COOL TIP: PC Matic is an Odd, but Oddly Effective, Virus and Malware Shield

PC Matic is an anti-virus, anti-malware, optimizing program that is unlikely any other — in a good way.   It relies upon a retro-marketing campaign, a funky old-fashion name and unusually reasonable price for a number of useful PC protection services.    It came to market in 2009 as a “comprehensive tool” to protect your computer.   And, since then, it has delivered on that promise in a very quirky way.

The visual interface feels like a 1980s racing video game:

But check out what it offers: 

  • Anti virus protection and scans
  • Malware detection 
  • SuperShield ongoing protection against malware and ransomware
  • Computer optimization

PC Matic has four major components: MaintenanceStabilitySecurity, and Performance. During these diagnoses, it scans for junk files, checks for disk fragmentation, craplets, broadband quality, driver updates, various forms of malware and other security threats, and then runs a series of benchmarks.  Clicking on “Scan” launches multiple clean-up, optimize, and secure routines that just run one after another in the background.    Because it is a cloud-based program, it isn’t using up your computer’s RAM or disk so multi-tasking during a scan is easy. 

One of PC Matic’s other oddities is that it functions differently than other anti-virus programs.  Programs like McAfee, Norton, Windows Defender, Avast and others rely upon “black lists” of known threats and viruses.   PC Matic uses a “whitelist” approach which assumes that any unknown software is unsafe until proven otherwise.  While this might create the potential for false positives, so far, we’ve not experienced any.   Cool!

Perhaps the best part of this offering is that PC Matic is reasonably priced.  For a home-based computer license of up to 5 computers you pay $50 per year.  Even better, $150 buys you a lifetime license — you don’t ever have to pay another dime for comprehensive computer protection  (in theory).   If you share the cost with four other computer users, you end up paying $30 for a lifetime license.   That’s a pretty sweet deal.  The only risk is that the 10-year-old company goes out of business — and you are personally out only $30 in that unlikely scenario.

This service appears to rely upon word-of-mouth (along with occasional TV advertisements).  Online reviews have been pretty favorable, including our favorite computer guru Bob Rankin.  Independent testing seems to support users’ experiences.  In its July 2018 tests, AV-Test gave PC Matic a score of 97.5 percent for its zero-day, web, email, and malware attacks test based on 225 samples. The organization’s larger malware test with 5,565 samples scored 100 percent.

We’ve tested this program and been very impressed with its ease and performance.  We urge you to check it out.

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