With its latest release, Iolo System Mechanic 7 Professional has lost its focus as one of the premier system utility suites on the market. Included within this latest release are other standalone Iolo products -- including Search and Recover 3, Iolo Antivirus, Iolo AntiSpyware, Iolo Firewall, and Iolo DiskScrubber -- which should, on the face of it, make this a great bargain at only AU$120. But as an all-in-one utility now, security suite System Mechanic fails, lacking the antispam, antiphishing and antirootkit protection found in competing Internet Security suites.

Also, Iolo has changed the system utility tools, and not for the better. Part of System Mechanic's allure was its position as the anti-Norton SystemWorks utility suite, providing useful system tools without all the extra baggage of a Symantec product. System Mechanic 7 Professional has instead moved closer to Symantec Norton SystemWorks, loading itself up with extras you might not use while urging you to accept its findings without providing context or sometimes even a choice.

We prefer the older versions of System Mechanic, which focused on system utilities and clearly spelled out what it was doing and why; System Mechanic 7 Professional too often feels like a hot-shot garage mechanic that recommends an oil change even though your car has barely driven 3000 miles. For those interested in upgrading, we suggest you keep System Mechanic 6 Professional a while longer. At this writing we're still awaiting the latest release of Norton SystemWorks (which, we're told, will be redesigned and fully compatible with Windows Vista); stay tuned.

Setup
System Mechanic 7 Professional runs on Windows 98 through Vista. You can download a full-function 30-day trial from CNET.com.au Downloads.

The setup for System Mechanic 7 Professional was unnecessarily challenging. Even with a disc from Iolo, we were asked to enter a long license number, then, a few screens later, enter an even longer registration number. That's a lot of numbers to key in, and if you make a mistake it's hard to find which character is out of place or entered wrong. You'd think you were entering the access code for Fort Knox.

Stats from your computer automatically appear on the Iolo Threat Center -- we couldn't find a way to opt out.

During installation we were asked to agree with a standard end-user license agreement. Only later we did realise that data from our hard drive was being collected and sent back to the Iolo. How do we know that? Visitors to the Iolo Threat Center see the latest statistics from System Mechanic users worldwide, displaying percentages of cluttered files on people's machines, or how defragemented their hard drive is. We could find no way to opt out of this, either during the setup process or after out installation. We think it's wrong that Iolo collects such data without our explicit permission.

Should you want to remove Iolo System Mechanic 7 Professional, there is no uninstall icon. You will need to use the Windows Control Panel, then Add or Remove Programs. After a reboot, we discovered several system registry entries remained for System Mechanic 7 Professional.

The interface has been redesigned to include more tools and information.

Interface
For System Mechanic 7 Professional, Iolo redesigned its interface. In addition to the familiar speedometer showing your system status as good, fair, or poor, there are right-hand menus that locate specific tools, although most user interface studies have shown the left-hand side of the screen to be the user's sweet spot, visually. Indeed, several times we had to remember that the navigation was on the right, not the left. The left side is occupied by a combined diagnostics test. In previous versions you had to analyse and run separate tools, which was a pain. This is an improvement, of sorts. Within System Mechanic 7 Professional, you only run one, and quickly, you'll see what needs to be fixed in one listing.

Unlike system Mechanic 6 Professional, which periodically asked us to download the latest updates, System Mechanic 7 Professional makes the update process more automatic. This is a welcome change, but it also highlights our concern that too many of the processes within System Mechanic now occur in the background.

Tasks have been simplified such that you no longer have much control over what is done; System Mechanic 7 Professional now makes most of those decisions for you.

What's truly frustrating about the new interface is that unlike earlier versions where you could check the items you wanted -- and uncheck those you did not -- you are strongly encouraged to accept Iolo's word that all the changes recommended are the best for your PC. Only by selecting Remove Manually did we see what Iolo had flagged. In most cases these were minor shortcuts and cookies and other items that we did not think warranted removal, and ultimately we unchecked them. We also question the hyperbolic terminology. "Warning" implies danger, and we don't see how two broken shortcuts on our test PC rise to that level. If anything, in simplifying its interface, Iolo has weakened System Mechanic's credibility to diagnose truly severe problems.

Features
Rather than license existing antivirus and firewall technology, Iolo created their own in-house security products. While this ensures the security apps will play well with the existing Iolo tools, these are largely unproven applications competing in a mature and competitive field. We look forward to seeing some independent testing of the antivirus tools from AV-test.org and Checkvir.com, or some other truly independent antivirus testing organisation.

Iolo Search and Recover, available as a standalone product, is now included within System Mechanic. Search and Recover allows you to search your hard drive for that missing file that you know exists, and, if you happened to have deleted it somehow, Iolo gives you a tool to recover it. This can be very handy.

DriveScrubber is another good feature. If you ever sell you PC, you'll want to not only delete the data, but overwrite it with ones and zeros several times so that the data will be unrecoverable. System Mechanic 7 Professional includes this tool with options to scrub one file, a specific folder, or an entire drive. Also you can set it to automatically scrub whenever you delete a file.

There's also a pop-up blocker feature within System Mechanic 7 Professional but we found this feature totally useless. We used the Firefox Internet browser on our CNET machine yet Iolo provides pop-up protection only for Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera. Netscape and Opera currently occupy less than 1 percent of the Internet Browser market; Firefox is currently over 10 percent. That said, all of these browsers, even Firefox, now provide their own pop-up protection, so this feature is unnecessary.

Missing from within System Mechanic 7 Professional are tools to block spam, stop phishing attempts, and prevent rootkits from installing on your PC.

Performance
Overall, our experience with System Mechanic 7 Professional was mixed. Although it's a system utility designed to fix problems, we tripped over a few error messages while using System Mechanic and Search and Recover 3. Future updates should be able to correct these flaws, but the errors (memory faults) were enough to lower System Mechanic 7 Professional's overall rating.

Iolo Antivirus 1.x is a new, proprietary antivirus product that has not been tested by the independent antivirus testing sites recommended by CNET. Therefore we have no information on its accuracy in finding and removing viruses. We did find that the antivirus scans tended to slow our test PC.

Iolo Firewall is also a proprietary firewall product and has not been tested by CNET Labs. On our informal test machine Iolo Firewall prompted us for permission to allow just about every application we had on our machine. After a week the alerts did slow, but it seems that Iolo does not have many applications in its database, and leaves the decision to grant access to you. We ended up disabling the Iolo Firewall and using Windows Firewall instead.

Support
We found the technical support for System Mechanic 7 Professional to be light. There's no PDF manual, for example. The in-program Help feature is adequate, but we'd prefer more detail about the specific tools within the program. Online, the knowledge base is also rather light, available either by asking the right questions or by searching an index.

Based on past performance, we eagerly awaited System Mechanic 7 Professional, only to be disappointed. Instead of a pure system-utility suite, the System Mechanic has morphed into an all-in-one security suite -- and may have taken on too much in this release. To be a true security suite, tools are needed to block spam, phishing attacks, and rootkits.