Ah, Those Built-in Windows Utilities

Q. My partner buys all these fancy add-on utilities for Windows. I keep telling him they’re a waste of money because Windows has all those utilities built in. He says the third-party utilities are better. Who’s right?

A. You’re both right. Windows does have a load of utilities built in, such as Disk Cleanup, Disk Defragmenter, Driver Converter, Maintenance Wizard, ScanDisk, Scheduled Tasks and System Information. And they work just fine. However, utilities such as Norton and FixIt have somewhat more powerful functions. But unless you’re really into tinkering with various defaults, the built-in utilities are quite sufficient. To access the Microsoft utilities, go to Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools. Then click on any one of them and check them out.