laptop battery can endure no more.. This report is filed in your Battery Eater installation folder and is labeled with the date that you ran the benchmark.

When you open the folder you will be greeted with a .beg file called discharge and a log. The Discharge file has the information you need, but you won’t be able to view it with Excel or any other program. To generate a readable version of the report you must  drag and drop the .beg file onto the Battery Eater executable file (called BEPro.exe.) The report will open automatically in your default web browser.

Conclusion

Battery Eater can be a sobering program to use. Laptops that are supposed to be capable of more than six hours of battery life often achieve less than four hours during the default Battery Eater test. I highly suggest that you run the default benchmark, Reader’s Test benchmark and Idle benchmark.

Yes, this will likely take a while – but remember, Battery Eater makes a report automatically when the laptop battery life gives out. You can turn Battery Eater on before hitting the sack and read the results the next morning. Just remember to modify your laptop’s settings so that it does not automatically sleep or turn off the display, as either function can skew or ruin your test results!

If you know of another way to benchmark your laptop, do let us know about it in the comments.

Synthetic benchmarks can also be used as a point of comparison to other systems with similar specifications, which lets you see if your computer is operating the way it should or if there is perhaps something holding it back.

However, synthetic benchmarks are, ultimately, synthetic. In other words, they don’t represent real world performance.

Achieving a very high 3DMark score won’t help you determine your framerate in one particular game. While some games, like first person shooters, often come with built-in benchmarks, many games do not.

Discovering Real Performance

To find out how your computer is performing during real gameplay and help increase video game performance, you can use an tool called Fraps. This tool is commonly used by professional hardware reviewers to find out how well hardware config