of 5

Jump Development Group, $99.95 (US). Requirements: Any hard
drive equipped Macintosh, System 7 or greater. Contact Jump 
Development Group at (412) 681-2692

For most of us, RAM is an extremely valuable commodity—especially in this day and age of high end applications that demand anywhere from 10MB to 24MB of RAM dedicated to just themselves. Of course, Connectix eased these RAM hunger pains dramatically when they released RAM Doubler. Unfortunately, though, RAM Doubler does not address the issue of dynamic memory management. While highly efficient, RAM Doubler simply uses a variety of compression and virtual memory techniques to theoretically ‘double’ the amount of data that can be squeezed into a given amount of RAM.

OptiMem RAM Charger, on the other hand, addresses dynamic memory management— and it does so with the highest degree of efficiency. OptiMem RAM Charger doesn’t double your RAM as RAM Doubler does; instead, it makes better use of the RAM you have available. OptiMem RAM Charger’s manufacturer, Jump Development, calls it “memory optimization.”

OptiMem RAM Charger gets to work virtually instantaneously. Just install the software, restart your machine, and it begins working. That’s it. No fuss, no muss. As you work, OptiMem RAM Charger goes about its business by controlling how the application you are working with uses the RAM installed in your machine. 

When you launch an application that OptiMem RAM Charger has not encountered, you will be presented with a dialog box asking how the application should be optimized. You can choose between no optimization, safer optimization or better optimization. Once you make your selection, OptiMem RAM Charger makes the appropriate adjustments and is never heard from again.  

Upon launching an optimized application,   OptiMem RAM Charger allocates a specified 
amount of RAM for the application to run 
in. If an application is constantly expanding 
and contracting, OptiMem RAM Charger 
adjusts the amount of RAM allocated to the 
application on the fly. Indeed, OptiMem RAM 
Charger is a much more efficient method of 
allocating RAM to and from applications 
than using the standard (and tedious) ‘Get 
Info’ dialog boxes.

If you are a Macintosh user who likes 
having a bit of control over the way your 
system works, you may choose to use the 
OptiMem RAM Charger Settings application. 
This small program is used to customize the optimization of each application installed on your hard drive. Inside the Settings application, you engage in an interactive discussion with OptiMem RAM Charger regarding the maximum optimization of each application. The way the Settings application works is amazingly simple.  

From within OptiMem RAM Charger, launch an application and work within it a bit. After completing a few of the tasks you would normally do within the application, choose the Quit command. Once the quit process is complete, OptiMem RAM Charger presents you with a dialog box asking if you would like some details regarding the performance of the application.  Upon clicking the appropriate button, OptiMem RAM Charger tells you about the way the application used RAM. It will tell you how much memory was allocated to the application upon launch and how much of it was not used.  

From there, OptiMem RAM Charger will ask if you want to adjust the minimum amount of memory initially allocated to the application. If you decide to click on the “Try New Size” button, OptiMem RAM Charger will  ask if you want to save the default memory settings for the application.  This safeguard is just in case the decreased memory allocation causes the application problems when it tries to run under the reduced RAM allocation. Once you click the “Backup” button, OptiMem RAM Charger will ask if you want to re-launch the application to try it under its new memory size constraints. Again, you use the application a little and, when finished, choose the quit command. OptiMem RAM Charger presents you with another dialog box to report on memory usage by the application. 

The interactive discussion with OptiMem RAM Charger ends when it finally tells you the application being used didn’t waste much RAM. This interaction is probably the slickest intuitive feature of the product. It takes all the guess work out of the optimization process and makes using OptiMem RAM Charger an absolute pleasure.

Another nice feature of OptiMem RAM Charger is the small “heads up” window it keeps on the desktop. This window tells you how much RAM is available for usage. It is a valuable feature in that it provides up-to-date details of RAM usage, and it does so on a continuously updated basis. Of course, if you don’t like the “heads up” window, you can choose to disable it from within the preference dialog box of OptiMem RAM Charger.

As OptiMem RAM Charger is constantly working, albeit in the background, it also reports when memory is getting low. It will let you know that available memory is coming to an end and even suggests which application(s) you might want to quit in order to increase the maximum amount of available RAM. This is a very nice feature and all but does away with those annoying “out of memory” messages seen far too frequently by Macintosh users.

OptiMem RAM Charger has no observable shortcomings. In fact, it’s about as close to being a perfect piece of software as any company can hope to come. It works so invisibly, so perfectly, I almost forgot I was reviewing it. However, while invisible, it is constantly at work adjusting memory here, saving memory there, and keeping you informed (but only if it has to) at every step of the way.

