Ever since the channel hijack,
I have been inundated with Facebook ads
for the FixMeStick.
They claim it will remove viruses, clean my computer,
and even get my windows running like new,
all in about 20 minutes.
Those are some pretty bold claims,
but their company got offers from all four of the investors
on the Canadian version of Shark Tank back in 2014.
They're sold on the shopping channel,
and they're still around nearly 10 years later.
They must be doing something right.
How is it that I've never heard of them then?
Inundated with Facebook ads,
they're sold on the shopping channel, right.
This thing ain't aimed at me or you.
They're targeting our parents, our aunts,
and our friends who keep asking for help
tracking down the elusive AnyKey.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad.
Maybe it's a great option for those of us
who are techie enough to fix our family's computers,
but would rather that they just buy this
and leave us alone so we can play video games.
To find out, we bought one.
Actually, we bought three,
and I think you're going to be surprised to learn
exactly what they do and what they don't do.
For example, none of them were capable
of making this segue to our sponsor, Build Redux.
With Build Redux, you can dominate your favorite games
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Check them out at the link down below.
Hey, there it is.
In a nutshell, the FixMeStick
is a bootable virus removal device
that's designed to find and remove any malware
that's managed to slip past your PC's defenses,
which is not as rare as you might think.
Half a million new pieces of malware are discovered daily,
and the makers of the FixMeStick claim
that it finds malware on more than 80%
of the computers scanned,
even though virtually all of them
were already running some other form of antivirus.
Their main value is the user-friendly interface
that they've wrapped around a bootable Linux image
that needs almost no input from the user.
You just boot from the stick, accept the license,
and the FixMeStick will automatically connect
to the internet, ask you to register,
which you can skip, by the way,
check for updates, load up not one, not two,
but three antivirus engines, Avira, Sophos, and McAfee,
and then get right to scanning
with all three of them at the same time.
While that's running, I guess,
I should tell you about our test system.
We took one part Windows 10 test bench
and added a few dozen drops of threats
you'd expect any decent antivirus engine to flag,
you know, various forms of the iCar anti-malware tests,
along with some very real,
though relatively harmless, malware.
Not a huge challenge, but definitely enough to prove
that each of those three antivirus engines
is actually doing something.
As advertised, about 20 minutes later,
the scans were done and the FixMeStick was asking for input.
The default action is to remove all malware found,
but you can also pick what happens with each flagged file.
In our not terribly scientific testing,
the FixMeStick caught more than 90% of our threat files,
with the majority spotted by all three engines.
But with that said, each one engine did miss things
that were caught by at least one of the others,
which I guess answers the question
of why does it need to run all three?
We also tested the FixMeStick against a MediCat USB stick
to see if A, the FixMeStick
would scan removable media at all,
and B, to see if it would flag useful tools as malware.
As expected, we did get false positives
on some of our system utilities,
but this did show us that yes,
removable media is automatically scanned
alongside your operating system drive.
In fact, by default, FixMeStick scans all files
on all partitions, whether they're on removable drives
or not, you can change that behavior
and some other basic options on the settings screen
where you can also remove items from quarantine
and even subject yourself to some targeted marketing,
if you're into that sort of thing.
This smooth experience doesn't come for free though.
One year's use of FixMeStick on up to three PCs
is gonna set you back 80 US dollars,
whereas two years on five PCs is $30 more
for a total of $110.
That is not an insignificant amount.
However, you're not necessarily stuck paying that much.
It can often be found cheaper in your local big box store
and they have a 30 day trial that will set you back just $20
if you pretty much just wanna use it once.
However, I have a serious problem
with their marketing of that trial price.
They pretend to give you a special deal
when you click through an ad,
then at the same time, they just plainly state
that the $20 trial is available
on various pages all over their website.
I also don't think that the FixMeStick in general
quite lives up to their marketing claims.
Most of their ads seem to make a big deal
about speeding up slow systems
and eliminating crashes and freezing.
While FixMeStick can do those things,
if the problems are being caused by malware,
it can't do anything to clean up a full drive,
repair broken Windows files,
or sort out misconfigured settings.
This isn't a technician on a stick.
It's just an antivirus tool.
As many of you I know are probably dying
to contribute right now,
you can make one of these on your own for free.
There are plenty of bootable anti-malware tools out there
that you can just slap onto your USB stick and run.
Insert disclaimer about us not having validated
their efficacy, so your mileage may vary.
