The beauty of the shareware and freeware models are that they allow you to isolate specific tools for specific jobs, without the need to opt for a bloated suite of utilities of which you may simply want one component part.

In the case of Quicksys' RegDefrag, it's a tool for a job that some of us simply dare not take on alone. After all, article after article in the IT press will alert you to as many pitfalls of messing around with your system registry as there are benefits, and that's enough to put many people off.

The registry holds vital information about the programs on your computer, as well as details of hardware settings and operating system options. When you consider how many different hardware and software permutations a user gets through in a given year, it's understandable how it can become a bloated morass.

So how do you manage it, without doing damage to your computer? That - you guessed it! - is where RegDefrag comes in. It's a tool with a small footprint that simply offers you two options. Number one is to defrag the registry, which we're coming to shortly. And number two is to get registry information.

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We approached this in reverse order and, upon requesting information, were presented with a screen outlining the breakdown of our registry and what items took up how much amount of space. Satisfied that it needed some pruning, we then chose to defrag it.

At this point the program takes you to a screen explaining the process you're about to go through. Part one takes the longest, as it then conducts a proper analysis of your registry. On our testbed PC this was a four minute job, and one that really needs to be undertaken with all programs shut down.

Once it's done that, you're then invited to defrag the registry. This, it should be pointed out, isn't a process whereby all rogue entries will be removed. Rather, in much the way a hard disk is defragged - or defragmented - the entries are compacted and arranged in a more logical way for your PC to access. The upside of this is that any wasted disk space is eradicated, and a tighter registry should also help your PC work more efficicently.

We didn't actually notice a difference in the case of the latter once RegDefrag had done its work, although we were impressed with how it went about its business. For peace of mind, for instance, it automatically adds in a restore point, which was welcome. And even after the job is done, you have the option of a HTML file report on its work.

And as for disk space? In our case, after the program had run, our registry took up seven percent less space, dropping from 125MB to 116MB. In the days of multi-gigabyte hard drives, that's not much. But as one particular chain store is prone to constantly remind us, every little helps.

It didn't do dramatic things for us, but RegDefrag is still a helpful little tool to have at hand. Anything that can effectively and safely streamline the Windows registry should, after all, be warmly welcomed.