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Suitcase Fusion vs Font Explorer® X

Oct 1, 2009 3:08 AM

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.

2771 Views   12 Replies   Latest reply: Bob Levine, Sep 24, 2012 2:17 PM
 
Replies
  • RodneyA
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    1. RodneyA,
    Oct 1, 2009 6:05 AM   in reply to antonioconte
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    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.

     
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  • designerdave72
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    2. designerdave72,
    Oct 1, 2009 8:09 AM   in reply to antonioconte
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    "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...

     
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  • antonioconte
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    3. antonioconte,
    Oct 1, 2009 8:46 AM   in reply to designerdave72
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    probably wise words designerdave - thanks

     
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  • Currently Being Moderated
    4. Buko.,
    Oct 1, 2009 9:06 AM   in reply to antonioconte
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    FontAgent Pro is better than Both.

     
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  • antonioconte
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    5. antonioconte,
    Oct 1, 2009 9:17 AM   in reply to Buko.
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    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

     
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  • mac_jockey
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    6. mac_jockey,
    Sep 24, 2012 10:16 AM   in reply to antonioconte
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    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.  

     
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  • Bob Levine
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    7. Bob Levine,
    Sep 24, 2012 10:36 AM   in reply to mac_jockey
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    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

     
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  • Peter Spier
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    8. Peter Spier,
    Sep 24, 2012 12:31 PM   in reply to mac_jockey
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    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.

     
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  • mac_jockey
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    9. mac_jockey,
    Sep 24, 2012 1:42 PM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    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

     
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  • Bob Levine
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    10. Bob Levine,
    Sep 24, 2012 1:55 PM   in reply to mac_jockey
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    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

     
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  • mac_jockey
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    11. mac_jockey,
    Sep 24, 2012 2:12 PM   in reply to Bob Levine
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    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.

     
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  • Bob Levine
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    12. Bob Levine,
    Sep 24, 2012 2:17 PM   in reply to mac_jockey
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    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

     
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