1997 Readers' Choice Awards: Utilities/Tools

File or Disk Utility

Partition Magic
by PowerQuest

OS/2ers will remember that Partition Magic is also PowerQuest's original product and one which was originally targeted towards the OS/2 market. For years, Partition Magic has been allowing OS/2 users to manage their FAT and HPFS partitions safely and conveniently.

Now at v3.0, this classic utility also comes with IBM's Boot Manager (for those non-OS/2ers who want to use multiple OSes the right way) and features a bevy of updated capabilities. While not much has changed as far as its OS/2 support in the past year, Partition Magic still works great with OS/2 and is now priced equivalently for the Windows and OS/2 versions. Our readers approved and gave it the nod as this year's "File or Disk Utility" Winner.

GammaTech Utilities
by SofTouch Systems

Like any mature operating system, the OS/2 market boasts its share of data repair and recovery utilities. One of the most popular with our readers, both last year and this, is SofTouch System's GammaTech Utilities which repeats at this year's "File or Disk Utility" Runner-Up.

The GammaTech Utilities for OS/2 are a suite of Presentation Manager and command line disk and system utilities that perform volume recovery, optimization and essential maintenance operations easily, often without extensive technical knowledge. The utilities support both FAT and all HPFS versions, including HPFS versions 2.3, 2.4 and HPFS386. All the utilities support long file names and extended attributes.

WPS Enhancer or Utility

Object Desktop Pro
by Stardock Systems

Object Desktop was such a success for Stardock Systems that it seemed they would have a hard time topping it. But they have proven they were up to the task and wowed the OS/2 community with an even better version: OD Pro. OD Pro adds universal file viewing, Object Security, Object Backup, an improved Object Navigator and more.

With all its strengths, Object Desktop Professional proved popular enough to take top honors this year in the "WPS Enhancer or Utility" category -- but just barely. In fact, it just beat out its predecessor, Object Desktop, by seven votes! Clearly our readers feel Stardock Systems has done the job right with this pair of products.

Object Desktop
by Stardock Systems

Last year we wrote about Object Desktop:

Is it a third-party upgrade to OS/2 Warp or is it just Stardock? Object Desktop is so smoothly integrated it's hard to tell where Warp ends and OD begins!

In the year that has passed, Object Desktop has become so common that practically everyone has seen or used OD by now. With a bevy of features such as Keyboard Launchpads, Virtual Desktops, and Object Archives, it's no wonder why OD and its big brother OD Pro made a clean sweep this year in the "WPS Enhancer or Utility" category.

System Utility

UniMaint
by SofTouch Systems

UniMaint is SofTouch Systems' popular answer to OS/2 system management needs. This versatile product offers users the ability to completely uninstall, archive and reinstall their OS/2, DOS and Win-OS/2 applications. Additionally, UniMaint provides a unified suite of utilities designed to allow users to maintain their OS/2 Workplace Shell, including automated repair of INI files, facilities for displaying and editing EAs, Desktop backup, and portable Desktop backups.

Shipping in various versions for some time and now at v5.0, UniMaint was our "System Utility" Winner last year. Just one of the many offerings from SofTouch Systems in this year's voting, UniMaint has held on to significant popularity to be named this year's Runner-Up.

Process Commander
by Stardock Systems

Stardock Systems continues to rack up Readers' Choice awards, this time with its system protection utility, Process Commander. Developed by the original WatchCat team (which was also nominated in this year's voting) and published by Stardock, Process Commander improves system stability and allows users to recover from hangs, manage processes, and monitor system activities.

With both PM and command-line utilities, PC has become popular enough with OS/2 users to take the Runner-Up spot in this year's "System Utility" category.

Archiving or Encryption Utility

Zip/Unzip
by Info-ZIP

In the mainstream computer community, there is PKZip and PKUnzip by PKWare. In the OS/2 community, there is Zip and Unzip by Info-ZIP. Both sets of archive utilities are so ubiquitous that there is hardly a person with a computer who doesn't have a copy, but there is a significant difference between the two: Zip/Unzip are freeware. Long the standard in the DOS/Windows world, PKZip was never able to claim similar marketshare with OS/2ers due to Zip/Unzip's great performance, compatibility and price!

Object Desktop
by Stardock Systems

What more can we say about Object Desktop? With this being its third award in the "Utilities/Tools" categories it's clear that it's a winner!

Making it our readers' choice as the Runner-Up in the "Archiving or Encryption Utility" Runner-Up spot is its fantastic Object Archives feature. Got a ZIP file? No problem! Drag and drop, double click, browse and manipulate it just like it was an OS/2 folder. What about RAR, TAR, ARC and more? Object Archives have them covered too! With great WPS integration, Object Desktop's Object Archives are definitely a handy tool.

Copyright © 1998 - Falcon Networking

ISSN 1203-5696