But the main issue with all of them,
for Joe or for Jill Average,
is that they're just not as polished as this,
and they're not as fast.
You will likely need to manually update
your virus definitions before you run a scan,
and the scan itself takes longer too.
Then when it's done, you're gonna have to run more tools
to catch whatever's been missed.
For me or for you, that's no big deal.
But for many people, time is money,
and tinkering with computers isn't something
that they do for pleasure,
which is why I guess FixMeStick has found a market.
It's not cheap, but it does cost less than a visit
to the local computer shop for virus removal,
and having something that you can just hand to Aunt Susie
that's gonna just work on a simple infection
could be worth it for her.
She might even be so grateful she gets you
the new PCMR hoodie from lttstore.com.
Where FixMeStick really offers bang for the buck though
is the back me up edition.
$20 more gets you a 64 gig USB stick
that also automatically backs up files
from the user's folder of your system drive
after scanning them,
giving you at least a little bit of protection
if you later get hit with something
that the FixMeStick cannot resolve,
something like a ransomware attack.
This may actually be the simplest method that we've seen
for making a backup for an average user's PC.
By default, it backs up pretty much everything
that a casual user might be storing,
though we did notice some glaring emissions
like Photoshop's PSD format.
So if you're beyond a casual user,
or if you need more than 64 gigs of storage,
you might wanna tweak the settings
to include other extensions
or to target additional folders.
By that point, you might as well pick up
a larger external drive
and then just use the only slightly more complicated tools
that are built right into Windows or Mac OS.
We also looked at their StartMeStick,
and to many of you,
this is gonna look like a pretty old idea,
a simple bootable operating system
that just works on any old hardware.
For the folks buying FixMeSticks, though,
this might as well be magic.
Now grandpa can get on Facebook
and check his email with things feeling nice and zippy
with a lightweight operating system and a modern browser.
He can even use it on any PC
so he can take it with him when he travels,
but there are some problems.
For one thing, it's a read-only system,
which means you can't screw up the OS
by downloading something nasty,
but on the other hand,
it means that any new bookmarks or files
are going to simply vanish on reboot,
and it doesn't give the user any indication
that that's going to happen.
As you're using it,
it looks like it's done what you've told it to do.
Your downloads and your bookmarks
hang out in temporary storage while the OS is running,
but unless you add a separate external drive for storage
and sign into a Google account for your bookmarks,
all of it will disappear.
Even worse is the fact that this means
it cannot update itself.
For updates, you have to boot into Windows,
run the updater for your StartMeStick,
then boot back into your Live OS.
Convenient.
The second big issue is that it's $80 and it expires
if your subscription expires.
Why?
Anybody watching this?
No, this one really is easy.
You could Google something like persistent live USB
and follow a guide or just download Rufus
and drag the slider to the right
to create a similar bootable USB stick,
and that one would even let Grandpa save files
in his home drive, all for the cost of a USB stick
and anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple hours of time.
And it would never cost you anything for updates.
Or, I mean, if you just wanted to skip all of that,
you could just put a simple Linux install
on the system's hard drive in the first place,
improving Grandpa's performance
without the need for unreliable USB boot media.
So then, FixMeStick's product line
is something of a mixed bag.
A bootable antivirus that's simple enough
for almost anyone to use is actually useful.
And when paired with automatic backups,
it might even be something that I would recommend
to the less tech-savvy user.
But then at the same time, the pricing is pretty spicy.
Their marketing ranges from optimistic
to downright unacceptable.
And whatever they might say, these tools aren't
and never will be a replacement for a competent technician.
They're also not a replacement for our sponsor.
Micro Center, they've renamed August
to Build Your Own Month in honor of the dozens
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Not sure if they have the legal right to do that,
but here we are.
New customers can get $25 off their purchase
of $100 or more in store.
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you can get an additional 25 bucks off coupon upon approval.
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If you're new to PC building,
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Now you might look around and think,
uh-oh, I don't see any Micro Centers near me.
But that might change.
Their Indianapolis store just opened.
They have a new Charlotte location opening early 2024
and two more stores are in the works.
So check out Micro Center this Build Your Own Month
and get a sneak peek at their new Charlotte location
at the links below.
I'm gonna miss saying August.
If you enjoyed this video,
you might be interested in the video
we did a couple of years back,
testing how antivirus programs
impact your system performance.
You can find that at the link down below.