The Tweakomatic brings much-needed joy to the holiday season

First, it rained on Christmas. That’s always a bad sign. Next, our threat level went to an angry-looking orange and every traffic cop started toting assault rifles instead of doughnuts; also a downer. Then some schmuck, doubtless a vengeful Macintosh user, slammed into the rear of my Cherokee on I-95. Naturally, just hard enough to kink the frame and probably total the thing.

Now it feels like bad omens are everywhere. But what does it mean, after you prepare a detailed wish list for your family members at their request (I’m talking with prices and part numbers in some instances), and you open your first Christmas gift only to find … a large pulley? Yeah, that’s right, a pulley as in a wood and brass contraption designed to pull up large loads of … whatever. What the hell does that mean?

I pondered this in the days subsequent to Christmas Eve and couldn’t arrive at a favorable conclusion. My holiday season turned so gloomy, I was forced to run out and buy a new table saw simply to save myself from clinical depression. That helped, but I would have inevitably slid back into my foul humor or the Woodcraft store had it not been for a buddy pointing me to a new tool off of Microsoft’s site, the Tweakomatic.

Written by the fringe comedy troupe known as the Scripting Guys, Tweakomatic is a follow-up to TweakUI. For those who don’t modify registry settings on client PCs, TweakUI boils down to an easy-to-use and rather thorough registry editor. Only trouble with this slick little tidbit is that it’s limited to the local workstation. Modify whatever machine you’re working on with TweakUI, and you’re happy. Try and modify another machine on the network, and you’re frustrated.

And so, the Scripting Skulkers got together and Tweakomatic was born. This utility writes scripts allowing administrators to access and modify Windows system and Internet Explorer settings. They’re written as WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) scripts, thus allowing Tweakomatic to extend its tendrils beyond the local machine and access remote computers anywhere on the network. One great way to modify a large number of machines at once is to simply queue your Tweakomatic codelet as part of a logon script. The user powers up and the new settings take effect. Very handy.

But is it handy enough to replace directly accessing the registry, or even enough to do away with TweakUI? Actually, no, and the Scripting Skells claim this is a feature. That’s because you can change quite a few registry values with TweakUI, and changing registry values can theoretically turn your PC into a lump of metal good only for hurtling through your car during a rear-end collision and narrowly missing your head and fracturing the windshield.

But I digress.

Tweakomatic, on the other hand, is relegated to changing only what the Scripting Scratchers deemed as “safe” registry values. Things like screensaver parameters, Solitaire card colors, and similar features. Yeah, it goes deeper than that in real life, but not enough that you can manage all your registry tweaking needs solely with Tweakomatic. This tool is for quick, dirty, and common scripting requirements. Open heart registry surgery will still require TweakUI, a text editor, your attorney, and 24 volumes of How to Mess with the Registry and Survive.

For those with less ambitious registry altering needs, you can download Tweakomatic here. Happy New Year. My pulley and I are going car shopping.