It’s a fact of life that after a while every Windows computer on the planet gets filled up with junk programs. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking browser addons or old discarded programs, it continually accumulates as the months and years go by. And eventually it takes up too much disk space, and slows down your PC until it feels ancient and crusty. So it’s always useful to remember that you can do something about it quite easily.

IObit Uninstaller 4 is a rather cool freeware program which uninstalls all your old trash quickly and easily. Unlike the standard Windows Remove Programs routine in Control Panel, it does it in batch mode too, so you can set it and forget it while it automatically uninstalls a bunch of space hogs. It also has a ‘powerful scan’ function, which gets rid of stubborn files and folders associated with those programs, so no more leftover orphans on your hard disk.

It’s very easy to use. Just download and install it, then run and it will automatically find all the programs lurking on your machine. You can then either uninstall them one at a time, or tick the Batch Uninstall box and check all the programs you want to remove. You can also click on the Size column to get a look at the programs in order of size, which is very useful if you’re trying to reclaim hard disk space. Eventually everyone needs to do that, right?

The other very neat thing is it’s fast. You can uninstall a bunch of programs in the same amount of time it takes to do one with the Windows default, which is great if you don’t want to be hanging around all day. And lastly, if you’ve suddenly found yourself hosting a nasty browser toolbar and you don’t know how to get rid of it, this software will do the job for you, and also tell you which are ‘benign’ and not malevolent. Nice.