Several months ago, I ranted a bit about the problems I had with my Vista desktop computer. After that article, I was contacted by Michael Simpson of Iolo Technologies about their product, System Mechanic.
System Mechanic is a an overall system cleaner. I thought it was definitely worth trying, especially since the eldest minion, my teenage daughter, often forgets to do what she’s supposed to do with basic programs like CCleaner, by Piriform. I wanted to see if there was a better way to keep her PC healthy.
I downloaded copies of System Mechanic on three computers: the newly-upgraded Windows 7 desktop, the Windows XP desktop used by the eldest minion, and the Windows XP desktop used by the youngest son, the tech genius minion.
The tech genius minion was the most skeptical of the three of us about System Mechanic. His objection was that you could download free programs that would do everything that this program does. He finally agree to try it after seeing it in action on my computer.
Downloading was simple and I had no glitches. The first full scan took several hours but I was able to keep the computer up and running during it without suffering any significant loss of processing speed.
Once the full scan was done, the program recommended a number of repairs.
Now, here’s where I really started to like it because System Mechanic explained both what it had found and why it needed to be fixed. I’m not a computer or tech expert thought I’ve learned bits and pieces along the way. So having a program explain, in simple English, what it was doing was not only a nice feature but it also taught me something.
After the tech genius minion saw the list of repairs that System Mechanic recommended on my desktop, he changed his mind about it. He still believes that you could get free programs to do what it does but it would take several different programs and they wouldn’t do it as efficiently as this one program. He wanted me to say he thinks it’s significantly improved his processing speed.
But here’s the part I really, really liked: you can set System Mechanic to run automatically in the background.
If you’re careful to remember to clean your PC every day, then this is not a huge advantage though it’s nice.
However, if you have kids using computers in your house, chances are that they are much less careful.
To the left is an example of what the screen shot will look like after System Mechanic finishes analyzing a PC.
For my teenager, I especially liked that it cleared away unnecessary start-up items. I know, she can do it herself. But she rarely does and it’s added protection against a program automatically setting itself to run.
If you click on the “options” tab, that’s where you enable all this to run in the background.
The program costs $19.95 a year of upgrades or $29.95 for two years of upgrades, both including the program itself. I did receive my copy for free but after watching it in action for over a month, I’m definitely going to buy it when my current subscription is up.
I like the convenience, I like that it could be uploaded to three different computers, and I like that it showed no difficulties/clashes with the anti-virus programs that are running on the various computers.
And I really like that the XP computers are running better. I can’t say with certainty how it’s affected Windows 7 processing speed because I uploaded System Mechanic only a week after I started using Windows 7. What I can say is that my desktop so far is working far better than Vista. Part of that, I think, is the cleaning done by System Mechanic, especially the way it cleans up after my kids use my desktop.
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