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Speed Freak 2.8

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Optimize background process performance. Free

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Big, Fat, Stinking Software

What's New

Version 2.8:

Intel compatible
Recompiled as Universal Binary

Requirements
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.4.10 or later

Speed Freak User Discussion (Write a Review)

ver. 2.x:

(9)

Your rating: Now say why...

Overall:

(9)

sort: smiles | time

critical commented on 13 Jul 2007

Could have been a great app, Speed Freak would not recognise password and user name. 'Is this really necessary' ? I can understand admin authentication, But' user name as well'

[Version 2.8]

+42

8oo8 commented on 22 Dec 2006

I've emailed the developer a couple of times since my first email to him many months ago regarding Firefox crashing with Speed Freak enabled, but still no response from him.
Offering software, here, but giving no support when there are bugs is very, very shabby, and irresponsible too. Either he's just too lazy, doesn't care or doesn't have the competence to fix the bug(and is too emabarrassed to admit it).
Doesn't have the time, perhaps? Well, he seems to have the time, and the motivation to develop his software and offer it, but no time to provide support? Gimme a break!
Yeah, Speed Freak is free, but he won't be getting any donations from me; he just doesn't deserve it, IMO.

[Version 2.7.1]

jellybean commented on 19 Dec 2006

Yeah, Speed Freak causes my Firefox browser to crash, too. Also causes SeaMonkey to crash, as well, but SeaMonkey is based on Firefox. If I use Firefox or SeaMonkey, deactivating Speed Freak prevents the crashing. Hmmm, I wonder what the issue is, though?
No problem with my other browsers, however (Safari, Camino, Opera, Shiira).

[Version 2.7.1]

+42

8oo8 commented on 19 Jul 2006

With Speed Freak enabled, Firefox crashes soon after launch, every time. Anybody else?
I emailed the developer about this issue, a while back, but he/she never responded.

[Version 2.7.1]

-12

pmason commented on 29 Jan 2006

Checked -in addition to the console log, this product writes to the asl and secure logs as well, thousands of times a day. As a result, log files grew by about 5 MB in size altogether in just three days.

In addition to the bad housekeeping, it would appear that speed gains, if any, are offset by wasting cycles writing to logs.

Sorry, can't use it anymore. :-(

[Version 2.7.1]

1 Reply

boccaccio7070 commented on 02 Aug 2006

Is there a way to periodically find and delete these logs that you say pile up at enormous rates.
where do i go and can i just drag them to the trash to keep things reasonable?

-12

pmason commented on 26 Jan 2006

Speed Freak 2.7.1 seems to work well but writes thousands of iterations of this entry to the Console log:

Jan 26 15:10:36 MacintoshHD authexec: executing /System/Library/ScriptingAdditions/StandardAdditions.osax/Contents/MacOS/uid

Any way to keep it from wasting cycles like that? At this rate, after a few days the Console logs will have considerably grown in size.

[Version 2.7.1]

+13

kioshi commented on 24 Jan 2006

Will it help me view the stuttering mp4 files that apple seems to insist on just to piss G3 users, since .mov and .mpeg ran erfectly fine (back in Quicktime 6.something, now even those are bad).

Thanks for the feedback.

[Version 2.7.1]

haphazard commented on 22 Jan 2006

umm. ignore list not working on my powerbook or g5. tried toggling checkbox and switching apps and when that didn't work i tried relaunching app. "go idle on ignored app's" checkbox is checked, speed freak is on the list, ignored list is enabled, but S.F. still accelerates itself. what am i missing? other than that it does what it says, which gives a nice added pep to my app's.

[Version 2.7]

1 Reply

haphazard replied on 04 Feb 2006

[EDIT] i am no longer using this app. not enough gains/ too much hassle to justify continued use. "ignore list" hasn't worked, ever. plus i've seen the comments about the log file accumulation. no mas, no mas.

yomcat tipped on 12 Jan 2006

This a great app. Would be even better if it didn't all ways want my password. Could you make it so that it only needs the password once?

[Version 2.6]

Anonymous reviewed on 23 Nov 2005

Great application. Downloaded, installed and was up and running within minutes. Noticed a nice increase in speed.

Also, I appreciate all the reviews and comments I read as it helped me make the decision to go with Speed Freak over other Shareware apps that didn't measure up.

[Version 2.6]

+297

thus.spake.z had trouble on 29 May 2009

When I click on the "activate" or "hold" tab in Speed Freak's U.I. panel I often get an AppleScript error message("The specified object is a property, not an element. [-10008]"
I've no idea what that means or why that message is appearing.
I emailed the developer about the error message but have gotten no reply from him.
Hmm, another developer who can't be bothered with providing support?
Yeah, Speed Freak is free but does a free app mean that the developer is absolved of the courtesy of responding to legitimate queries?

[Version 2.8]

Appolyon had trouble on 02 Feb 2006

Since Speed Freak 2.6 I've had trouble with the app remembering my password at the launch. After upgrading to 2.7.1 I tried to fix the problem by first deleting it's key from the keychain, which didn't work. Then I though maybe the preference file was the trouble so I trashed that. That's when I found out something interesting... 2.7 (as well as 2.7.1) can't remember all of it's preferences. It would write a plist file, but at launch it wouldn't try to activate, wouldn't remember acceleration values, wouldn't activate the ignore list, and only would activate the default options in the preference list. I did fix the problem though, by using 2.6 again to create my preferences, then run 2.7.1.

I'm hoping something's done about this, it's kinda a pain, especially after how long we've had to go without. I personally haven't notice how much it's writting out to other files, but it could be a problem in the future.

(Mac mini 1.42ghz, 512 Ram, Mac OS X 10.4.4)

[Version 2.7.1]

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Downloads:21,636

Version Downloads:5,760

Type:Utilities : Optimizers

License:Free

Date:08 Jul 2007

Platform:PPC / Intel

Price:Free

Overall (Version 2.x):

Features:

Ease of Use:

Value:

Stability:

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Speed Freak reprioritizes applications at a user-specified interval so that the frontmost (or active) application gets more processor time than background applications. By default in Mac OS X, all processes have equal priority. By using Speed Freak, you override this default by increasing the priority of whatever application you are currently using, resulting in faster application performance. Speed Freak accomplishes this through the Unix "renice" command.

Speed Freak does not affect graphics card performance and will show little to no increase in 3D games. Although Speed Freak does not affect network performance, the increased CPU priority it offers should increase performance in internet applications. For example, web pages with complicated HTML should render faster but download speed will not change.

For more information, see the included ReadMe document in the download.

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