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Disk Order won my heart with a single feature.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

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3 new programs for OS X: Disk Order, iDefrag, Nisus Express 2.1


Jan. 12, 2005


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, The Post-Standard

   I have three new programs to tell you about this week. They're great new file manager, an outstanding word processor and a disk defragger.
   The file manager is Disk Order, from a Russian programmers' site at www.likemac.ru. It costs $22.57 -- the odd price apparently shows the effect of an exchange rate calculation -- and can be purchased from the LikeMac Web site or tried out for free.
   Disk Order is modeled after the popular Norton Commander file manager Peter Norton designed years ago for Windows. It has two panes, left and right, that show files and folders. Folders are listed first, before files, as God intended.
   (Windows users who haven't done much work on a Mac might not realize that the Macintosh Finder ordinarily arranges lists without distinguishing folders from files, so that a file named "Letter Appealing to the IRS" will appear above a folder called "All My Important Files" in a list sorted alphabetically. The only option you have is to arrange a list by Kind. The rest of the known world arranges directories by putting folders first.)
   Disk Order won my heart with a single feature. It can copy from one location to another while ignoring errors. All you do is check off a box in the file-copy dialog. This lets me rescue files and folders from CDs that have started to go bad. When the Apple Finder encounters uncopyable items, it stops all file copying operations.
   My big find among word processors is the latest revision of an old friend, Nisus Writer Express. An early version of the Nisus software became my word processor of choice after I switched from Windows to OS X, probably because it seemed to handle everything I needed to do without a lot of bother.
   The current program, Nisus Writer Express 2.1, is even better. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say Nisus Writer Express 2.1 is the best word processor for OS X. It's that good. Even if you plan to stick with Microsoft Word or any other word processor, you should check out the way Nisus Writer Express 2.1 works. You'll find yourself smiling more than usual.
   Nisus Writer Express 2.1 costs $59. You can download a 30-day tryout from www.nisus.com/free/express.php.
   Disk defraggers are rare in the Mac world. The Windows file systems need to be defragmented often, but the HFS+ system used on OS X computers shows little improvement from manual defragging. (It even defrags itself while running, but only for large files.)
   Defragmenters rearrange the way things are stored on a hard disk so that the bytes that make up each file are stored next to each other. It's like rearranging your workbench so that your hammers are near your nails.
   The defragger is iDefrag, which costs $30 from Coriolis Systems, at www.coriolis-systems.com. I can't tell you yet how well it works because it had problems on my Mac (it gave me a worrisome error message), but Coriolis has issued a new version since that time. My advice: Make sure you back up any disk you try this software on.
   This program isn't for the faint of heart. But it's a welcome addition to OS X utilities -- as long as it is reliable and relatively foolproof. I'll keep you posted.