Rating: 
Summary: Pure Garbage
Review: Be very careful if you purchase this product. It tells you that you can delete some files when in reality you should not. To me, it is useless a Registry Cleaner with this behavior. The Disk Fragmentation utility is one of the worst I have ever seen. Half of all the utilities are just pure garbage. Do not even think on using the anti-virus, it is lousy and it slows down your machine. The Crash Guard utility stops your computer from crashing... by freezing it!! If you have another suite installed in your system, SystemSuite will disable many of the utilities already installed. I can not think of one good think about this suite, Oh yes there is one... very nice layout. I am requesting my money back; and remember, if you purchase this suite BE VERY CAREFUL it can DESTROY and/or mess up your Windows and Files registries in no time.
Rating:
Summary: Very buggy software. Vendor acknowleges bugs but never fixes
Review: I decided to purchase this product after reading glowing reviews in various computer magazines. I was looking for an alternative to Norton after I had some problems running it under Windows ME. SystemSuite did not prove to be any more stable under ME. Thinking the problem was Microsoft's fault (which may still be partially the case), I went back to Windows 98SE. Unfortunately, SystemSuite's performance did not improve. It crashed repeatedly under Win98, whereas I never had any such problems with Norton under 98. Further, I found SystemSuite is harder to understand and control. And the clean up facility does not appear to be safe. I will not be reinstalling this on my system, and am returning it to the manufacturer for a refund. Trust me - stick with Norton.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't be misled by positive magazine reviews.
Review: I decided to purchase this product after reading glowing reviews in various computer magazines. I was looking for an alternative to Norton after I had some problems running it under Windows ME. SystemSuite did not prove to be any more stable under ME. Thinking the problem was Microsoft's fault (which may still be partially the case), I went back to Windows 98SE. Unfortunately, SystemSuite's performance did not improve. It crashed repeatedly under Win98, whereas I never had any such problems with Norton under 98. Further, I found SystemSuite is harder to understand and control. And the clean up facility does not appear to be safe. I will not be reinstalling this on my system, and am returning it to the manufacturer for a refund. Trust me - stick with Norton.
Rating: 
Summary: Best utility suit I have ever used
Review: I have used Norton system works and McAfee office 2000 Pro, and I have to say that Ontrack's utility suit really work for me. This system will not hang your computer. Its fast and its truly fully integrated, unlike McAfee's Office suit. However, if you still unsure about which utility suit to choose, then look at PC Magazine?s website. They benchmark the three systems and Ontrack SystemSuit came out the winner by far. Performance will also depend on your computer's configuration.
Rating:
Summary: Useless in case of emergency
Review: I purchased the product hoping to diagnose & hopefully fix a hard drive that had essentially crashed.
The emergency disk that came with the program turned out to be useless -- no better than Microsoft's ScanDisk program.
What worked? Downloading the diagnostic program made specifically for my hard drive by its manufacturer (Maxtor).
I can't speak to the other utilities in the suite as I will be returning the program.
Rating:
Summary: Useless in case of emergency
Review: I purchased the product hoping to diagnose & hopefully fix a hard drive that had essentially crashed.
The emergency disk that came with the program turned out to be useless -- no better than Microsoft's ScanDisk program.
What worked? Downloading the diagnostic program made specifically for my hard drive by its manufacturer (Maxtor).
I can't speak to the other utilities in the suite as I will be returning the program.
