Iolo System Mechanic 8 - PC review

Comments

• I bought the software last week and it generated script errors the very first time it ran, and GP faults every time it starts up. I have never gotten it to run successfully, and support has not responded to my inquiries at all, now 5 days later.
  
  I am an experienced software engineer and relatively expert on Windows technology, seldom requiring support of any kind and in fact much more often providing it to others, and my machine is virus and spyware free. I attempted removal and reinstall without firewalls or anti-spyware running to ensure there was no interference, etc., to no avail - this thing simply will not run on my machine, and Iolo does not have functional tech support (i.e., if no one gets back to you in days, this is not helpful).
  
  I cannot strongly enough recommend against purchasing this software. It's too bad I hadn't looked at other people's experiences with Iolo - apparently it's consistent with their past business practices to release software with severe/disabling bugs and not provide support to their users, see, e.g., http://www.forbes.com/2007/04/25/iolo-system-mechanic-tech-personal-cx_de_0425iolo.html and http://reviews.cnet.com/system-utilities/iolo-technologies-system-mechanic/4864-3680_7-32955439-1.html. Posted by Jim Wright, USA
• Update: Their customer service rep was very courteous with me on the phone and quick to agree to issue me a refund. Apparently the current version of the product has known localization problems.
  
  It would have been much better had support actually responded to me rather than needing to call customer service after nearly a week to request a refund, but at least they were good about admitting the problem & hopefully refunding my purchase. Posted by Jim, Part 2, USA
• I have had perfect results with this product,it has done everything it says it can do and more.But i do have to admit that custormer service is super slowwwwwwww.But as long as i am getting great results in computer performance,having to wait for custormer service is worth it. Posted by COLT, united states
• is it perfect no! is it better than norton for speeding up your system YES, I love iolo my system scores on sandra and others doubled after use, yes you can do most of this stuff if your a geek like me for free, but not as fast or easy. Posted by Edwin Jostmeyer, United States
• Excellent - it works well on all four of our family laptops. Posted by Joe, New Zealand
• Firewall would not work in blocking incoming or outgoing traffic on Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox when their settings are set to "Block" in their respective profiles. Blocking all internet traffic is only a temporary measure as a computer restart resets this setting to "allow". Anti-virus program kept crashing at PC close-down, unable to be fixed. Tech support quite slow and, I believe, that they really do not actually read your emails, just skim and find the first thing they can fix and offer one of their FAQs or knowledge based help. They NEVER answer all questions you may need help on. It requires many, many emails of constantly asking. They can, also, be unclear in what they want when asking you for information, which confuses the issue further. Posted by foggy1, Australia