Checkmate

This has been nothing but bad. Since installing I have to reboot my Mac several times a day. No value. Negative.

I don't at all understand all the ire directed at Checkmate, and not to start a debate, but what Checkmate does is very, very obvious. It checks out things like volume structures, Memory, looks for I/O errors, SMART status and the partition map in an effort to detect minor problems before they become major ones.

Nor do I see why that's particularly difficult to understand, and as to other applications with similar functionality, I know Drive Genius 4 has a similar function (but am unsure if it works in the same fashion) though I am unaware of any freeware or shareware apps with such a comprehensive feature set.

You set Checkmate up, and it scans your computer at certain times, informing you what it has discovered. Personally I prefer to know about problems before they escalate, because often in those early stages I find can make all the difference.

How it does what it does? I know there's a daemon working in the background, but as for the particulars, I have no idea.

Then again, I also don't know the purpose of half the electronics in a modern car, yet that lack of knowledge won't stop me from driving If I need to do so.

It works just fine for me, now if Micromat will only update the UI, which is unnecessarily huge and in need of a refreshening.

A $30 disk utility with very little real utility. Checkmate brings to bear exactly zero tools to fix any and all problems it might discover. Since several freeware and cheap shareware apps offer system monitoring (and more), and it’s available as an additional but secondary feature in the more comprehensive disk utilities, in my opinion Checkmate is overpriced by a factor of 3. In fact, I’d probably balk even at a $10 price point. This is such featureless and incapable software that even its developer is at a loss for words to articulate its virtues. His smarmy product description (above) goes on for 4 paragraphs without saying much about what Checkmate actually does and even less about how it does it. It’s just a bunch of marketing drivel, though I suppose he couldn’t have said much more about such meritless junk. So, if you can afford only one disk utility, my recommendation is to go with TechTool Pro (but NOT its diminutive sibling ProToGo). For many years, I’ve been a true believer in DiskWarrior’s supremacy over TechTool Pro at rebuilding a corrupt or unbalanced directory, which is by far the most common cause of non-hardware problems in OS X. Since I bought licenses for both apps over ten years, DW has repeatedly and handily corrected many problems that TTP couldn’t fix or missed altogether — a shame because with such a halfassed main feature, TTP’s wealth of other capabilities are insufficient to justify its $100 price. But the good news — especially for the developer — is that Micromat’s flagship product, TechTool Pro, has improved markedly with the introduction of version 7.x and subsequent updates. Its directory rebuilding is still a bit inferior to DiskWarrior’s, but at its current pace of development it may be on par or superior to DW by the beginning of 2015. If you’d like a more thorough comparison of TTP and the other leading contender, DiskWarrior, I’ve done some informal but fairly rigorous research and presented my findings on MacUpdate’s TTP and DW pages: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/4307/techtool-pro (1 comment) http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11707/DiskWarrior (multiple comments, some may be on subsequent pages) Hopefully I’ve made my opinion clear that this app is ulcerous, fetid rubbish.

The in-app update doesn't work. The first time I tried I got the spinning beach ball of death - the app froze up. A day later I tried a second time and got a server unavailable message. With no other easy (that is, user friendly) way to update I tend to agree with the negative reviews of this app. The only really useful feature is the surface scans it does of my hard drives, which run in the background, that take too long to do with TechTool Pro to be practical. The I/O scans may also be of some benefit. As for SMART tests, they tend to be unreliable. I too have had a drive fail that was passing SMART tests regularly. There are, in fact, different kinds of SMART tests, some more thorough than others. But they all depend on a drive's ability to diagnose its own problems. The only reliable way to ensure against drive failure is with regular backups. In principal this utility is an adjunct to TechTool Pro and provides a form of system monitoring that most of us would not do manually with TTP. I do use TTP from time to time to perform other tasks, like file and drive defragmentation. While there are other apps that can do this work, TTP has always been the Swiss Army Knife of troubleshooting tools. But it seems to be taking Micromat an unseemly long time to get Checkmate up to par.

Thinking about buying this doctor for my mac's however why is it better than TechToolPro 7 ? Or is it just another computer vitamin pill we all think will cure us ? Honestly, I don't understand why i should buy this in addition to owning TTPro7, DiskWarrior, Apple's DiskUtility, and CleanMyMac.

I bought Checkmate some time ago for my iMac with OS 10.68. Recently I had trouble with many programs freezing and very slow response. My iMac was determined to have a failing hard drive. Its replacement cured all the problems. During this time Checkmate continuously checked the drive and found nothing wrong. What is Checkmate supposed to detect?

The only reason I own this software is because it came with the TechTool Pro 6 software at a price point of $49.99. I would NEVER buy this alone. It does nothing.

I've found Checkmate causes fewer problems on my 3GHz Quad Core Mac Pro (16GB of RAM) than have been reported here by others. Perhaps the issues are hardware specific. Time will tell. I certainly would not discount other people's experience. I've found Micromat support to be very responsive. I had some problems when I first started using Checkmate. It turned out, after extensive troubleshooting, to be a problem with permissions in my user folder. So, though Checkmate did not report that problem, the problems I had with Checkmate led me to discover the source of the trouble. So Checkmate helped indirectly. Which is often the case in troubleshooting. That said, the Checkmate interface is too cute by half and not nearly as useful as it could be. For one thing, the bright blue background color in the app window makes reading the status and logs difficult because of the low contrast, even with the thick black text it uses. The lack of scroll bars is also an issue; so is the fixed window size. I use Checkmate primarily because of the surface scan feature - which is not supposed to run while you are using the computer. Other functions operate in the background and I've found no undue stress by Checkmate on system resources in Activity Monitor. But doing a surface scan with TechTool Pro (or other utilities) is very time consuming so I usually skip it when I'm using TTP. Nevertheless, a high number of bad blocks can be a sign of impending drive failure and I've found SMART tests are an unreliable indicators. The only sure way to find bad blocks is by scanning the surface of the hard drive. For the reasons I've stated I cannot give Checkmate a rave review. Nevertheless, I've had fewer issues than some people so I thought it was worth reporting.

