Painless alternatives to a system upgrade

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Published: 12:00am, 25 Nov 2003

The more things change, the more we may want them to stay the same, especially when it comes to computing.

Advancing and upgrading means new learning demands, unknown behaviour and uncertainty. When you throw in the expense, many people simply prefer to stay with what they have.

I have been bragging about the wonders of Panther, Apple's new operating system upgrade, for the past few weeks. Bragging about the new features it has and tricks it can do. But can those treats be acquired by other means? The answer is yes. Here is a list of shareware that offers a few of the more popular Panther features for the system you are running now.

Panther's Finder has a few productivity enhancements that some people will not be able to live without. Pfinder (www.landsbert.freeserve.co.uk, US$10) gives you some of the utility of Panther's new Finder and simulates the Panther interface in older versions of OS X and OSes back to 8.6.

On the other hand, PathFinder (www.cocoatech.com, US$34) takes the Finder interface to a new level of ease. There were two or three OS 9 utilities that made the Mac sing, but until PathFinder there was nothing special for OS X. It works in both Jaguar and Panther, and if you check out only one new Mac utility this year, this should be the one.

I particularly like PathFinder's Drop Stack feature. Instead of having to open two or more windows, you can move files from one folder to another by using the holding window that is right in the Finder.