Suitcase Fusion vs Font Explorer® X

[tonyconte]

I've been using Suitcase Fusion for a few years now and its kind of been fine really.  I love the way it handles fonts with Quark and Indesign well.

I'm now in teh process of getting a new MBP 17" with Snow Leopard and was wondering if Font Exporer X is better or not?

Has anyone made the switch to it?  is it better? faster? good at auto activiation?

many thanks for your comments.

[RodneyA]

I like Font Explorer X Pro. It's no long free (for the current version) but it has automatic font activation for CS4 products, and various useful features. Some of the features -- like fixing problems with duplicate fonts -- are not exactly intuitive, but once you look them up in the manual, the features are there. I like being able to erase font caches too, since I've had problems with those in the past.

Version 2.02 didn't work with Snow Leopard, but an upgrade came out a few days back and so far it's been fine.

I've never used Suitcase Fusion.

[designerdave72]

"Don't fix what ain't broke" or so they say?! I too have been using Suitcase (since v8) and have experienced not many problems with it. If anything, I've had more problems with certain fonts in families not showing up in the Quark menu list but, as RodneyA points out, it's good to clear the caches (FontNuke recently upgraded to SL) once in a while and this flushes the troubles away. Now that I have migrated to IDCS4 from QXP, I haven't experienced any problems with the latest SL/SF/ID and associated auto-activation. Just keep in mind that a lot of people don't - fonts can be temperamental and so any font client/application that uses fonts will be also...

[tonyconte]

probably wise words designerdave - thanks

[Guest]

FontAgent Pro is better than Both.

[tonyconte]

wow, thats a bold statement without any reason?  any experience you have with either of the others and why is Font Agent Pro better?

thanks

[mac_jockey]

I'd like to weigh in here. The dates on these posts and the fact that you are all discussing Snow Leopard has me a bit confused.

Font Explorer is by far the better program. Suitcase has an overall sluggishness about it that tends to slow users down when browsing our font library. Also, when initially importing fonts to the program, Font Explorer is about 50% faster in the process. Lastly, I have seen Suitcase 3 spontaneously stop working and need to be re-intalled because the font vault also got corrupted on 3-4 computers in the last year. A few of us run Font Explorer v. 1.2.3 with OSX 10.6.8 and have had none of the above problems.  

[BobLevine]

You’re getting on the reference to Snow Leopard and then you bring up Suitcase Fusion 3?

Suitcase Fusion 4 is the current version. I suggest taking a look at it…it’s a major upgrade.

Bob

[mac_jockey]

That's another problem. We gave one of our designers a demo of Suitcase v.4

on a 2007 MacPro tower

with 8 GB of RAM. I personally worked with him on set up and experienced

this trademark sluggishness right away. We have a large library of fonts

(approx. 16,000 when all loaded), but Linotype's product has none of the

sluggishness with exact same set of fonts. I've speculated that it has

something to do with the vault that Extensis creates. I'm in discussions

with both companies as we are evaluating both their server products and the

behavior is even present on the server products.

I'll keep you posted.

-Frank

[BobLevine]

2007? That machine is ancient.

I’m running SF4 on a Win 7 desktop with a Core i7 and 16 GB RAM and a 2012 MacBook Air running Mountain Lion with 8 GB RAM.

Try installing it on current hardware and test it out there.

Bob

[mac_jockey]

Well, how about this. I've just had Suitcase 3 running a 2011 6-core MacPro

14GB RAM, same font library, all kinds of weird bugs happening. Finally

un-installed and am currently testing Lino's Font Explorer server with no

headaches so far.

[BobLevine]

That’s good…have you tried SF4 on there? SF3 was very good but could definitely be flakey.

I haven’t see any of that yet, with SF4.

Bob

[Peter Spier]

mac_jockey wrote:

The dates on these posts and the fact that you are all discussing Snow Leopard has me a bit confused.

You're looking at an archived thread that's three years old.

[finktank]

Suitcase 4 has been a disaster for us. It's many issues mean we loose a vast amount of time and work fixing issues or suffering unexceptable performance. The FM core corrupts (as it often does with the server version as well) and needs to be replaced or requires a full reinstall. It corrupts font vault so a backup copy needs to be setaside and replaced after a new installation. Duplcate fonts can cause seriousproblems. An example of this is when we installed an update of Microsoft Office, which installs it's own font folder in the system library. Plugins in abobe software has to be the biggest issue and are best dactivated or removed negating the whole reason for having the software in the first place. My view would be to test a trial verison with a copy of you font library and go for the program which offers the most stability. You live happier that way!

[BobLevine]

Suitcase Fusion 4 has been replaced with Suitcase Fusion 5. Each version gets better and this is no exception.

Autoactivation works flawlessly in my experience.

[finktank]

I would usually agree that any version is usually better than the previous and I'm sure Suitcase 5 has some great features. However, since version 4 has preformed so badly we would think twice before upgrading. Its also telling that since that Suitcase Fusion 4 wasn't tested on Mavericks operating system. Extensis recently told this to me in an email and why one can only guess that they wish to force users to upgrade.

[BobLevine]

Force? Nobody forced you to Mavericks!

