Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!oberon!sm.unisys.com!csun!csuchico!robin
From: robin@csuchico.uucp (Robin Goldstone)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: MenuFonts 2.02
Keywords: menufonts
Message-ID: <1989Mar16.144238.21189@csuchico.uucp>
Date: 16 Mar 89 22:42:38 GMT
Organization: California State University, Chico
Lines: 30

I recently bought MenuFonts 2.02, a program which displays the font names
listed in the Fonts menu in the acutal font.  This program looked handy 
I can never remember what many of the fonts look like...It was recommended
by MacUser magazine as well.  Cost: $30 from MacWarehouse.

Well, the software is a total dog!  After installation (it is an init)
it causes extensive disk overhead on my system.  System startup takes
10 seconds longer, and statup of Word jumps from 6 seconds to 27 seconds.
The overhead even exists on programs that don't use MenuFonts!  

I called the company that wrote the program, Beyond Inc., about it.  They
were puzzled  they had never heard of such overhead!  I sent them a
copy of my disk.  They called back and said that indeed it was slow, but
adding some RAM cache helps a lot.  This is not a legitimate solution
in my opinion!  I added a RAM cache of 32k (all I can spare on my 1 meg
SE) and got the Word startup time down to 16 seconds.  Still unacceptable.
Hey  it works great on my home Mac: SE with 4 megs and a 512 RAM cache...
But I shouldn't need to buy $600 worth of memory to run a $30 program!

My questions to you:  do you use this program?  Do you experience this much
overhead?  Do you consider a 200300% overhead to be acceptable? 

I can't believe that they never tested the product with a minimal 
configuration.  I can't believe that MacUser recommended this program.
Didn't they test it out?  Surely I am not the only poor soul with a
one meg machine...  Comments welcome. Thanks for listening.

Robin Goldstone, Systemst Software Specialist
California State University, Chico  Computer Center
robin@csuchico.edu