The first thing System Suite 7 Pro insists on is having your PC to itself. One of the select band of titles that asks you to close everything down before they'll install, it does give you an option to ignore its pleas, but that'll only lead to a required restart before the program is fully operational.

But then it's a frightening comprehensive tool at heart, designed to cover the four corners of your PC with an adequate safety net.

First up in its locker is security, with spam, e-mail, virus and hacking protection all part and parcel, along with a data recovery wizard. For our money, this is the comparably weak link in a very strong toolbox. The virus scanner, sensibly, demands exclusivity, but we weren't convinced it beat the Sophos solution on our test laptop (VCOM uses Trend's solution, though, which is suitably able).

Likewise, the firewall - and System Suite has switched away from Sygate to NetDefense - is no market leader, and we didn't find it quite as effective as our preferred solutions. The security tools do also have a system overhead, which is fine for a powerful machine but should be a consideration on lower spec computers.

It wasn't the security, though, that warmed us to System Suite, rather the able collection of system tools it has hiding under the bonnet. For instance, it's a useful rooter-out of clutter on your hard drive, has an effective disk defragmenter, can sort out your registry, streamline what boots when Windows starts, verify media and even move an application, lock stock and barrel, across to another machine.

You can tie some of these into a schedule if you want, which again the program is keen to do, or you can launch them on an ad hoc basis as and when you fancy. When you click on an option, System Suite explains what it's about to do and then you simply confirm and you're away.

It's all centred around a simple menu that groups the otherwise overwhelming selection of tools into logical categories. These cover the likes of diagnostics, fix and maintain, recovery, uninstall and more. In all you'll find about 60 different system tools contained with System Suite, and while they aren't all perfect, you simply can't argue with the comprehensive solution you're offered for the modest asking price.

Factor in the fact that said asking price covers a licence for three machines (or that, at the time of writing, a single licence version was available on the Avanquest site for a tenner), and its value increases further.

Post-review, System Suite 7 Professional is definitely staying on our test laptop, even if it's the toolkit we'll be relying on rather than having it replace our existing security setup.

Verdict
An awful lot of useful software for a relatively modest price, System Suite has its flaws, but there's so much here that you're bound to get good value from it.

Company: VCOM

Contact: 0800 289041

Tags: antivirus sophos security avanquest data recovery microsoft windows personal computer windows