[finktank]

Okay, lets just clarify what were are dicussing shall we and move Mavericks off the table. Extensis Suitcase fusion version 4 wasn't well developed as universal type server (even before Mavericks). Regularly myself and my clients, large scale agencies suffer the dreaded  "Suitcase Fusion has detected an incompatible version of FMCore. Suitcase Fusion can not continue" message, usually resulting in a reinstall. If you're using a low number or a small libray suitcase is most likely quite stable but we have a large library of our own and client fonts and that needs stability and perforamce from the software. This is what Extensis should have been working on and improving.

[Peter Spier]

I try to stay out of these things becasue I haven't used suitcase since, I think, Suitcase 9 on System 9 back a the turn of the century. I used to get very similar problems with database corruption and instability (I worked in a service bureau, and we had hundreds of cleint fonts), and wound up reinstalling suitcase and rebuilding the sets about once per month. I was so impressed I won't permit an extensis product to be installed on any machine I own.

That's extreme, I know, and probably unfair, but there are other ways to manage fonts that don't seem to have nearly the number of reports of problems I see reported with Suitcase even now -- Bob's experience to the contrary.

I'm actually not a fan of auto-activation, and since the advent of the Document Installed Fonts facility it's easier than ever to simply drag client fonts into a folder with the client file and ID will use them without having to turn other versions off.

[jhjhhjh]

I find all this interesting because I'm on my 2nd day of the trial version of Font Explorer X. I'd heard wonderful things about it. So far I'm finding it incredibly slow! It takes ages to start up. It also takes much longer than Suitcase to add fonts. I have the Windows version. Windows 7. I'm telling myself it can't be this bad since so many people rave about it. I'll give it a few more days and see how it goes.

I'm used to Suitcase Fusion (4 & before that 3). I downloaded the Explorer trial after another of the well known FM Core episodes - that Extensis still seems in denial of. In XP it was usually a simple matter to restart FM Core. In Windows 7 I couldn't find it anywhere to restart.

At this time my thought is that I'll be returning to Suitcase.

Keith

[BobLevine]

If you do, I think you'll be happy with SF5.

[jhjhhjh]

Hi Bob,

I'll likely look into the upgrade to Fusion 5. But since I've already cleared Fusion 4 from my system and installed Explorer I'll give it a bit more time. Still baffled over the loading time though. Particularly in view of that so many seem to love it. It reminds me of opening Photoshop 3 (not CS3) way back hah,hah.

Thanks for the tip,

Keith

[Dov Isaacs]

finktank wrote:

I would usually agree that any version is usually better than the previous and I'm sure Suitcase 5 has some great features. However, since version 4 has preformed so badly we would think twice before upgrading. Its also telling that since that Suitcase Fusion 4 wasn't tested on Mavericks operating system. Extensis recently told this to me in an email and why one can only guess that they wish to force users to upgrade.

What do you actually expect from Extensis?

In the “old days,” reputable operating system providers designed new operating system versions such that existing applications would run as-is with full performance and full functionality under the new OS version. Most unfortunately, this clearly has not been the modus operendi of some current operating system developers.

Unless you license a product with a maintenance contract that includes support for future incompatible operating systems changes, it is fairly unreasonable to expect that application software developers are going to develop “fixes” for older software versions to re-establish OS compatibility.

In migrating your computer system to a major new OS release (whether it be MacOS 10.8 to 10.9 or Windows XP to Windows 7) or new hardware that requires such a new OS release, you should simply assume that you may need to update some major portion of your existing application software. Is that what should be necessary? NO! But very few if any users complain to the OS vendors about this. But somehow they expect the application vendors to somehow just accommodate any arbitrary (and capricious?) incompatible changes that OS vendors make to suit their own needs. The cost in time and effort (as well as opportunity costs) to develop and test application OS compatibility updates is tremendous. That is why application vendors “force users to upgrade” to get OS compatibility fixes.

By the way, this issue is one of those which has been effectively forcing application vendors towards subscription models. It is the only way to deal with customer expectations in terms of “free” OS compatibility updates.

          - Dov

[finktank]

What I expect from Extensis is a software that has a longer shelf life than 1 year and is stable. Extensis 4 was only released on 7 May 2012 and only a year later, 10 July 2013, they're releasing a new version.

Migrating? Do you not think they are on the developer list? Do you not think they KNOW when changes are likely to happen? Do you not think a licence holder should maybe expect their product might be supported longer than a year?

Get off the Extensis bandwagon and wake up. We are a cost based industry. Studios, agencies, networks and freelancers do not needa cash cow killing their top line. Extensis seem to be it it for a fast buck and frankly we just don't need that.

[jhjhhjh]

Many companies are guilty of that. They get you on the treadmill . . . Often there are good reasons for updates though.

I just want something that fills my needs and in the case of font management it doesn't necessarily have to be the latest version. For that matter, I also don't need the latest Adobe products either (I'm on 5.5). It used to be that one of the main reasons to upgrade was clients sending native files that had to be opened. PDF has eliminated a lot of that. One of the most annoying things in the world (besides my wife) is the inability of new software to open previous versions and vice versa.

Anyways, back to topic. It's only been a couple days with Explorer, so we'll see.

Keith