Therefore, there are a meriad of other reasons for slow system performance with many fonts.

ah, actually you can have a million fonts on a system if you like and it will not slow the systems operation one bit unless you have a bunch of the enabled...

Extensis Suitcase and many other applications are used exactly for the purpose. Extensis Suitcase Server is a font server which keeps a running database of the fonts installed on a system used to serve fonts to a local system remotely.

Adobe Font Manager is broken in my opinion it SUCKS and it a resource hog itself, but then again it is also mainly used in production Print shops for Postscript Font management. It falls short in handling other font types.

from the Extensis Web Site...

"Font management isn't a problem reserved for Macintosh users. Anyone using multiple fonts can run into stability or speed problems regardless of whether they're on a Mac or Windows system. So, if you're using multiple fonts in Windows applications, Suitcase is an essential utility for you. Suitcase allows you to activate only the fonts you need, saving system resources and all but eliminating font conflicts and other font-related errors. In addition, with Suitcase, you can preview fonts without installing them, create font sets, and utilize other time saving features that make selecting and activating the right fonts a snap"

It is all in how you configure your system which can be done by allowing defaults to be the norm, or actually designing the structure of your configuration for best performance operating to perform specific tasks, even multiple specific tasks (different user(s) logons)....

Kind of like workstation configuration in network design but applied to a single system...

anyway...

#25 by bordfryr

sounds like me

Heck I would chase any Carpenter out of my yard who showed up with only a Hammer in his tool box

'The Font Thing' works for me.....[and I like the sophisticated name as well]...

Thanks for all your responses. The thread went off onto fonts, but that's OK The reason I asked about system tools is that I am not a computer geek, by any stretch of the imagination. I'm a user, doing the best I can with tools that, hopefully, will bail me out when I screw something up.

Having said that, I try not to screw things up, so I need tools that don't require me to be computer professional to keep me going. I do have two hard drives. I also have my main 60gig hard drive partitioned so that my programs run on virtual "C" and my data is stored on virtual "D". I use my older 13gig drive to store really critical data, like Quicken backups, resumes, and the like; things that would otherwise be unrecoverable, but not yet burned to CD's.

As for system tools, nobody mentioned TuneUp Utilities, http://www.tune-up.com/order/. I read a good review of it in one of the computer magazines, so I downloaded and used it through the 30 day trial period. it seemed to work well, but I'm not really sure *what* it did, though it really seems to be quite similar to Norton Utilities. Also, some of the tools seem so unnecessary and redundant. Now, I need to decide if I want to purchase it for $34.95, or if another one would be better.

Decisions, decisions.........

Dabe