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System Mechanic 8 is the latest
incarnation of iolo technologies PC tune up software. Formed in
1998, iolo is recognized worldwide as the market-leading provider of
PC tune-up software and is best known for its award-winning System
Mechanic family of products.
As your PC is utilized more and more,
its performance seems to slowly degrade and become more sluggish.
With System Mechanic 8 on board, these issues are addressed pro
actively, keeping your operating system running at its peak
performance. System Mechanic 8 cleans unwanted services from
startup, optimizes the registry, fine tunes the internet settings,
defragments system memory and hard drives, repair hard drive error
and much, much more.
When I had a chance to talk to one of
the representatives from iolo at the Pepcom show, they stressed how
System Mechanic 8 was ideal for both the neophyte PC user and the
power user.
For the beginner, System Mechanic 8
offers “fix and forget” capability. One click repairs and power
tools allow automated repair and maintenance of your PC. The
ActiveCare technology allows System Mechanic 8 to do all the work and
fix issues as they arise.
The power use has over forty tools to
choose from and allows tweaking of system performance tools. The
Intellistatus technology allows the user to visualize key statistics
and track performance.
Iolo also allows System Mechanic 8 to
be installed on up to three computers per license. This helps
protect your laptop, desktop and one additional family computer.
So let’s take a closer look at the
latest version of System Mechanic.
System Mechanic 8 Review
Reviewed by: Tomas Ratas
Sponsor:
iolo
Tech Specs, Features and the
Basic Info:
ActiveCare 2.0 keeps your PC running like new — Now smarter,
leaner and fully configurable
New ActiveCare 2.0 just got leaner, smarter, and even better at
keeping your PC humming along at full speed. And it does this
silently in the background, only working when your PC is on but not
in use.
ActiveCare 2.0 has new options to give you full control over how
and when it runs, and ActiveCare’s idle-time processing has been
refined to detect battery power, CPU activity, and more, so that it
truly does operate without ever interfering.
Defragment and Compact Registry tool — Registry optimization
with graphical feedback
Our next–generation Defragment and Compact Registry tool now
performs a comprehensive analysis of your registry, detects
performance–draining bloat, and displays wasted space with
instructive, color–coded graphics.
It then removes the bloat and defragments your registry at the
next system startup.
DriveSense
— Real-time hard drive status
For expert users, the new DriveSense provides real–time data
about the status of hard drives, including drive temperature and
other indicators of drive reliability.
More new features and enhancements
New navigational links within the tools simplify moving throughout
System Mechanic.
iolo’s library of programs and program components has been
expanded to target resource-robbing programs unnecessarily clogging
your PC’s startup process and to detect potentially dangerous
software.
System Mechanic now inherits your Windows Vista Aero theme for an
integrated look and feel.
Access to Windows Firewall is now integrated into System Mechanic
for seamless updates and configurations. And if no firewall
protection is detected, System Mechanic will alert and help you to
turn on the Windows Firewall.
One click does it all with PC TotalCare
With one click System Mechanic lets you repair and speed up your
PC. Then it “silently” monitors your system, running needed
repairs automatically to keep you at peak performance.
PC TotalCare performs a complete system tune-up by running all
Power Tool functions in one pass:
PC Repair
Wizard
Fix hundreds of stubborn problems including hard drive crashes,
system conflicts, program errors and more.
Repairs Registry problems
Repairs hard drive problems
Emergency CD revives downed systems
Fixes or removes broken shortcuts
Proactively and automatically maintains PC
PC
Accelerator Wizard
Increase PC speeds up to 300% by eliminating performance
bottlenecks and data fragmentation.
High-speed, single-file, and low-level drive defrag
Automatically accelerates PC startup 19 ways
Boosts internet speeds up to 300%
Defragments and recovers memory in real time
Compacts and defragments Registry
PC Cleanup
Wizard
Safely sweep away gigabytes of system clutter that wastes space
and produces errors.
Cleans up over 40 different types of junk files
Removes invalid uninstallers and programs
Wipes internet history, clutter and cache
PC
Security Wizard
Terminate sneaky malware and automatically repair security flaws
that leave you open to attack from hackers, viruses and identity
thieves.
Advanced spyware protection
Repairs
security vulnerabilities
Military-standard secure file wiping
Automatically blocks dangerous or unwanted programs and
configuration changes
Erases browser, MS Office and search history
Patent-pending ActiveCare
Only
System Mechanic has ActiveCare technology that repairs problems and
speeds up your PC automatically during idle time — effortlessly
keeping your system running like new.
Key
ActiveCare Features:
Works silently in the background to keep your system always
running at maximum speed and stability
Only runs when your PC is idle, never impacting performance or
interrupting work
Immediately releases control if you start using the PC when it is
No annoying prompts or slowdowns normally caused by
“calendar-based” schedulers
Only performs the necessary tune-up actions required based on
real-time system analysis
Additional tools
Complete
Registry Repair and Optimization
The Windows Registry is the single most important component of
your operating system, and it’s also where 90% of computer problems
originate. System Mechanic’s powerful Registry Repair tools clean,
optimize, fix, defragment, back up, and compact your registry while
always maintaining an absolute focus on Registry safety and security.
Netbooster
Accelerate your internet speed up to 300%. With one click,
NetBooster improves your downloading, online gaming, and web surfing
speeds beyond what you thought possible by automatically configuring
powerful hidden settings that allow faster data transfer over your
existing connection.
