System Mechanic 8 is a diagnostic application that seeks to streamline your PC by finding and removing unwanted clutter. After an initial analysis, the main screen gives you a picture of the overall health of your system. It provides a comprehensive range of tools for fixing problems. Individual tools allow you to fix or optimise specific aspects of your system, including the Registry, Windows startup programs and the hard disk. There are also more general, theme-based tools titled Accelerator, Repair, Cleanup and Security, which run batches of the individual tools.
As with System Mechanic 7, there's an element of vagueness about both the nature of the uncovered problems and their proposed solutions. If you don't care too much about the technical details of what's happening this isn't necessarily a problem, but it will leave anyone with a modicum of computer knowledge a little unnerved.
Using the Registry cleaner, defragmenter and the startup tuner knocked four seconds off our test system's boot time, while the disk checker uncovered an extra 2.3GB of hard disk space by removing unnecessary Windows components, although the latter did result in the loss of some system settings. We ran our Shopper benchmarks before and after the optimisation, but the results revealed an insignificant overall increase in system performance.
Those lacking the time or inclination to delve into advanced settings and eke out some extra performance will like the simplicity of System Mechanic's approach. The subscription model, though, is less attractive. There is little here that demands regular internet updates to function, but System Mechanic is sold as a yearly subscription. At £29 it's not cheap now, and it won't be in 12 months when you have to update the licence.
Requires Windows 2000/XP/Vista , 400MHz processor, 256MB RAM, 30MB disk space, Internet Explorer 6 or laterAuthor: David McKinnon
Iolo System Mechanic 8