Published on January 13, 2009 By Island Dog In Personal Computing

I like to keep my PC’s well maintained.  That meaning I don’t any excessive system clutter, temp files laying around, and things of that sort.   I had a chance to give System Mechanic and System Mechanic Professional a try, and it’s definitely one of the best utility suites out there.  System Mechanic has been around for a while, and that experience shows in this latest version.

One of the things I like about a suite like System Mechanic, is that it has a bunch of tools all rolled up into an easy to use interface.  Why have a bunch of different applications installed, when I can have all of them in one place?

System Mechanic has an attractive interface which opens a Dashboard view, which gives you an up to date status check, along with some other useful info including some “hints and tips”.  The “Problems” screen shows just that, problems with your system that could be decreasing performance and offers solutions to fix the issues.

system_mechanic_011-13-2009 10-44-47 PM

On the left side you have your navigation panel, where you can find all the available tools just waiting to go into action.

1-13-2009 10-47-20 PM

In the ActiveCare section, you have Automated Tasks and Internet Security sections.  Automated Tasks gives you the option to enable/disable various scheduled tasks that System Mechanic can perform.  You can even set it to e-mail you system reports about your PC.

1-13-2009 10-49-56 PM
The Tools area has a Power Tools and Individual Tools section.  The Power Tools category has several selections which run multiple tools to help increase system performance, free up drive space, or check system security.

1-13-2009 10-52-01 PM

The Individual Tools area is my favorite, because you have total control over the tools you can run.   There’s way too many to list, but you can do things like defragment your hard drive, defrag memory, configure boot-time, remove junk files, remove spyware, configure Windows start-up, and much more.

1-13-2009 10-54-41 PM

Intellistatus gives you an up to date look at common PC statistics like drive space, memory, internet speed, and more.  You can also view a history of changes made by System Mechanic.  If you are worried about doing something to your computer, don’t worry, System Mechanic has the SafetyNet feature in which you can easily roll-back any changes you have made. 

I have been using it for weeks, and have used all the functions and haven’t run into any problems.  Just the opposite really, because System Mechanic has helped me clean out and optimize performance on my PC.

System Mechanic and System Mechanic Professional are both available on Impulse.  The Professional version adds features such as Anti-virus, Anti-Spyware, Search and Recover, and DriveScrubber.

Link: System Mechanic Professional

Link: System Mechanic


Comments (Page 2)
2 Pages1 2 
on Jan 14, 2009

Those are negatives to me. I have never liked putting all my eggs in one basket when it comes to security.

Then opt for just System Mechanic.  On the eggs in one basket...I've used it steady for 4 years and have had minimal problems.  I personally like having a 1 stop shop for my needs and this is 1 of the best I've used.  It's a pain to me to have to have this virus, this other firewall, this other tune-up etc.  I like simplicity...and bananas.

on Jan 14, 2009

Those are negatives to me. I have never liked putting all my eggs in one basket when it comes to security.

That's only in the professional version.

on Jan 14, 2009

Can SM do HD repair and recovery or rebuild broken partitions?

It does have HD repair features.  Not sure about broken partitions though.

on Jan 14, 2009

I had this program years ago and it was pretty good, so I'm not knocking it. The only issue I have is that the company comes out almost every year with a new version, and want you to pay for the update. Nothing wrong with that concept. You get support and all if needed. But there are free alternatives such as Glary Utilities. I use this along with Avast (for AV) Spybot SD (new version 2.0 very soon) to keep the system clean, and they are all free and easily updated. Never had a problem

on Jan 14, 2009

How is the AV on this one, though? Not all are created equal, after all

on Jan 14, 2009

How is the AV on this one, though? Not all are created equal, after all

Only had one problem so far.  It was a recent virus.  4 years, one virus got through...pretty good I'd say.

on Jan 17, 2009

But there are free alternatives such as Glary Utilities

I'm using Glary Utilities in Vista x64 because System Mechanic is not compatible with 64 bit as yet, otherwise I would use it.  I tried a free trial of it on my 32bit Vista and thought it was great, reliable and efficient, but alas, it is not available as yet for my primary OS.  Hopefully that will be remedied in time for the release of Win 7 x64... cos I don't see myself going back to 32 bit after so liking the additional power of x64.

 

on Jan 17, 2009

I don't use registry editing programs anymore. Rollback or no rollback, make sure you know exactly what that thing is doing before you allow it to automatically change anything in your registry.

2 Pages1 2