Technical support is available for OptiMem RAM Charger, but I doubt you will ever need it. In fact, I’ll bet the technical advisors at Jump Development can really relate to those Maytag commercials where the bored-beyond-explanation repairman sits by his phone, anxiously awaiting the repair phone call that never comes. But, if you do need technical assistance, Jump Development offers the talents of some very knowledgeable technicians who are both helpful and courteous. Best of all, this technical support is free.

With a street price of about $55 US, OptiMem RAM Charger is the steal of the year. Plus, it offers a no risk money back guarantee. You can’t get much better than that. Additionally, OptiMem RAM Charger works flawlessly with RAM Doubler—and practically every other application for the Macintosh. Since the benefits of OptiMem RAM Charger are applied individually to applications and controlled by the user, it doesn’t affect all software in the same way, nor does it optimize applications across the board.

 

As Macintosh users, we constantly see innovative products being introduced for our beloved machines. Rarely, however, is such a product  completely invisible—and at the same time, exceedingly powerful. Yet that’s exactly what we have with OptiMem RAM Charger. Without a doubt, Apple should sit up and take notice of OptiMem RAM Charger and incorporate it into all future versions of the Macintosh operating system. Where Apple has proven, with the Macintosh, that you can build a better mouse trap, Jump Development proves, with OptiMem RAM Charger, that the mouse trap can be made better still. 

                                                                                                      MacSenseAE@aol.com

  

Pro CD, Inc., $150 (US) and $25 (US) respectively . 
Requirements: System 7 or greater, 68030 processor 
or better. Recommended: 6MB of RAM. Contact Pro CD, 
Inc. at (508)750-0000.

You’re located in Chagrin Falls, Ohio and you want to call someone 
in Los Angeles, California. The problem? You don’t know the phone 
number of the party you are trying to reach. Of course, directory 
assistance is just a phone call away, but what if you don’t know the 
area code? At minimum, you will have to make a couple phone calls 
to Ma Bell in order to get the number you need and she is going to 
charge you a pretty penny for her services.

Let’s say you are a person who has reason to regularly call many 
different locations around the country. Unless you have a current 
set of white and yellow pages for every area of the country, you are 
behind the proverbial eight ball. What to do, what to do?

Enter SelectPhone and FreePhone from Pro CD, Inc. SelectPhone and FreePhone are two products in the Pro CD line of CD-ROM based telephone directories. SelectPhone is a complete directory of residential and business telephone listings for the entire country, including Alaska and Hawaii. (Localized Canadian and Australian listings are available in separate packages.) FreePhone is a complete directory of “800” listings for the United States.

What the manufacturer, Pro CD, Inc., did with SelectPhone is acquire the telephone listings and addresses from current white and yellow page directories for every area of the country and then actually hand typed every single entry to make up a master directory!  But that’s not all: in order to ensure accuracy, it typed each entry a second time.  From this double-typed master, errors were weeded out and the directory was split into five different regions, each region representing a different part of the country. The finished product comes as a set of five CD ROMs, along with the appropriate software needed to access the directories contained on the CD ROMs. SelectPhone contains over 90 million separate residential and business listings and is literally a complete “411” service that is at your disposal anytime you need it. 

FreePhone is the complete AT&T “800” directory neatly packaged on one CD-ROM. FreePhone, as with all the products in the Pro CD family, use the same application program to access the directories contained on the CD-ROMs, so all you need to do is install the Pro CD software once and forget about it.

Pro CD’s application software offers a multitude of features. First, with the required CD-ROM directory in place, it provides phone numbers; millions of phone numbers. With so many phone numbers, one might think searching for a single listing could easily turn into a nightmare.  However, this is far from the case. Indeed, searching is exceedingly simple (not to mention quick). The application interface is very intuitive and easy to understand, making the search process a breeze. To search for a specific listing, simply type in the last name, first name, the street address if known, city and state. Click on the search button and within seconds, the number you are looking for appears on the screen, complete with the person’s name and mailing address. If you are not sure of the spelling of a name you are looking for, you can use a wildcard attribute in order to proceed with your search. In addition to using wildcards, you can search using any of the data fields provided, regardless whether it is name, address, city, state and/or SIC codes.

But the searching powers of Pro CD’s software don’t end there. You can look for businesses by using convenient SIC codes. For example, let’s say you want to know all the hotels in Miami, FL. Simply put the appropriate SelectPhone CD-ROM into your CD-ROM drive, type Miami in the “City” field, FL in the “State” field and then double-click on the SIC title in the SIC field. A dialog box will appear from which you select SIC codes. Once in the SIC dialog box, type “hotel” and the appropriate SIC code is provided.  Click on the “OK” button and the software automatically places the SIC code in the SIC field. Now, click the “Retrieve” button and all the hotels in Miami, FL instantly show up on your screen.

