utility programs - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, June, 2000 by David Haskin

Aside from its lack of flexibility, Webforia Organizer is a reliable way to organize Web data.

[pros] Simple way to save Web documents

[cons] Inflexible management tools

Clipboard Magic 2.01

HOC RATING 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Some of the system utilities in this roundup are complex, but this one is simple, free, and fills a hole in Microsoft's operating system (lamely addressed by a less powerful utility in Office 2000): Clipboard Magic 2.01 lets your Windows Clipboard hold several items at once.

Each time you copy something to the clipboard, it appears in a list within the tiny Clipboard Magic interface. You can cut and paste text from this list as you normally would. You can save a collection of items on the clipboard, and edit the words or phrases in a saved Clipboard Magic file.

We were annoyed that CyberMatrix's utility doesn't retain formatting such as fonts or paragraph styles, but it's still one of the most useful utilities we've seen--and best of all, it's free for the download from scores of shareware sites.

[pros] Clipboard tools we've been waiting for

[cons] You'll have to live without formatting

PartitionMagic 5.0

HOC RATING 1 2 3 4 5 6

Home office workers are often their own IT departments--and IT tasks you often need to perform are changing the size of a hard disk partition, creating separate partitions, or preparing a hard disk to house a second operating system. Enter PartitionMagic 5.0.

This utility makes simple work of these storage jobs. Its interface features large icons representing various partition-related tasks; click on an icon and a wizard helps you perform the function, no matter how complex.

While the procedure is simple, we were sometimes baffled by the technical aspects of what PartitionMagic was doing and felt it could do a better job of explaining each step. Nonetheless, PartitionMagic makes these occasionally key chores much easier for users with only moderate technical knowledge.

[pros] Makes a difficult task easy to do

[cons] We couldn't tell what it was doing

System Commander 2000

HOC RATING 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Installing a new operating system is a nontrivial and sometimes damaging task. But what if you want to try Linux, or upgrade to Windows 2000 without saying goodbye to your Windows 98 setup?

System Commander 2000 lets you safely install additional operating systems on your PC and select among them at startup time. If necessary, it can also help you partition your drive or reset your computer to its original configuration.

As with PartitionMagic, you'll need to understand some technical basics before you use System Commander, but we found this utility did a better job of explaining computing complexities. As a result, V Communications' utility is the easiest way we've seen to upgrade or try a new operating system without bringing your computer to a standstill. It even comes with a copy of Linux and the StarOffice suite for that operating system.

[pros] Install Linux without killing your PC!

[cons] You should know a bit about it first

RATINGS

HOME OFFICE COMPUTING rates products on a scale of 1 to 10--with few 9's or 10's--based on value, performance, innovation (medals go to rare standouts in these areas), ease of use, and suitability for home offices. The [pros] and [cons] symbols indicate pros and cons.