SmallBizResource Blog -- Software

System Mechanic Speeds Startup Of Slowpoke PCs

Posted by Gayle Kesten Friday, Jun 5, 2009, 01:11 PM ET

Make coffee. Pack lunch. Wake son. Those are just a few of the tasks I can cross off of my to-do list during the time it takes to get my laptop started each morning.

If you have a slowpoke Windows machine like mine (granted, it's nearly 2 years old and is sorely in need of some spring app-cleaning), then the just-released small business version of iolo technologies' flagship System Mechanic solution is worth consideration. "System Mechanic consists of more than 40 tools that go in and make sure startup runs as close to a brand new computer as possible," J.J. Schoch, iolo's VP of marketing, told me during a briefing prior to Thursday's official launch. "Even after three months, a computer starts clogging up enough in several different areas to cause performance degradation."

That clogging comes courtesy of what Schoch called "remnants," or software and add-ons that wind up on your computer while you're installing other programs and receiving updates. For example, he said, say you've gone through three different printers in the past two years. Each printer not only installs a driver so your computer can talk to the printer, but you may also get different pieces of software for scanning, and some have trialware included, as well. "Three printers later you still have all those pieces of software with nothing to do," Schoch said.

All of those remnants soon add up and bloat your Windows registry, resulting in a waste of computer resources that affects not only startup speed, but also creates a sluggishness when working among multiple applications and consumes more electricity.

"There's less memory available because it's being used up by all these remnants. The processor is being used for nonessential things," Schoch explained. "System Mechanic goes in and finds rogue startup programs that put themselves into the Windows startup. It cleans out errors from the registry and compacts it down."

What's new about System Mechanic is less about functionality and more about that functionality being extended to time-strapped, IT department-less small businesses in the form of fewer licenses required to purchase -- $99.95 for a 10-PC license, $199.95 for up to 25 PCs, and $349.95 for up to 50 PCs (75- and 100-license packages are available, too). The solution is part-software, which I can tell you is simple to install because I did so, and part-service in the form of updates that, similar to antivirus offerings, communicate with the software in the background as new information is learned. "Our labs are researching all of these different startup items to find out what's essential and not," Schoch said. "It recommends to System Mechanic what items to remove and which processes to turn off."

Updates are included in the initial price for the first year only. Of note, System Mechanic works on 32- and 64-bit systems, from Windows 2000 on up -- including Windows 7, Microsoft's forthcoming operating system. "We're keeping up with all of the releases," Schoch added.

In my own test-drive, System Mechanic reported finding (and had my OK to remove) 4.19 GB of system clutter on my laptop. I can't say this morning's startup was dramatically faster, but I did notice an uptick in speed -- enough so that my son stumbled out of bed before I had the honor of waking him.

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