Soluto, the anti-frustration software

A new piece of software was recently launched as beta for the masses. It goes by a simple name - Soluto.

According to the designers, Soluto’s goal is to end the frustrations that PC users come across daily. The novelty of the product is something related to the cloud computing technology we recently started seeing implemented in anti-virus software such as Prevx and Panda Cloud Antivirus.

Soluto named its “cloud” the “PC Genome“, an online database linked to the user client, containing information on various software, as to weather it is best to be run, disabled, what conflicts may it generate with other programs, user behavior statistics regarding and so forth. Currently, this database is in construction by uploading anonymous data, as Soluto is tested by each user.

For the time being, Soluto is being centered on the boot process. In time, as the central knowledge base grows, the software is to be developed in such a way as to help users bring an end to as many as their computer-related issues as possible. The PC Genome data will be freely available for online study, also enabling the user to have an insight on the software he/she is using regarding the impact on system resources, conflicts, compatibility and any other causes for PC frustration. This database will also help users decide what software is best for use towards a certain goal.

Soluto Installer

The Soluto installer is a small 871k download, and the installation should go painlessly with one click on its behalf. However, the most substantial part of the installation is the .NET Framework 3.5 setup, automatically downloading and installing around 50 MB of data, added to around 7 Megs for Soluto itself. Common knowledge is that this version of the Framework will not always install as planned, in our case causing the Soluto installer to fall into a retry-fail cycle. The cause is usually in the already installed versions of the .NET framework. Good news is, Soluto leaves the .NET configuration intact at uninstall, and if you wish to reinstall the software again, it will install itself quickly, applying a check mark on the already installed .NET section and moving on.

In case the .NET framework fails to install, you might want to try uninstalling every .NET version you have, using either the Add/Remove programs applet from the Control Panel, or even better - using the .NET Framework Cleanup Tool available on msdn blogs (selecting All Versions and clicking restart when asked).

Soluto booting page fold

Now that that’s out of the way, the installation should run flawlessly, finishing with a screen asking to reboot now or postpone for later. After the reboot (which has a barely noticeable delay than the previous state before the program installed), a bottom left screen folding effect in the corner shows the processes still loading. Afterwards, the program identifies the findings using the “PC Genome” servers.

PC Genome uplink

When completed, Soluto shows the startup report, with names and load times, highlighting safely removable startup programs in green, potentially removable ones in orange (for advanced users to tamper with), and required - the system vitals in gray.

Soluto results

On mouse hover each program shows some details and actions that can be performed (such as Pause or Delay at startup), and more details on click. Using the PC Genome servers, a statistical pie chart shows what other users did with that respective process. You click your options and get on your way, plain and simple.

Soluto pie chart

Overall the interface is indeed plain and simple, clean and non-bloated. You get to have the above mentioned displays plus the tray icon, showing the necessary items. There you can open Soluto’s main interface, enable constant Live Boot Progress and “Ongoing Frustration Research“. Therefore, when clicking “My PC just frustrated me“, the program should send the currently running software problems to the servers for analysis, and contribute to the statistical frustration data for research.

However, the clean and simple interface keeled down this P4 in all its 3GHz hyper-threaded glory running Windows XP on 1Gig Ram, close to a full stop; I’ve even reported it in the program’s feedback section.

My guess is they haven’t optimized the interface for the XP GDI+ graphical system, but working fine only on the hardware accelerated WDDM driver system on Vista/Seven. Either this will be remedied in the final version, or the system requirements will not include XP anymore (which is downright stupid even from a marketing point of view). Frankly, this frustrated me more than many programs, as not even the latest Adobe Software for instance has managed to disrupt the CPU that much that even the mouse cursor movements started getting blackouts. Well.. at least nothing crashed..

So Do Not forget - it is a teenage Beta version! (researching even its Own frustrations).

That being said, Soluto shows a very promising approach for an integrated diagnostic solution, a tool permanently linked to the “brain” servers providing precious solutions to be applied instantly. Even for the advanced user, diagnosing problems with Microsoft operating systems does cause serious headaches every day. The average user just gives up and re-installs everything from scratch every few months or so, which is also a very frustrating solution.

In my opinion, this should be one of the main integrated jobs of the operating system. An Operating System should provide a secure, stable and user-friendly environment between user<->application<->hardware interactions.

Therefore, the Operating System should have an integrated self managed security system for prevention, detection and repair of any risk; a self managed maintenance system that prevents, diagnoses and repairs operating conflicts and risks and performs periodical operating system and file system optimization tasks; and of course detailed logs of Everything centralized in one place helping advanced diagnostic to be performed by system administrators and advanced users. These are aspects that are bearly present at best in the widespread Windows operating system.

Currently, the best performers to do these jobs for the operating and file system are pretty much the software we throw at it and program ourselves - defragmenters, optimizers, tweakers, cleaners and whatever it is we choose, while the operating system is busy with things such as “sending error reports”, informing when unknown errors occur, installing solitaire, and indexing files and folders nobody looks for.

Soluto is another potential embodiment of the popular wish to make an independent, organic piece of software capable of automatically performing its tasks in the most intelligent manner possible, instead of letting the user trying to patch everything up with his hammer, nuts and bolts. And to do these “tricks” in favor of the operating system and its users is indeed a noble cause. I am curious if it will do shutdown diagnostics as well (for faster, cleaner shutdown), as i don’t recall any program doing specifically that.