The Pit BLOG

February 2008

PC Pitstop OverDrive Beta

Hi Everyone!

Long time no see. What? It's past Ground Hog's Day? Man, I feel like I've been buried in a hole. The reason is because I have been working non stop on a (w)hole redesign of our world renowned Full Tests. We are renaming the service, PC Pitstop OverDrive Beta. Our plan is to run the beta for as long as necessary to weed out any last bugs. The product has already undergone substantial testing, but it is not possible to foresee every situation without a formal and public beta period. Once that is over, our plan is to move our signature Full Tests to OverDrive. Vrooom!

This has been a non stop labor of love for the last four months. The changes are substantial and I encourage everyone to check it out and let us know all of your feedback. Good, bad and ugly.

I'll try to review the major changes here.

Web 2.0. OverDrive uses a lot of the latest Web 2.0 technologies. I used mouse roll overs, click able images, and tabs heavily throughout the design. I hope the use of these technologies helps people quickly diagnose common PC problems, and learn about their PC in a quick and intuitive interface.

OverDrive Browser. The system browser allows you to manage easily manage all of your PCs under one user account.

Security. Not only does OverDrive check all aspects of your PCs performance, there is also a full security. OverDrive includes a virus scan, spyware scan, and a scan of the critical security settings in your browser. In order to keep the test short, OverDrive scans active memory for malware. Before a malware can begin to do its dirty deeds, first it must be in memory, so we catch over 90% of the problems of the slower scanners.

Performance. OverDrive does an unbelievable job in performance. A registry scan, a full benchmark suite (including internet), disk analysis, processor analysis, and on and on. Don't forget to mouse over each test, and then click to learn more about the details of each and every test.

Driver Scan. Driver Alert has been an amazingly successful product, and our unique scan and match technology is also built into OverDrive. The Pit Notes, along with all the useful driver information.

Software. The software area has one huge improvement, but it is behind the scenes. The database driving the software categorization has been majorly enhanced. We now have the world's largest database of running processes. In addition, we have improved our categorization techniques. There is a new category called "Disable". These are the applications that are in memory and they serve no purpose other than eat up memory and CPU cycles. A lot of people call them craplets.

World Rank. Here's a new feature and I am really excited. After I run a test, it tells me how I compare to the rest of the world in five key areas, processor peformance, memory performance, disk performance, graphics performance, and internet performance. Now you can really see how your PC stacks up against the rest of the world. I guess that's why they call us PC Pitstop.

New Layout We now have a new more attractive layout with less clutter and hopefully more useful information. You will also note that we have an RSS feed from PC World. This is the start of a new partnership with the most revered publication in the PC space.

There is so much more in this application, but rather than talk about it, please check it out. And let's talk about it here.

HAPPY GROUNDHOG'S DAY.

Rob

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