Iolo Technologies isn't a well-known name here in the UK, so its System Mechanic utilities face something of an uphill struggle against big names such as Norton and McAfee. However, the package has been selling well in the US and does provide a wide range of features for PC maintenance, virus protection and Internet security. The suite performed well during our tests, and provides good value for money at about £50.

There are two versions available. The standard System Mechanic costs £29.95 and consists of three main modules, called System Shield, Drive Scrubber and Search and Recover. The Professional edition, reviewed here, costs £49.95 and includes the same three modules along with additional firewall and anti-virus software.

The program gets off to a messy start, though. The first thing you see upon installation is a warning to remove any existing anti-virus software or firewalls. Of course, Windows XP has its own built-in firewall, but Iolo assures us that you can turn this off rather than removing it completely. Even so, this might confuse some less technically knowledgeable users.

Once you've installed the software you'll see a System Mechanic icon on your Desktop, a number of new icons in the Windows Taskbar and three new folders in the Programs section of your Start menu (which include a number of sub-folders as well). In other words, there are bits of the suite installed all over the place and it took us about half an hour to look around and find all the main options before we could really get down to trying them out. A proper printed manual would certainly help users, instead of leaving them to plough through the online Help files.

The main thing that kept us going was the fact that after installing System Mechanic and restarting our test PC, the anti-virus module detected a number of trojans missed during other recent scans of the system. It was encouraging to know that the software was doing its job properly, so we persevered and it soon became apparent that the System Mechanic icon on the Desktop merely acts as a kind of front end for most of the features included in the suite.

Once launched, the System Mechanic window displays a series of tabs, with labels such as 'Protect', 'Maintain' and 'Optimise', each of which leads you to a set of related options. There's a range of features available, including tools for deleting files or for recovering files deleted by accident.

The firewall and anti-virus programs are accompanied by a pop-up blocker and anti-spyware program, and for more technical users there are options for delving into the Windows Registry and monitoring memory usage and network activity. We like the boot-time defragmentation option and the Startup Guard which can detect any program that tries to configure itself to run when the PC starts up.

The colourful interface initially seems to work quite well, but there are still a few problems. The main one is that many features are duplicated or found in more than one place. There are, for instance, no fewer than three options offered for deleting files and data from your hard disk, each of which seems to work in a different fashion. And many of these features are given different names in different places. The System Shield program found in the Start Menu/Programs folder can also be accessed through the System Mechanic interface, but is referred to as 'Delete Data'.

The slightly messy interface and lack of a printed manual mean System Mechanic may be confusing for novice users, but it can be recommended to those who are more experienced. It certainly represents a strong challenge for products such as Norton's Systemworks.

Contact:
IT Red 0845 226 1082
www.itred.com

System requirements:

• Windows 95 (Rev B) or later
• 128MB RAM
• 200MHz processor
• 60MB hard disk space