Review: System Mechanic

System Mechanic is comprehensive, but makes tinkering under a PC's hood fairly simple.

PCs are a lot like people. Brand new, they're shiny, fresh and zippy, but over time, they slow down, and eventually develop the digital equivalent of senility.

Chances are that if your PC hasn't had regular doses of maintenance TLC, you're probably experiencing the following symptoms. Start times begin to balloon out, your browser and email shuffle along at a snail's pace and your PC is becomes less and less responsive. Some blame their ISP, others may yell and scream, but the real answer lies with performing regular ongoing PC maintenance.

Unfortunately, many PC owner don't know where to start, or simply don't have the time and inclination to learn the ins and outs of PC maintenance.

Enter stage left, System Mechanic - a maintenance and tweaking application suite that's bulging at the seams with features and utilities.

Crucially, System Mechanic also manages to achieve the near impossible feat of balancing industrial strength maintenance with a design that's so simple to use that even the most ardent luddites can cope with it.

Consisting of half a dozen fix and repair categories, each populated with a swathe of utilities, the capabilities of System Mechanic run the maintenance gamut from Clean, Fix, Maintain, Optimise, and Protect.

Each category is crammed utilities such as the Start-up Manager (which, by managing which programs start with Windows, can greatly speed up your PCs boot up time). Other utilities are similarly easy to drive, including a One-Click Maintenance tool which can un-kludge your PC's innards with virtually no diploma of geekery required.

Add to this an uninstaller program (which can effectively remove unwanted applications to free up space), a device manager (to keep connected peripherals running smoothly) plus several bazillion others and there really isn't much that System Mechanic can't handle.

Of all the System Mechanic utilities, the one that really made the most immediate difference to my PC was the network optimiser which saw my internet speed improve dramatically.

This was closely followed by my second favourite, the system Customiser, which allowed me to control a huge range of Windows settings, starting with administration options through to tweaking the Windows Start menu.

Last but by no means least, System Mechanic also offers some pretty solid security capabilities in the form of a robust spyware detector with antivirus capabilities, plus a firewall and an internet information Eraser, which keeps online transactions safe and hidden from cyber bandits.

If the thought of rolling up your sleeves and doing some tinkering with System Mechanic's individual utilities has you breaking out in hives, no problem. ActiveCare, automatically keeps your PC optimised and tweaked without any intervention on your part beyond you initially telling System Mechanic you're okay with it running in the background. ActiveCare maintenance only occurs when your computer isn't busy and quietly runs in the background.

In short, System Mechanic offers a huge number of tweaking and tuning tools, and if you happen to be a little nervous about tinkering under your PC's hood, System Mechanic also has undo options, complete with backups and log files, allowing you to back out of most tweaks should the need arise.

If things however were to go really pear-shaped, the System Mechanic CD to can also restore and repair trashed PCs.

About the only real fly in the System Mechanic ointment came when I tried to install it on my netbook. Its lack of a DVD drive meant that I had to download an installation manager which then proceeded to download 18MB of installation files.

This would have been fine except that watching grass grow was faster than the installation manager downloading the installation files. I eventually got there but five-plus hours to download a mere 18MB of data verges on being ridiculous.

This said, System Mechanic is one of the most comprehensive system tweakers I've ever seen. Couple that with fantastic technical support and System Mechanic by Iolo Technologies is a must have for anyone keen to keep their PC running in tip top shape.

System Mechanic
RRP$89.95 Inc GST