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VPNs for ad-blocking The big catch, though, is while there’s only one initial fee, that won’t always be the case. Ultimate Defense has an expiry date for receiving updates and technical support, which can be updated for US$79.95 per year once it expires. The reality is, while it isn’t marketed as a subscription upfront, users will seemingly have to renew their subscription annuallyto have the most up-to-date protection. The only testing I could find was from six years ago. Considering the rankings changes on AV-Comparatives and AV-Test regular tests, it’s not worth factoring in. On the surface, the lack of real-world testing isn’t necessarily a negative. But it also makes it trickier to recommend when there are other competitors out there that receive regular independent testing. Running an initial full system scan used up more Windows 11 resources than I was expecting, certainly in comparison to the minimal impact I’m used to from Windows Defender. For context, my Surface Laptop 4 fans were pumping during the entire scan. It was the same story for a quick scan. You should never use a real virus for antivirus testing, which is where the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research (EICAR) dummy files stepped in to help. This fake virus is a way to test antivirus. While Google Chrome does a good job of blocking it anyway, when I bypassed those protections, the files still failed to download, which tells me System Mechanic Ultimate Defense was doing its job. My Surface Laptop 4 scan had no major issues but there were two recommendations. Clicking on the number reveals the system recommendations, which can be reviewed for more detail or skipped. System Mechanic flagged one start-up item as “unnecessary or dangerous”. That’s a very dramatic dichotomy for what amounted to a recommendation to remove CCleaner Update from my start-up settings, which it flagged as unnecessary (and the community was 94% against this recommendation). The other warning was for six “potentially unwanted start-up programs”. According to the included community metrics, only one of the entries had most people agreeing it should be disabled or delayed. To access additional optimisation features, there’s a drop-down menu. ‘Deepclean’ is a seven-step process of removing unnecessary files, cleaning up registry entries and freeing up system resources. I’d like it more if it didn’t prompt me at every step; CCleaner is a lot more user-friendly in this regard. Finally, the ‘LiveBoost’ screen optimises system power allocation to help boost performance. All power tweaks are enabled by default, except for ‘AcceleWrite’, which minimises random data writes to storage. Alternatively, there’s a drop-down menu that lets you tune performance for gaming, video production, graphics rendering, programming, maximising battery life, office productivity and web browsing. Selecting any of these options doesn’t change any of the main power toggles. Again, this feels surplus to requirement for the average user. For context, these features offer more manual control than the typical ad-blocking add-ons for antivirus, anti-malware and certain virtual private network (VPN) services. While there’s a password manager tab in the Ultimate Defense software, you’ll be prompted to install ByePass as an extension on your supported browser of choice. When creating an account, ByePass offers live feedback on the strength of your password, which is a nice touch. Once registered, you’ll be presented with a recovery key, that you can copy/paste save or download as part of a PDF. The browser extension installs, after which you’re prompted to add your first credentials. When I went to create an account, there was a mix of greyed-out and coloured ByePass logos for respective fields. The greyed-out options handily prompted me to add an identity to ByePass, albeit without a convenient link to the corresponding section. ByePass recommended a secure password, which I added with a single click. After the account was created, a pop-up prompted me to add the credentials with a single click. Most of this is great news on the convenience front, but ByePass isn’t as fully featured as big-name password managers. For the best password managers, I strongly recommend starting comparisons with Dashlane, Bitwarden or 1Password. Big points for any software that’s available as an outright purchase these days, but the trend is towards subscription models if users want the most up-to-date protection. We then take note of how easy the software is to install, what platforms it supports and how well it holds your hand during setup. Ideally, performance optimisation and security tools should be easy to use while working in the background without a massive performance impact. We then put the relevant optimisation and security tools through their paces, comparing them to our experience with alternatives and commenting on what they do and don’t do well.
