Home > Consumer Reviews > PC Clean Machine Personal PC Concierge Service

While this little pen drive does come with some software to install that's not all that it really is. The software basically sets your personal computer up for a remote connection to the Clean Machine Concierges. But what they don't mention in the product details is the fact that you will have to pay a 9.99 a month fee for use of this product after the first year and you only get 6 scheduled maintenance of your system in that year, not monthly like it would have you to believe in other parts of the description.

While it seems like a great idea when you first glance at this device it's more than what it appears to be.

Why are they selling this device for so much when you don't really get all that much. you're basically paying them to log into your computer 6 times in a years time for 120 bucks. So each time someone connects to your computer it's 20.00 bucks that you have paid for that.

Pros:
you don't have to do the work and they insure your system and they also help with ID theft
Kind of simple to use
Software comes on a small THUMB DRIVE, better than a CD!

Cons:
You have someone you have never met messing with your computer (you don't know if this person is going to take your work and sell it as theirs, or take some files and plaster them all over the internet)

Now yes this is a company that is licensed and insured and all that great stuff like that but I just haven't heard enough about them to put my trust in them with my personal files on my home PC. IE Family photos, work documents, My designs that haven't been patented yet and so much more. Call me a little paranoid but I need to know a lot more about this company than just a little video and a few good reviews before I go diving and using this product.

To me at this point I just don't trust it/them enough to take these risks!

I have been a user of PC Clean Machine's PC Concierge service for several months now and I'm a huge fan! Primarily I use my PC for a home office system and Clean Machine has saved me countless hours of clueless stumbling through diagnostic and remediation programs. I am not technically savvy, and keeping up with the latest anti-spyware and PC optimization programs is way beyond my comprehension and patience. Enter Clean Machine: One a month, overnight while I'm asleep, they scrub and optimize the performance of my PC. The following morning a report is in my email detailing exactly what they've done and whether or not they detected any issues requiring remediation. They run anti-spyware/adware programs, de-frag my disc and do an overall system check-up. It's like a complete lube job and oil change for my PC, with some new spark plugs thrown in for good measure. After that, I'm good to go...and go fast!!

Andrew Einhorn
CFO
Oceana Therapeutics, Inc.

Seems to work from initial clean. Very easy to run as it does it overnight. Will post back with more details as soon as I go through all the changes it made. I am fairly technical when it comes to computers so it will be interesting to see what items I miss on my normal scans. The good news is that running this has not negatively impacted me so far!

**Detalied Review***

Installation of this program is very easy and it is very small as well. After installing the program, it asks you for some information on how to contact you (e-mail and phone). Within 3 hours or so I received an e-mail to ask if the following day would be a good time to run the first scan. I confirmed via e-mail and just waited.

Two morning later I awoke and found my machine was still in the intial scan from the prvious night. Seeing that I have 1.5 terabytes of storage, I was not surprised as a virus scan and degrag can take hours. I'm sure they notes the time in their logs for next month's scan!

Anyway, there was an open text box where you can chat with the tech running the scan. They were very friendly and very aware that I may need my computer soon so they asked how long before I needed it. I gave them plenty of time to finish their scans as I was interested in seeing the end results.

A few items to know, they setup a separate user on your machine under their name so they don't mess up your desktop settings on your own accounts. This will require one additional step when you tunr you machine on from a bott as you will need to select your username. For those who have multiple users, its no big deal. But for some that only use one user account, just be aware of this.

After the scan, the tech logged out and I logged into my home account. I checked my e-mail and found the full log of everything that they did including the inventory of my machine. Not surprisingly, they found not viruses, all my core systems were working properly and my discs were properly defragged. As I mentioned, I am a fairly sophisticated with computers and control all of my own scans, running processes and just about everythings else that concerns my computer.

If anything, the thorough scans that this software did, reaffirmed my abilities (which is nice) but also confirmed the fact that my knowledge level on this stuff is most likely above average for most users. All of the scans they did are ones that I help other people in my family with so I believe that this software is great for those people that don't have the knowledge, patience or time to run all of these scans.

I would highly recommend this software/service for everyone looking to protect themsleves from everything that is bad out there on the internet. You would be surprised at how easy it is do have spyware, malware, viruses and other potentially dangerous software on your machine wiothout even knowing it. This service will help you keep you machine clean and you won't have to do a thing. It's very nice!

At first this looked like a worthwhile service. Having acquired it under the Amazon Vine(tm) program in November, my first service during the first week of December went fine, but I didn't see anything performed that I don't usually do myself anyway.

However, the next scheduled session in the first week of February did not go as well. First, the offshore concierge asked me to leave the computer running and logged on before I left for my night shift, which I did (just like in December).

The following morning when I came home I found an email from them stating that they were unable to perform the maintenance unless I disabled my UAC (user account control). As the UAC had NOT been disabled for the December maintenance window, I had a real problem with doing so, so I queried them via return email asking why there was a need to disable it. I never did receive a response to that, possibly due to the time difference between EST and wherever they are, but disabled it temporarily the next night before leaving for work.

The next morning I found the system sitting running along with an email stating that they had "lost their connection" to my system, so could not complete the service, and asking for another session on the following Sunday night, which I granted. The same scenario occurred on Monday morning, with the system sitting unattended and this time HUNG, requiring reboot.

