


The first of these buttons is the all-in-one PC TotalCare tool. You can run repair tools directly from within this box or use the Power Tools buttons on the right side of the application's interface. The two other items are for maintenance: Update indicates whether System Mechanic is fully updated, while Active Care lets you know whether an automated maintenance schedule has been set up. The first four - Clutter, Speed, Safety, and Fitness - tell you which major repair tools you should run to optimize your system. The basic tools are that good.īelow the meters is a box with six items detailing where your machine is in good, or bad, shape. Drilling down to the more expert tools is intuitive, though most people will probably never get around to them. We also appreciated the applications logical layout, which should provide novices with fast access to the most important tools for cleaning out junk files, optimizing the Registry, speeding Windows' startup, repairing hard-drive problems, and killing spyware. Most striking about the shipping version we tested are the colourful audio-volume-style meters that display your computer's overall health and security status at a glance.

This version answers that promise with an informative interface. System Mechanic's original appeal was its promise to make your system run quicker and leaner, with simple, easy-to-use tools. We're happy to see that System Mechanic 6 is substantially better than the two prior versions. Once the maker of one of the best PC cleaning and optimization tools on the market, Iolo Technologies had slipped a bit in recent years, turning out mediocre versions of its flagship System Mechanic software.
