iolo System Mechanic - Unlimited PCs

iolo has been around for years and makes a decent product, but........Years ago System Mechanic was free but limited. If you wanted to use all the features of the product you paid a nominal fee to open up all the features or in other words, purchased a license which for the most part lasted forever for the machine it was installed upon.As time went by and the product evolved it slowly became more expensive to purchase and the license became limited to a one year subscription. If that were not enough, iolo thought it would be cleaver to install nags in their updates that would pop-up every day or more to remind you to renew your subscription before it expires. It got so bad that I was tempted to remove the software from my personal workstations, then the nags all of a sudden stopped.The unlimited PC's promotion is just what it implies, you can install this promotion on as many PC's that you wish, however the license lasts for one year from the time it was registered on the first machine. It will update itself to the most current version (if you allow it to) and not nag you to renew every day anymore. There is no guarantee that it will not happen again though.The tools contained with this software are handy but if you know how to use Microsoft Windows below the skin, then you will quickly learn that most of what this product does is invoke existing Microsoft Windows software already installed on your PC. Please be warned at this point that the software is not smart enough to recognize an SSD drive over a mechanical spin drive and will offer to defragment an SSD drive which is totally unnecessary and detrimental to the drive. Defragmenting system RAM memory is totally useless as well because the moment you switch off your computer it all gets erased anyway. System RAM memory is known as volatile memory meaning that it is only temporary memory. So then, why would you need to do a temporary defragment? Your running programs know the address where the flash memory is stored, why change it? That makes no sense at all.I am not suggesting that this software is not any good nor is it anything more than a graphical batch file, but it really is not a super star either. The bottom line is the software does a little more than what most freeware utilities can, and if you have it installed on 10 PC's, the annual renewal of 30 bucks is probably worth it, so long as it does not constantly nag you to renew. If you are running this software on maybe two or three home PC's I would question the value for your money.

System Mechanic does everything it promises to and more. With the possible exception of the deepest system problems, this suite of utilities delivers when it frees up disk space, reclaims active RAM capacity, fixes and backs up the Registry, and generally keeps everything afloat for much longer. I consider this an essential tool for any version of Windows.

The amazon website said that this works with Windows 8. However, the packaging says it works only with previous versions of Windows. all my efforts to install it and upgrade through the IOLO website have proved useless.

Though I still can' t go from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 it still does a pretty good job of cleaning out my computer. I still have the famous Windows error 0x80004005 .; Still can't find a solution to it

Quite pleased for it to have scanned the computer to weed out programs that were slowing down its speed as well as any issues that could have resulted brief crashes but also to include small daily checkup fan to let one know how things are moving along.

Be prepared to be nagged to upgrade.

Excellent buy! Works very well.

Installs easy, runs well and on Auto it works great in the background