Advanced
Disk Defrag
System Mechanic gives you four powerful disk defrag tools:
High-speed Disk Defrag to defragment hard drives up to 30 times
faster than other defragmentation tools
Boot-time Defrag to optimize key “locked” system files that
can’t be defragged while Windows is running
Low-level Ultra-deep Defragmentation to intelligently organize
drive data for maximum program performance and long-lasting data
contiguity
Right-click Defragmentation for instant access to System
Mechanic’s powerful file defragmentation technology from anywhere
within Windows.
DriveMedic
This emergency rescue CD restores and automatically repairs downed
systems and drives, partitions, boot records, and more. Simply insert
your recovery disk (or let System Mechanic create one for you),
restart your PC, and DriveMedic will have you up and running in no
time.
System
Customizer
Gives you immediate access to over one hundred powerful
undocumented Windows settings, so you can optimize the Windows Start
Menu, speed up networking performance, log in automatically, edit
registration data, change multimedia behavior, improve pagefile
security, edit advanced administration options and much more.
Incinerator
Simply deleting a file, picture or document does not erase the
data. This information actually stays on your drive, where snoops and
criminals can easily find and view your private data. System
Mechanic’s Incinerator provides instant desktop access to
military-strength data-wiping technology, allowing you to erase files
so they cannot be recovered even by the most advanced forensic
techniques.
SafetyNet
With SafetyNet, you can undo any action performed by System
Mechanic and revert your PC back its prior state. This powerful
feature ensures that all repairs and optimizations made to your PC by
System Mechanic are safe and worry-free.
IntelliStatus
Easy access to the heartbeat of your PC. IntelliStatus provides
important system information visually and in real-time. It displays
comprehensive system statistics that allow you to track your
computer’s performance and analyze potential threats to PC health,
locate performance bottlenecks, know if any unknown or unauthorized
programs are running, and much more.
Price:
$49.95 for 1 year
{mospagebreak title=Installation and Testing}
System Mechanic 8 is available in a
stand alone box or as a download-able purchase. Plus, iolo has a
thirty day trial version to figure out if System Mechanic 8 is the
right program for your system. The review copy that I received is
the downloaded version, but the packaging for System Mechanic 8 is a
white box with the cog, screwdriver and wrench logo icon.
Installation and Testing:
Installation was easy, just follow the
prompts, enter the serial number when asked and sit back.
As soon as System Mechanic 8 fires up,
the dashboard appears and requests a System Analysis. The program
scans your PC for issues and offers the option of automatically
fixing any issues or letting the user investigate the problems a
little further.
This main screen has four tabs on the
side – Dashboard, ActiveCare, Tools and Reports. Below the
Dashboard heading is Overview and Problems.
– Overview – runs an analysis of your
PC and sees a snapshot of your computers condition.
– Problems – view details about
detected problems and run selected repairs.
ActiveCare is broken down into –
Automated Tasks and Internet Security.
– Automated Tasks – Designate issues
that you want SM to monitor and automatically fix.
– Internet Security – View
information about the status of your antivirus and firewall
protection.
Tools features Power Tools and
Individual Tools
– Power Tools – Allows access to SM
‘s all in one solutions
– Individual Tools – access
individual tools for specific needs
Reports show key system details and
statistics
– IntelliStatus – view key system
details and access relevant optimization and management tools.
– History – view statistics of
repairs and revert your PC and undo specific SM actions with
SafetyNet
After running my initial System
Analysis, you can see, my main system had a few problems that System
Mechanic 8 offered to easily fix. I preferred to investigate what
each problem was and was able to easily do so.
Next to each identified problem group,
there was a drop down menu next to the repair button. If you wanted
all the problem immediately resolved, just click the repair button.
However, if you wish to further
investigate the issue, then a drop down menu gives the user a few
manual choices.
System Mechanic 8 gives the user as much control over the
maintenance of the PC as they want. If one is not computer savvy,
then System Mechanic 8 will do all the work. If you want to have
final approval of any system changes, then System Mechanic 8 will let
you do so.
One concern with PC Tune Up programs is how many PC resources does
it consume? ActiveCare 2.0 is the engine that drives System Mechanic
8 and runs only on idle-time allowing it to perform optimally without
causing a hit in system performance.
One feature that I did not think is warranted is the subscription
necessary to run System Mechanic 8. Since this is a PC Tune-Up
program, I am not quite sure why it needs to be subscription based.
It does not require updates such as an anti-virus or spyware scanning
program, although iolo does give the user a thirty day try out period
to figure out if System Mechanic 8 is right for the user.
There is also a Pro version which includes antivirus and firewall
capabilities as well as a Search and Recover program for deleted
files.
Summary and Comments
System Mechanic 8 is the swiss army
knife of PC maintenance programs. There are more tools available
than most users will ever need, but if you require them, then System
Mechanic 8 will most likely have them.
DragonSteelMods gives the System
Mechanic 8 a 4.5 out of 5 score.
Pros:
-ActiveCare 2.0 takes up minimal system
resources
-Fully customizable
-Registry defragmentation
-Tune internet settings
Cons:
-Subscription required to continue
using program past 12 months
I would like to thank iolo for the chance to review System
Mechanic 8 and for their support of DSM.
review#494