|
|
Available from:
iolo
|
|
Newsletter
|
|
Be
notified of site updates. Sign-up for the Newsletter sent out twice
weekly.
Enter
E-Mail Address Below:
|
|
iolo's System
Mechanic 10.5
With the latest update to 10.5, iolo System
Mechanic maintains its dominance of this corner of the software market.
One of the aspects of iolo's System Mechanic is that it's a "fire and
forget" program that can be automated to perform most of the basic tasks
(and many advanced ones) to keep your PC running smoothly and speedily.
With the most recent update, I spent some time twiddling with some of
the functions a layer or two below the most basic functions. Rather than
cause me to |
|
|
the latest drivers for your PC. This works
but I'd like to see how it performs over a longer period of time --
months rather than the couple of weeks that I've been paying close
attention. For a PC gamer, it means never having to think about getting
the latest software updates for your equipment.
There's a list of
further enhancements and new features of System Mechanic listed on their
website, but one the new features that most caught my attention and
actually seemed to work some voodoo to make things go faster is Program
Accelerator which "speeds up overall program responsiveness by
re-aligning all of a program's dependent files on the hard drive." It
reads like one of those infomercials that try to create an artificial
demand. (How many times has this happened to you? Your friends come over
and you need to make 7 different kinds of daiquiri and bake an apple
pie. What are you going to do? Now there's an answer to this every day
problem. You're going to take out of your Pie-O-Daquiri Quick
Concocter!) The difference here is that iolo delivers. Programs start
faster!
For PC users, advanced and novice, spending a some money on iolo System
Mechanic should be a no-brainer.
- Aaron Simmer
(July 13, 2011)
iolo's System
Mechanic 10
The only thing that prevented me from
immediately deleting the email from iolo asking if I would be interested
in reviewing their System Mechanic was the recent tripping and chugging
my PC was doing. It was serendipity! For once having a malfunctioning and unstable PC would
actually help with something.
There were no problems with the installation, which is kind of what I
was expecting with the recent behavior of my PC.
Through it's easy-to-navigate menus, I had System Mechanic run the
diagnostics. The results seemed a long time coming, but that was something I was
expecting.
The results weren't unexpected: I had a lot of problems. The gauges that
popped up provided a good visual on what I already knew, but it did go
to the trouble to break down each issue with moderate detail.
I pressed the big "Repair All" button and let System Mechanic go nuts.
On my Windows 7 machine, it took what seemed like forever, especially
when it took to running a defrag of my hard drive. I think I restarted
the machine at least twice for all the changes and adjustments to take
effect. Time from start to stop felt like hours, but it was more like 45
minutes.
After the initial bulldozing and reshaping of my registry and hard
drive, the time spent running diagnostics and fixing any problems
dramatically decreased and most of it could be run in the background.
But the most important thing here is that System Mechanic did precisely
what its infomercial-like webpage says it will. I noticed considerable
improvement of my PC's initial boot time and programs loaded more
rapidly than I ever remember them loading. More importantly, for me
anyway, there were several games that had their stuttering problems
fixed. These were problems that I just took as a fact of life --
monkeying with my registry or fooling with background programs has
always comes back to bite me -- so having these issues resolved without
my haphazard involvement saved my sanity.
I also like the way System Mechanic's interface is laid out and the
variety of options that can be turned off and on. the default settings
are great for an untechnical shmo like me, but there's plenty of deeper
options that I'm sure tech heads will appreciate having access to
without having to muck around with the guts of a program.
For $35US (for a year's coverage), iolo's System Mechanic is money well
spent in this writer's opinion. I'd recommend this to other PC gamers
for its ease of use and the fact it works as advertised.
- Aaron
(April 12, 2011)
|
