May 29, 2007 09:37 AM
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Purchased about a month ago, I was looking for a utility suite to replace the really terrible Norton suite that was so invasive and resource-hogging that it slowed my computer to a crawl. System Mechanic got some great reviews online from good sources, so I decided to give it a try. The $39 price, but free after two $20 rebates, was certainly an incentive. I hope to receive those rebates soon.
Installation was fast and easy on my Celeron 3000 system (Windows XP Pro, 2 gigabytes RAM, nearly a terabyte of hard drive space, ) as was initial use. The features seemed to be a good assortment, and the initial use of them was acceptable.
After a few weeks of use, however, I noticed that System Mechanic slowed to a crawl when initiated, and my computer lost a lot of its speed. This got worse as time went on. The program "fixed" registry errors that weren't errors, and its monitoring tool constantly ran and hogged about 90% of my memory resources. One thing that absolutely wouldn't work was the defragging tool.
Support was minimal, and the problems weren't resolved, so I decided to remove it, after which my computer returned to its normal zippy state of responsiveness.
I've since replaced most of the features of System Mechanic 7 with several small freeware tools that, while not all packaged in a neat array, do everything that System Mechanic promised to do, without the invasiveness and resource loss that SM7 exhibited.
If you're interested in SM7, go to their website and download the trial version. Maybe you'll come to the same conclusion I did, but without the $$ outlay.
