Product Reviews

StuffIt Deluxe is a complete package of compression and encoding utilities. And version 5.0.1 takes Aladdin further into the PC market, as it stores archives in a cross-platform Unicode-based format.

Mac OS 8.5 includes StuffIt shareware - StuffIt Expander 4.5 and DropStuff with Expander Enhancer 4.5 - that allows most major compression formats to be compressed and decompressed. So why bother buying the Deluxe utility suite? For one, it gives considerably more capability. The StuffIt Deluxe application, along with its associated system extensions, gives the utility suite its power. From within it, you can select, then compress and encode files and folders into any of the available compression and encoding formats, or decompress and decode them back to normal.

StuffIt also comes with other utilities. StuffIt Expander and DropStuff allow compression and decompression (as well as encoding and decoding) by dragging and dropping files or folders directly in the Finder. The True Finder Integration utility allows you to compress an item merely by adding .sit or .sea

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extensions to its name, or to decompress by removing an extension. Magic Menu, another part of True Finder Integration, adds a compression menu to the Finder. And StuffIt Browser enables archive creation and item compression and decompression by a simple drag-and-drop processes.

Also included on the StuffIt Deluxe CD-ROM, although not installed by default, is StuffIt SpaceSaver - a utility that allows and controls background compression of files, both semi- and fully automatically.

StuffIt Deluxe is a powerful method of managing compression on a system-wide basis, and represents very good value for money. However, version 5.0.1 is not without its problems. Its new compression format delivers up to 20% greater compression, depending on file formats being compressed. However, it's slow - a 389K folder took 97 seconds to compress - and it's not backwards-compatible, so users of previous StuffIt decompression formats won't be able to decompress archives created with it. In reality, anyone who receives a StuffIt 5.0.1 compressed file can download the StuffIt 5.0 Expander to decompress it, but this is not ideal.

Fortunately, a control panel lets you select faster compression (the same folder took seven seconds to compress). While this is still not backward-compatible due to differences in archive resource forks, at least it's fast.

Most Mac users won't be able to do without some form of decompression and most will have a copy of StuffIt Expander. StuffIt Deluxe 5.0.1 enables greater levels of compression and better cross-platform compatibility. However, its lack of backward-compatibility may make you think twice before upgrading.