The Pro CD application also allows you to tag entries for later use by using a powerful Tag Manager. This is a very useful feature, especially when you need to construct a mailing list of people from various areas of the country. Double-clicking on a listing tags it for later use by moving it to a separate window. Once listings are tagged, they will remain tagged until you either untag them or quit the Pro CD application. Once you have finished tagging all the listings you want, you can export them for use in another application or print them. If you print your list, you can choose between printing on labels or in a galley format. Printing on labels is a breeze in that the Pro CD application software knows the formats of many different label types. Simply select the type of label you want to print on, click the “print” button and within seconds, your labels are ready for use, all of them perfectly centered on the labels you are using. Printing in the galley format provides a printed listing similar to the way a phone book is laid out.

One of the niftiest search abilities of the Pro CD application software is its sort by address function, accessed by clicking on a toolboar icon that has a little red door on it. Let’s say you own a landscaping company and you just did a landscaping job for John Doe. You feel that others who live on John Doe’s street might be interested in having their property’s landscaped as well. Simply fill in the appropriate data fields to get John Doe’s listing on the screen and then click on the little red door icon button. Almost magically, all of John Doe’s neighbors appear on the screen as well John Doe himself.  From there, you can either print the listings to mailing labels, export them for use in another program or tag them and continue adding to your list. No matter what type of lists you need to build, the Pro CD application software accomplishes the task easily and quickly.

But if you need SelectPhone for nothing more than phone numbers, no problem. Simply find the listing for the person or business you need to call, highlight it and click on the “dial” button. With a modem in place, the Pro CD application software dials your selected phone number for you.

The included User Guide is well written and full of information in order to get the most out of the product. Technical support is high in quality and the technicians are well informed and quite courteous. 

Updates to the Pro CD family of products are an issue which must be taken into account. Obviously, a single set of CD-ROMs will not remain up-to-date forever. But, happily, Pro CD really comes through in this area.  When you register SelectPhone or FreePhone, you will automatically receive the next update free of charge. Pro CD will even pay for the shipping. And the same holds true for the other phone directory products offered by Pro CD.

Even with the plethora of useful features offered by the Pro CD software application, I did find a couple of irritating points.  First, even though Pro CD has taken great strides to ensure maximum accuracy of its product, it’s not 100% accurate.  I have found a few multiple listings for individuals and businesses, as well as a couple of misspellings which, more often than not, resulted in the multiple listing noted above. This is somewhat understandable, however, when one stops to consider that SelectPhone product contains well over 90 million listings.

When you buy the SelectPhone product, you receive five CD-ROMs, each representing a different region of the country.  The regions are Central, South, Northeast, Pacific and Great Lakes.  But the way Pro CD has broken up the country into these regions is sometimes a little confusing.  For example, all listings for Delaware, District of Columbia and Maryland are on the South CD-ROM even though these states have never really struck me as being considered southern states.  Listings for Texas, which I definitely do consider a southern state, are contained on the Central CD-ROM.  Listings for Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia, which are widely considered southern states, are found on the Great Lakes CD-ROM.  Personally, I feel Pro CD would better serve its customers by breaking the country up into regions which follow a more logical pattern. In their defense, Pro CD states the reason the country is divided the way it is has to do with the amount of information that can be placed on each individual CD-ROM.  Hence, the regions aren’t necessarily based on state locations, but rather on the total number of phone listings for a given number of states which make up a region.    

And lastly, the Pro CD software application has no ability to save lists you build. While you can export lists for use in another software program, you cannot save lists for use within the Pro CD application itself.  This can be a bit of a problem if you are working on a large list compiling task which takes several hours. Without the ability to save your work, you cannot quit the Pro CD application until your job is finished. And be prepared to pull the hair out of your head if, after hours of building a list, you experience a power outage just before finishing your work. The list you worked so hard to build is lost forever and you will have to start all over from the beginning. If nothing else, Pro CD should offer some way of saving working, even if to a temporary file. Not having any kind of save feature is an unexplainable omission.

 

SelectPhone has a street price of about $150 US. ProPhone FreePhone will cost you about $24 US. Both products, as well as all the others in the Pro CD family, can easily pay for themselves in a short period of time by precluding you from having to constantly call directory assistance or having to pay an outside company for compiled mailing lists. Even with its little shortcomings, the Pro CD software application, along with the accompanying CD-ROM directories, are excellent products. Indeed, since installing SelectPhone, I have found some long lost friends, built a complex mailing list for my company and saved myself countless dollars by not having to call directory assistance all the time—and I’m one of those souls who is constantly placing calls all over North America.

                                                                                                      MacSenseAE@aol.com