System Mechanic adds energy boost

Walk into any convenience store these days and you’ll see those little energy booster bottles next to the register, containing a drink that gives you a jolt of power when you really need it and gets you firing on all cylinders.

If only you could find an energy booster for your PC, something that could strip away all the stuff that bogs it down when it’s doing the everyday work.

Imagine if you could just press a button and make it lean and mean for the times you need the highest performance possible for playing games, manipulating complex graphics or some other kind of job that needs every bit of computing power your PC can summon. Well, that kind of energy booster is here, and it’s just a part of the newest version of System Mechanic from iolo technologies.

System Mechanic Version 9 is a major reworking of iolo’s award-winning PC tune-up utility that contains more than 40 integrated tools designed to bring your PC back to its original, finely tuned glory days. As we get older, we begin slowing down — your PC, however, should remain just as fast as the day you first bought it.

As you continue to use it, the operating system simply gets bogged down with such things as fragmentation, memory leaks, registry entries that are no longer valid and more.

System Mechanic restores and then maintains your PC’s performance at like-new levels, and with Version 9, iolo introduces some major new features to ensure that happens most effectively.

Just like anti-virus programs get updated virus definitions to deal with the latest malware, System Mechanic 9 introduces its own Tune-up Definitions that perform a similar function, but instead deal with bottleneck problems. Iolo Labs is staffed by technicians working full time analyzing software and benchmarking computer systems.

If a bottleneck is identified, a Tune-up definition is released and uploaded to your copy of SM9 so that it can identify and intelligently deal with the problem. iolo Labs is publishing Tune-up definitions on a weekly basis.

This feature alone puts SM9 in a class by itself. No longer do you have to wait for a new version of the software to be released to deal with the latest performance problems. Industry-first Tune-up Definitions lets SM9 perform smarter, faster and perform deeper tune-ups in a timely manner.

The EnergyBooster button I first mentioned appears on SM9’s new PC Health Status Gadget that gives you an easy, at-a-glance overview of your PC’s performance and all recent tune-ups. Smack the EnergyBooster button and SM9 uses its Tune-up Definitions and, optionally, your own choices to intelligently jettison any non- essential background programs that may be running at that moment such as printer and scanner drivers, e-mail processes and more.

After your game is over, just go back to EnergyBooster to restore your PC to its everyday functionality, or you can simply reboot your PC. Enjoy the impressive instant performance boost you’ll get by temporarily turning those processes off and freeing up extra memory, knowing that EnergyBooster is not just some arbitrary, shut-down process, but an intelligent action informed by the Tune-up Definitions.

SM9 now has the Total Registry Revitalizer wizard that first backs up your registry, uses the new Registry Repair Tool and then compacts and defragments the loaded registry. It’s everything you need for your registry now in one wizard.

The list of new features and enhancements in SM9 is just too long to list in this column. Suffice it to say that if you already have an earlier version of System Mechanic, you’re going to want this newest release, and if you’re still dealing with those bogged-down problems, SM9 is just what you need to get things back up to speed. System Mechanic Version 9 sells for $49.95 and is available at www.iolo.com.

XCraig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. For more information, visit his Web site at www.computeramerica.com.

2009 McClatchy Tribune