Is this a TR article?
I am not so sure.
It is hardly even a review, or I would have expected comparisons to competing tools - and to say that System Mechanics defrag util is better that Microsofts native defrag is not useful, almost ANYTHING is better than than THAT!

In fact, it reads like a sales pitch, in short, a commercial, by a company for its own product.

Or am I mistaken?

To answer Marks question, I swear by Nortons Utilities, in particular Speed Disk, and Win Doctor, those utils will ALWAYS be in MY toolkit!!

I must qualify that however, I do not endorse ALL of Nortons products, they peaked in performance at around 2001/2002 versions.
It was when they became part of System Works, Internet Security and the like, they became bloated, inefficient resource hogs.

Symantec ruined what was an excellent product from Peter Norton (in my opinion).

There are other useful tools, such as Memtest86 to check for dodgy RAM, and EVERY toolkit MUST contain a floppy (eg W98 Startup - which can also access XP systems) or CD version (such as BartPE) of a basic start up, just so you can access a system, when the OS is unavailable
Hirens Boot CD is very useful, filled with loads of goodies.
Oh.... and a few installation CDs would be handy, for those inevitable times when Windows requests one, to load a replaced/repaired driver or whatever.