Now Utilities 2.03 Now Software, Inc. 520 SW Harrison, Suite 435 Portland, OR 97201 503/274-2800 503/274-0670 (fax) CPBaker on America Online Rating: 8 Penguins out of a possible 10 Summary: -- Now Utilities combines a number of former shareware and freeware INITs, cdevs, and applications into a single coherent package of system enhancing utilities

The latest software to show up at TidBITS for review is Now Software's upgrade to the Now Utilities. This set of INITs and cdevs is unique in that it is comprised primarily of previously shareware and public domain programs, which have been cleaned up and given consistent interfaces. I talked to a couple of the authors whose programs moved from shareware to commercial in the Now Utilities

The installation went smoothly - simply a matter of copying the appropriate files to the system folder. That's when the fun began, in part because the manual never talks about disabling shareware versions of the various utilities, a number of which I used

The next cdev was AlarmsClock. I use Remember?, so I didn't think I would use this one much. Then, when I looked up where SuperClock normally lives, SuperClock and AlarmsClock were alternating ticks, flashing back and forth

This program is obviously a take-off on Mike O'Conner's freeware Layout, not that that's a problem. The latest version I have of Layout is 1.9, and it suffers from not working on a Finder that is active under MultiFinder

Next up was DeskPicture. I had looked forward this because all I've found that randomizes the desktop picture is a shareware program, Backdrop, and Backdrop doesn't work quite right on the SE/30

Nice idea, mediocre implementation (though one user considers FinderKeys the second best utility in the entire package, which proves that the Now Utilities meets different needs for different people)

I've heard that MultiMaster was designed to compete with OnCue, but I've never seen OnCue. MultiMaster has two basic components - a pop-up window attached to a hot key and a drop-down menu that can be installed in either (or both) the upper right hand corner (on the right of the MultiFinder icons) or the upper left hand corner (on the left of the Apple icon)

Now Menus is another one of those programs that you wonder how you lived without. Its primary function is simple, yet elegant. It provides hierarchical submenus from the DAs in the Apple menu

This is an odd one. It's a Chooser device that allows you to print to screen and see your document reduced to fit in the window or full size when you zoom in

This is a separate application, and to be honest, I'm not really sure why Now included it as such. I say this because the Startup Manager has a "Profile" button that does exactly the same thing, producing an extremely detailed report on your system configuration

This part of the Now Utilities suffers from the Claris syndrome, having been spun back into the Now Utilities, though Now still sells it as a separate product for $79 or so

Crashed when I tried to configure it. Of course, you idiot, you forgot to remove the original files from Boomerang 2.0 from your System Folder. After I removed those (and reinstalled, just for the fun of it) Super Boomerang worked fine

This is another simple, but useful member of the Now Utilize. Its purpose in life (don't you wish your life was this simple sometimes?) is to display the font menu of your current application in the correct fonts

The documentation for the Now Utilities is decent, with a few typographical errors, including one mistake on page 1-1 (the punctuation gods will be unhappy with Now Software)