utility programs - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, June, 2000 by David Haskin

MAC ESSENTIALS

Apple fans need to manage their Macs just as Windows users need to maintain their PCs. Here's a short list of essential Mac utilities:

Adobe Type Manager Deluxe 4.5 ($65; Adobe Systems, 800-833-6687, www.adobe.com) is the time-honored way to add, remove, and otherwise manage fonts on the Macintosh.

DiskWarrior ($70; Alsoft, 800-257-6381, www.alsoft.com) is a data recovery tool that can also search your Mac system for impending disk problems and fix them before they wreak havoc.

MacLinkPlus Deluxe ($100; DataViz, 800-733-0030, www.dataviz. com) converts files among multiple formats and operating systems.

Norton AntiVirus for the Macintosh 6.0 ($70; Symantec, 800-441-7234, www.symantec.com) gives Mac users the same infection protection that Symantec's Windows customers enjoy. The company's Norton Utilities 5.0 ($100) is also available for Apple fans, though it no longer supports older, pre-PowerPC Macs.

RAM Doubler 9 ($49; Connectix, 800-950-5880, www. connectix.com) is a venerable Mac OS enhancement to increase room for applications. Connectix's Speed Doubler 8 ($20) can accelerate some file operations on systems using Mac OS 8 or earlier.

Stuffit Deluxe 5.5 ($80; Aladdin Systems, 831-761-6200, www. aladdinsys.com) is as popular a tool for handling compressed files on the Mac as WinZip is for Windows.