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Brawny has a lumberjack; Mr. Clean has that bald genie guy of its namesake. Just like these and many other cleaning products, Allume's Spring Cleaning 8 has many "New and Improved!" features to tout. All it really needs now is a geeky mascot to assure you that your Mac's hard drive has been thoroughly scoured.
The Spring Cleaning utility is based on the simple premise of performing searches of your hard drive for certain kinds of files and then letting you perform actions on them, such as moving them to the trash (or any other location) burning them to a disc, renaming them, archiving them with Allume's StuffIt technology and more. The file searches potentially show you files that you don't want, or are located in the wrong place, while the actions let you move, remove or compress them in order to save you drive space and organize your system.
With its nearly-annual update, Spring Cleaning 8 adds several new searches: Music Finder, Image Finder, Archive Finder, Disk Image Finder, Widget Finder and potentially the most powerful of the bunch, Universal Slimmer. This last tool supposedly finds all applications containing Universal binary code for running on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. It can then delete the code that you don't need on your machine, freeing up drive space. (Unfortunately, at press time, we didn't yet have any Universal software on our Macs to test this feature.) Spring Cleaning 8's new tools join improved versions of the Font Finder, Internet Cache Finder and Mail Cleaner, which locates emails containing attachments from within Entourage (Office standard, $400; www.microsoft. com/mac), Eudora ($50; www.eudora.com) or Mail. Other tools help you find empty folders, duplicate files, aliases, types of documents and files that haven't been accessed in a certain amount of time. The program adds an icon to the Menu Bar that lets you shortcut to any of the 25 tools in Spring Cleaning 8.
A new Choose tool lets you select a folder, file or volume from the Finder on which to perform Spring Cleaning actions. This is nice for quickly bypassing searches, but it only lets you choose one file, folder or volume at a time, rather than making a list. Custom searches let you build and save more robust tools narrowing down search criteria. For every search you also can set up Exceptions, folders or files to be excluded from those searches. In addition, a Results Filter lets you set up a search to display only the files you indicate from a detailed set of criteria.
Actions for found files have also been updated with more options for the Renamer, as well as an Add to iTunes action for the Music Finder or Import into iPhoto for the Image Finder. These are well-functioning and handy options for moving any stray songs or photos into any playlist or photo album in the iApps. A preview window helps you by displaying photos or playing audio. However, moving the files could be streamlined. Right now, Spring Cleaning has to search the entire source lists of both iTunes or iPhoto every time you want to move something to a new location, which is very time consuming.
A new QuickCompare action launches a separate app (included) that shows a comparison of two files, folders or applications.
Operating Spring Cleaning 8 is very easy, even if you want to customize and build searches. In general, the new tools and features worked well and added value to the program. However, some problems from Spring Cleaning 7 still linger. The app is liable to hang indefinitely on occasional searches, particularly when using MailCleaner on Apple Mail. Also, there really should be a check-box system to make it easier to select multiple items from the results list. The tool MacUninstaller isn't much more than the long way around simply deleting an application from your Applications folder.
While Spring Cleaning 8 isn't essential for keeping your Mac tidy, as with a high-grade vacuum cleaner with a lot settings, controls and an impressive name like RoboVac 4000, it makes the job easier.
–MARKKUS ROVITO
Spring Cleaning 8: 
Allume Systems | www.allume.com | 800-732-8881 | $50
Pros: Many useful new actions and features, iPhoto and iTunes integration, easy to use, highly customizable.
Cons: No check box system for selecting files, unexceptional uninstaller, sometimes stalls on searches, can only Choose one file, folder or volume at a time.
Requires: OS 10.3.9 or higher
macHOME recommends: iPhoto 5 or higher to use the Image Finder action
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