Rating: 
Summary: OnTrack SystemSuite 3.0
Review: I tried SystemSuite 3.0 because I was tired of the way Norton Utilities tried to take over my computer, and seemed to want to run things its way, instead of the way I wanted. SystemSuite 3.0 is certainly better behaved than Norton in this regard.It comes with the PowerDesk file manager, and I have to say I think this is far superior to Windows Explorer. Some disagree, and let's allow that personal taste plays a big role in these things. PowerDesk allows you to see everything on your disk drives without fuss, unlike Windows Explorer that needs to be persuaded that you are mature enough to look at all the different types of files that you are accumulating. It is very configurable, and it is easy to set it up just as you want. I have a slight grumble that it does not seem to be very good at updating its display when the disk contents change, but needs frequent nudging with F5 to keep the display current - a minor point. SystemSuite itself contains pretty much all the features you would expect from such software. You can clean up and defrag your registry - but beware. It will happily suggest lots of "unused" keys to delete, but don't accept anything without checking first. A similar warning applies to the disk clean-up utilities. The danger that uncritical use will wipe out important files is real. The Diskfixer utility works like the Windows Scandisk, and seems no better or worse than the Windows version, except it gives a rather more full report on the state of the disk. However, I have a problem with the defrag utility, which is the slowest I have ever encountered and thrashes the hard disk like no other. Ontrack boast of their "intellicluster" feature that is supposed to supervise defragmentation and make it more efficient the more it is used. However, after a few defrag operations on my drive I noticed that it had become very fast indeed, and in fact nothing was happening! My drive continued to fragment, but Jetdefrag was unable to defragment it. An email to Ontrack only got the response that there was "an issue", and the suggestion to turn off the intellicluster feature. This allowed defragmentation to continue, but at the cost of very slow operation and the excessive disk thrashing mentioned above. Add to this that even when the defragger works it frequently reports that "some clusters could not be defragmented", and you have to ask - what is the point? Most other defraggers just get on with the job without making excuses. I think Ontrack need to work on this aspect of what is otherwise a very nice set of utilities. One very nice feature is the ability to package up an installed application and export it to another machine. I managed to transfer a couple of apps from my desktop to my notebook this way, but some others managed to defeat it. When it works this can be very useful indeed. All the components of SystemSuite are packaged in a clean, easy to follow GUI that is sensibly organised. I would have rated SystemSuite at at least 4 stars if it had not been let down by the defragmenation utility - surely one of the most important disk maintenance utilities on any machine. Apart from this, and the need for common-sense caution when cleaning up files and registry, I would highly recommend SystemSuite.
Rating:
Summary: Very buggy software. Vendor acknowleges bugs but never fixes
Review: I tried this software on Windows 95 and Windows NT Workstation. If installed on NT Workstation, it installs 2 background tasks which will not shutdown when the system shuts down. Instead you get a prompt stating "the task cannot shutdown automatically, do you want to terminate it." The uninstaller is very dangerous as it removes entries from the registry that should not be removed. The "Move" feature (to move an application from one machine to another) is documented as being able to move from one OS to another (their example is 98 to NT). When you try to do this, it kindly builds a 'transport' file, but when you try to install the transport file onto another Windows OS, it tells you that it can only move from one machine to another having the same OS. Even if you use the same OS, it does not move all the registry entries which are associated with the application. Try moving MS Word across 2 machines and you will see what I mean. The company seems very happy to acknowlege these bugs in emails, always suggests a fix is in the works, but has never produced a bug fix for anything other than their useless disk defragmenter. Ironically, my system needed much more fixing after I installed this product. On a positive note, the 'bonus' utility PowerDesk is terrific value. It is an excellent file manager, providing dual windows, a decent FTP client and a ZIP manager. It really should have been the product for sale with System Suite listed as 'bonus software to be used at your own risk" My advice, save yourself the hassles.
Rating:
Summary: Tech support is nonexistent
Review: I've struggled with this product for over a year now. Finally
Ontrack support decided to tell me that they don't support SCSI.
Since this is listed nowhere on the box, in the documentation, or
at the web site, I'm in the process of trying to get a refund.
Rating:
Summary: Tech support is nonexistent
Review: I've struggled with this product for over a year now. Finally
Ontrack support decided to tell me that they don't support SCSI.
Since this is listed nowhere on the box, in the documentation, or
at the web site, I'm in the process of trying to get a refund.
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