I then sent an email canceling my account and revoking permission to access my system - reinforcing it by removing their user account and programs, and locking down the UAC.

Two days later, while I and my system were in sleep mode, my system was accessed, started from sleep mode, a new Clean Machine user account established AND my McAfee real-time anti-virus disabled. No one was logged on at the time I woke up and saw it running, but the user account proved who had disabled my anit-virus software and left the machine running unprotected.

In summary, I don't think it's a good idea to turn your system over to strangers to do whatever they want.

Before I begin I need to throw out a few disclaimers. I'm a software developer by profession and have lived and breathed computers for the last 12 years. I've written several books on computer programming and in short, I'm not this product's target market.

When the CleanMachine arrived, it came in a non-descript manilla envelope and contained a small USB drive. The instructions are printed on one sheet of paper. They consist of a quick introduction and 3 steps that walk you through getting it set up. (One nice touch is that you can use the Drive for memory afterward and it's a full GB).

To begin with you simply plug the stick into an open USB Port. It takes a few seconds and a Wizard like interface opens up. You'll be prompted for some basic contact information as well as the Registration number. The reason I mention this is b/c it was on the outside of the envelope which I didn't notice at first (thinking it was just a regular envelope, I threw it out and had to retrieve it). At that point, you finish the registration and you're done.

They say within a day you'll be contacted by one of their tech support people via email but in fact it took them 6 hours. The only thing that happens there is scheduling of your first appointment. If you have an immediate problem though they can expedite things and it looked like you could start asking questions immediately if you wanted to - I didn't however try but I'm quite sure they would have helped if I had asked.

The appointment was pretty straightforward. They ask a series of questions which are concise but thorough. As a software professional, I was extremely impressed with their knowlege. For instance, they emphasized that you need to have Windows updates (they have MAC support as well but I didn't ask them about this so I can't comment) on and if you don't, you *really* need to make sure you do it manually regularly. They drove the point home without being scarry. I didn't let on I knew much about computers. They asked about Firewalls, Virus scanners and any other security software you may have. I forgot to mention that at first they asked if I had any reason to believe my computer might be infected... have I seen any weird popups, has my computer been slower than user, have I installed any freeware or downloaded any videso from chain emails etc. Again, they were quick and too the point but asked pretty smart questions. After we went through the inventory, they asked me if I had it on a schedule and if so how frequently. The one thing I was impressed with was with regard to firewalls. They asked if I had one and I said Yes. They asked if I could tell them about it. I said "I have a program, McAfee". They immediately asked if I had a wireless router and I said Yes. They asked if it was a firewall and I said "Beats Me". They stressed how important a Hardware firewall was and wanted to go through it with me to explain how the router works and how to set up security. They also asked if I had it locked down and I said "I think so" and they had me walk through to verify it. Although it was a little disingenuous for me to play dumb and thereby waste their time, my intent was to review their service so it was the only way to do it adequately. They beat me to the punch on a bunch of stuff and for instance, I told him I shut down the firewall a lot b/c my Zune wouldn't work. He explained immediately why this wasn't a good idea and how to open the ports. He made sure I knew how to open and close ports so I could do it on my own. He followed up by asking if I had anything else like that so we could address it and asked if I turned it back on immediately or did any browsing - ostensibly b/c if I did then I could have been running naked.

So we scanned the computer and all was clean. After that he explained browser add ons and gave me a quick rundown of safe surfing. I told him I heard that it's a good thing to use a virtual pc shell on your computer and to surf inside that... that way if anything goes wrong it's really easy to remedy and makes it very difficult for malicious software to damage your computer by accessing important files. He said "Sure if you have Virtual PC and don't mind doing it" and walked through a few things that were great advice.

So he asked if I had any other questions and asked when I'd like to meet next. I told him I'd like to learn a little more about monitoring and using something like Wireshark to watch traffic. He replied "Wow, that's a question I never got before" and said they don't specifically support it as such but would be glad to help me get started.

All and all this is a service that is absolutely great for people new to computers or who are afraid of them. For advanced users and people who are comfortable finding their own information, the price is probably a bit much. But honestly, for newer users or people who aren't informed about security, for those relatives that have 5 toolbars on their broswers and smiley's in their email signatures, this is perfect. Having someone on the phone takes all the fear out of it and the friendliness and understanding of customers these techs have is huge. Unlike Geeksquad types who use big words and acronymns they often don't understand who try to look smart by talking down to people, these folks seem to do whatever they can to make people comfortable. I've heard several people asking GeekSquadders about viruses and in most of the cases, they got fed a line of BS and sold software or services they didn't need. having the exact opposite of this is something that's greatly needed and the tech was everything but an arrogant geek. Even for mid-level users who want to become a lot better when it comes to security I think it's well worth the price. The best compliment I can say about something is if I'd buy it for myself or a loved one. I'm buying my mother and brother/sister in law one.

The five star rating I gave is based on the assumption that you are their target customer. If you mount your own linux distro or configure your own RedHat firewall, well, you don't need this sort of service. If you're comfortable opening up Windows Firewall or have an ISA server running, again, the price is a little steep b/c you don't really need it. But for anyone else that finds themselves really confused or lost at times, or that knows they're doing something wrong/have a computer issue but don't know how to resolve it, don't pay the Geeksquad all that money to keep your computer for a few days and leave you without the knowledge to prevent it from happening again.