I use PCmatic now. I used to use Bitdefender and CCleaner and Remote PC. PCmatic takes the place of all three. PCmatic features anti-malware protection. It also features system clean-up. And it provides a VNC window so that you can remotely access machines. It’s a pretty impressive product and its cost is about… $8.00 in some cents per seat per month. What this means is that I am replacing three products that I was paying pretty good sized fees on with one product for a modest fee.
The question is, how good is it? How does it work? Well, I’ve been running it on my client machines for about a month now. One thing that it does is that by default it will not allow a program to run. This is pretty major league because it means that you don’t have to worry about ransomware. Somebody gets an executable file on their email, and of course Microsoft hides extensions by default. Don’t ask me why, it’s incredibly stupid.
So they have what appears to be a text file. So they double click on it, and Ransomware is released, and it encrypts every single file in their network that it can reach, and then demands a ransom payment.
You don’t have to worry about that if you’re running PCmatic, because PCmatic is going to say, I’ve never seen this program before, I’m not going to allow it to run. And it doesn’t. Now this also means that it’s not going to allow things like batch files that you’ve written to run the first time. And for most of my clients, I have a batch file that runs late at night, which does a robo-copy of their files that they want to keep, and puts them into a… A directory as a backup.
The first time you try to run it after you install PCmatic, it won’t be allowed to run. So you have to whitelist the program. Now the good news is that PCmatic has a very nice web login where you can see all of your customers in one place. And if any of those customers have had an issue with not allowing a file to run, they’re going to be flagged.
So you log into this website at least once a day and if you see something that’s flagged, you click on it. In my case, on one of my servers, it was saying it was not allowing backup.bat to run. So I whitelist the program for the entire group of customers and any file that I have named backup.bat will now run. The other thing it does is system cleanups. It will go in periodically and wipe out old install files, temp files, stuff like that. I’ve got mine set up on my clients to run on the weekend. So every weekend each machine gets a thorough cleaning where these…
Unused temporary files are purged. CCleaner was good at doing that too.
Now, in all honesty, this doesn’t do everything that CCleaner does. One of the things CCleaner would do was keep a record of when a machine was logged into, when it was logged out of, when it was powered down, when it was powered back up, and even if people were printing things, it would let me know that. So, it was very comprehensive in its reporting.
PCmatic is not that comprehensive. I can’t go back and see the day’s activities on a machine like I could with CCleaner Cloud. But perhaps that’s not something that you need. I decided it wasn’t something that I need. And honestly, I haven’t missed it.
But what I do have to have in a machine is a program that will clean up old garbage files. And PCmatic appears to be excellent at that. The third thing VCmatic does is it provides a VNC window. I was a little skeptical of this because VNC just doesn’t run that well on Windows. At least it didn’t the last time I checked it out. Which, once again, in all honesty, was about 15 years ago.
Turns out, the VNC window that pops up with PCmatic is very responsive. And the mouse is always highlighted as a little dot. So you never lose track of the mouse. And I’ve been so happy with it that I do not plan on renewing my remote PC license. Which is not up for another 7 months. So I will keep remote PC during that time. But when I need to jump into a machine, I’m not using it. I’m actually using PCmatic’s remote client. It’s that good.
I discovered this when I interviewed with a potential new client and. They have a full-time IT person who is retiring. And this IT person showed me PCmatic and said it was what she had decided to settle on as an anti-malware solution.
She also uses a remote desktop client. So she doesn’t use the PCmatic VNC client like I do. But that’s okay. because they don’t have a problem paying for it. I did win the client, so I am going to be going to work for them. And when I do, I’m going to have a decision to make. What am I going to use for remote access? Am I going to use their remote control client, or am I going to go ahead and use the PC Matic that they already have installed? We’ll find out as time goes by.
My review is strictly covering PCmatic from the point of view of an IT consultant. I’m not sure about the home product. I’m not sure how good of a value it is. You have to determine that for yourself.
But I will say that if you as an IT consultant are providing anti-malware protection for your clients as part of your services, you can’t go wrong with PCmatic. It did manage to find some bugs that Bitdefender was not aware of, which was very surprising to me. Because Bitdefender is an excellent product, which does tend to find any bad behaviors that are out there.
And I’m not badmouthing Bitdefender at all. What I am saying is that PCmatic is a cheaper program that does more. Bitdefender is still quality anti-malware protection. Bitdefender also protects against phishing, which PCmatic does not. PCmatic unfortunately does not do.
But my clients are all pretty savvy, and none of them have ever run into fishing problems. So, if you’re an IT consultant, give TC Matic a try. They’ll let you use it free for two months while you make up your mind. And if you’re like me, you’ll decide to stick with them.