Checkmate is an awful product. It constantly freezes my MacBook Pro. When my Mac is in sleeping mode, it won't wake-up and the fans are working at full speed. The only way to get working on my Mac is by holding the power-button for 5-7 seconds. I've removed Checkmate and now my Mac is much more quiet and no more sleep-problems. Sorry Micromat, this was a complete waste of money! My advice is simple, Don't buy/use Checkmate!!!!!!

I've been a Micromat user for a very long time. So I jumped at the chance to buy their new Checkmate product at a discount. Sadly, this app is not useful for me, mainly because of how irritating it is. I have two 2TB external hard drives and Checkmate CONSTANTLY performs surface scans and other tests even while I'm using the computer, which is something Micromat advertises Checkmate will not do. Normally my workstation is fairly quite. But the constant ratcheting sound of the hard drives was too much to bear. I also wonder what the vastly increased drive access will do to the mechanical longevity of the hard drives, not to mention my internal SSD. With all that in mind, I just uninstalled Checkmate. I may try it again when they release 2.0, but at this point, it was a waste of my $29.95.

Awful. Stupid window, no scrollbars, no text interface, hangs the Macbook when it tries to scan the drive if Free Memory happens to be freeing memory at the same time. No uninstaller apparent. Icon won't drag out of the toolbar. Tried 1.0, hated it, tried 1.03, hate it. Biggest annoyance-per-dollar ratio of anything since, oh, Drive 10 probably.

Just uninstalled, to have peace again. Whenever I have a short pause, the app grabs 95% of my CPU and the hard drives rattle like crazy. Wonder if this additional stress may kill the hard drive sooner or later. I would like settings, how often it should do the checks. e.g. a surface scan once a week, would be enough for me. The interface looks like from the 70s. Maybe I will look at this again, once it is version 2.0.

Checkmate 1.0 was a memory hog and I could leave my Mac for hours and it didn't check anything. This update fixes a lot of issues, starting with the gobbling resources problem. I check it periodically, and definitely whenever the fan revs up, and this app is no longer showing up on the list. Also, as soon as I leave my desk for even a short time it goes into action. On its first scan after being updated it found a volume structure problem. I checked the drive with TechTool Pro and DiskWarrior and both found the problem. I repaired it with TTPro and rechecked with DW and the directory was repaired (also freeing up some space). MicoMat may have been a bit premature in releasing 1.0 but now I think they've got it right (no, I don't work for them) and I suggest the outraged here give this version a try, especially if they purchased the first release.

I tried it based on the reputation of Micromat - and it really sucks....hogs resources and there's no way to stop it if you happen to miss the "warning" that it's about to do it's thing. No config options at all. Now uninstalled, and unless they fix it and make it worth using it's a $20 lesson learned.

I agree with what is said here. Checkmate is an obnoxious 'work in the background' software package that does nothing that TechToolPro or even other packages do and do well. It is a CPU HOG approaching 92%. Only way to uninstall is to open the Installer Package, and click Customize then unclick loading the major parts of the package but click UNINSTALL and it will remove it. What a waste of money. Really surprised at Micromat as I've used them for almost 20 yrs. Complete waste.

I bought this because I have used and liked TechTool for years. However, this is the most obnoxious and intrusive application I have ever used. It completely takes over at a time of its own choosing, frequently using over 90% of cpu. I have spent hours trying to take back control and often a forced shutdown of the computer is the only solution. Even if I succeed in shutting down Checkmate it is only a temporary reprieve. The concept is good and it has proven capable of providing useful information, but the execution is badly flawed and I am going to have to remove it.

What a waste of money! It doesn't fix anything just is a warning system.

Impossible to configure, and does nothing to repair problems discovered. Hogs CPUs when running, which it does at apparently random times (until it "learns" when your periods of inactivity are). Interrrupted a movie we were watching and had to restart the computer to continue watching. If there was a way to set preferences, it might be useful to monitor a few basics.

TechTool, Protogo, and Checkmate all seem to be pretty much the same basic troubleshooting engine in different formats - the standard version, the flash drive version, and now the version with special scheduling capabilities. I'm glad they offer a wide variety of options for using the software, but I wish they would simplify the methods for buying it. Currently Micromat expects you to buy each program separately, and buy updates for each of them separately, even though they are pretty closely related. Protogo contains TechTool (although that's not clearly explained), but other than that there are no bundling options. Some products can be updated via downloads, but others require ordering a CD. After a while, it gets very confusing. I think it would be great if they just offered some sort of "Micromat Everything" package that unifies all the functionality and upgrades. Even if they had to make it cost just as much as buying all the products separately, it would be nice to have the option of feeling more organized.

Maybe they should put out a Demo so you can test it before you purchase it.