PC Matic is Number 1 in customer satisfaction – and for a few days – Free after $40 mail-in rebate!
Although we appear to specialize in hardware reviews, we often get software at ABT to evaluate and we have scheduled a long list of upcoming reviews and mini reviews for you from many companies including Cyberlink, muvee, and of course, reviews of PC games. Software is what makes our hardware function and without it our PCs would be completely useless.
We also have to protect what we have and it is a necessity to run a good anti-virus and malware protection for any PC. There is a lot of malware and evil programs designed to cause you misery, steal your information, identity and even raid your bank account. Fortunately there are a lot of good programs to help us. Unfortunately, most PC users do not have a lot of time to spend on PC security, and tweaking a complicated suite will turn off all but the most dedicated enthusiast. PC Matic is designed to be simple and easy to install and configure and to just work without the user having to give a lot of thought to what is happening.
PC Matic launched back in August 2009 as an all-in-one suite for PC speed, performance, security and stability. It takes advantage of Cloud Computing Architecture so that as long as you are connected to the ‘net, you will get free product updates and enhancements for a year for $49.95 for licenses for 5 PCs. This is a pretty good deal considering that PC Matic has a better CNET consumer rating and is much less expensive than Norton who only offers licenses for 3 PCs.
Best of all, if you buy PC Matic in the next week or so, you can get it basically free at Micro Center and at Fry’s Electronics! It is not only on sale for $40, there is a $40 mail-in-rebate!! If you are considering a high-quality PC all-in-one suite, this deal really delivers solid value for almost no money. Naturally we next want to know if it is reliable and if it has good customer ratings.
Of course, now that we see that it has the highest CNET customer satisfaction rating, this editor wanted to find out a little more about it and how it compares to other utilities, and so it is now installed on this editor’s notebook PC. Here is our very quick evaluation so that you may consider if you want to take advantage of this free-after-mail-in-rebate offer that is happening for just over a week longer. Here is what PC Matic does.
It looks good and it is a really tiny 1.5 MB compressed download as it uses remote cloud computing to interact with your PC. Installation is a breeze and in a few minutes you are up and running and you will next want to scan your PC. You will need to uninstall your current Internet Security Suite if it is incompatible with PC Matic. I am unsure why this message appeared as there is no Norton running on my PC.
No worries. Now PC Matic will safeguard your PC. Here are the options that we are greeted with to scan our PC for the first time.
My notebook PC has a 250 GB hard drive that is about three quarters full and it only took less than 20 minutes for the first complete PC Matic scan including the hard disk defragmentation! In my experience this is extraordinarily quick and much quicker than just running a Windows defragmentation of your hard drives alone.
PC Matic always recommends immediately running a second much quicker scan after your initial one to confirm that any issues found in the first scan are really fixed. We ran all the default options each time we ran our PC Matic scan. And of course we want to see the results.
There is not really a lot wrong except for junk files and fragmentation of the hard drive. I uninstalled my anti-virus before installing PC Matic so the security threats are obvious. They offered 20 automatic fixes and we felt brave and went for it.
Again, there is not a lot wrong other than our PC is listed in the bottom 19% of the world’s PCs. Let’s see what the fix does. We went for the default cleaning options:
Again, everything is automated. You don’t even have to pay attention, you just click right through it, and it takes very little time once your PC is optimized by the initial scan and fix. During the scan and fix, you should move away from your PC and close your browser windows and close running programs so PC Matic can do its work efficiently. Take a break while it does its work; the fix took about a half hour to complete on my PC.
And when it is done you get the results.
Of course, not everything runs perfectly and the second scan did not complete.
So we ran it again and it completed perfectly. You can look up your results at any time.
So now we want to see how our PC compares now that it has been optimized.
Not bad at all! And we still have much to explore but it is very comforting to know that our PC is protected and that we no longer have to think about it. We didn’t notice much difference with the Internet speeds as Satellite ISPs are notoriously hard to optimize for, but our PC definitely benefited from the hard disk defragmentation. Even a couple of drivers were installed that this editor was too lazy to upgrade with the last Windows update. PC (auto) Matic indeed!
What can we say? We like PC Matic as one of the best, most automatic – set and ignore – all-in-one suite that we have ever encountered. How much in resources does it take up?
It’s footprint is smaller than most. This is a quality suite – especially for free after $40 mail-in-rebate.
Summary & conclusion
Pros
- All-in-one speed, performance, stability security suite
- Cloud computing architecture delivers free updates and enhancements for a year
- Automatic driver updates
- Optimization – disk cleaner, PC and Internet Optimizer as well as download booster enhance your PC experience
- Protection against malware and Spyware as well as registry repair gives you peace of mind and protects your PC and you from heartbreak.
- Scan and Fix in one click! This software is easy to use.
- Remote scheduler allows you 5 PCs on your license to managed scheduled scans from one location.
- On sale now for $40 and free after $40 mail-in-rebate.
Cons
- None
PC Matic is a great value for $50 for the 5 PC license deal with updates for a year compared to its competition. And did we mention that for just over a week, PC Matic is free after a $40 mail-in-rebate? That alone qualifies it for our great value award! Recommended.
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