[MW Forums]

Extensis announced Suitcase Fusion, its next-generation, single-user font manager that integrates Extensis' two leading single-user font managers: Suitcase X1 and Font Reserve 3. more

[iron_chef]

I hope it's faster and less buggy than that Suitcase X1.
I hope they got it right now.

[fribhey]

you can pay $50 for the upgrade or $100 for the full Suitcase, a program that gets horrible reviews and nobody likes
OR
you can get FontExplorer X by Linotype for FREE, a program that is getting rave reviews and again, is FREE.....
hmmmm, let me think about that one for a minute

[jeffharris]

Yeah, Suitcase has stunk for the past 3 or 4 versions, but Font Reserve is great!
If you have tons of fonts, it handles and organizes them extremely well.
I'm curious to see what the upgrade brings.

[tfrogh]

It ought to be free for any poor soul who who bought Suitcase X1. What a P.O.S I ended up downgrading all of my machines to Suitcase X. Since then, I have slowly begun migrating to FontAgent Pro. It simply works, 100%!!! No start-up delay, no shut-down delay, no daily crash, actually does something about corrupt fonts. All this and it is their older version 2 software!
Extensis should wake up and read their reviews. Too many customers have been burned to ever pay for another upgrade. If Extensis were to send me the new version for free with a letter of apology for their past transgressions, I will give it another go. Otherwise, I am sticking with FontAgent Pro!
Tom
System Admin for 29 machines

[Splashman]

After finally making the leap to OSX and being unpleasantly surprised by the utter lack of an ATM/ATR workalike, I bought and paid for (in this order): Suitcase 10, Font Reserve, Font Agent Pro, Suitcase X1. All were/are crap, compared to the ancient Adobe products, with Suitcase being the worst of the lot.
Now along comes FontExplorer, for FREE, which as a version 1 kicks the sh*t out of all the others. That really says a lot for the talent at Extensis, eh?
I'd pay $200 for FontExplorer, and that's no jive. I'm more than happy to pay for a quality product; the corollary is that I won't pay an effin' dime for a POS like Suitcase from a company that has worked hard to earn my disgust. Never again, Extensis.

[Adwiz]

FontExplorer is a Beta, not free. There's a big difference. Beta software is a marketing approach that lets a product gain a following and work out final bugs before it becomes a commercial product. Those who use the beta usually don't get a discount when it goes commercial. When FontExplorer does reach its final stage, it will quite likely cost the same as the competition.
While I'm annoyed at some of the bugs in Suitcase X1, including an unnecessarily long startup time, I feel that the $50 upgrade is a fair price. Extensis generally offers reasonably priced upgrades. My only beef is that some of them were more along the line of bug fixes than upgrades, or "upgrades" that were required to support OS X or new versions of products like Photoshop.

[maeric]

Will FontExplorer remain free after the beta? Well, this quote is off Linotypes webpage now.
Available now. Free.
FontExplorer X is available now for download, free of charge. No license fee, no shareware fee, or nag screens, and no functionality limits. FontExplorer X is free. A service from Linotype.

[REG]

Three cheers for fontexplorer X! The font managment app that made fonts interesting and font management fun again. Adios suitcase, it wasn't swell...
beta or whatever... fontexplorer kicks the pants off of suitcase and FontAgent.

[kelake]

I'll stick with FontExplorer X by Linotype. It isn't entirely free - it includes the marketing of their product which I actually appreciate as it allows me to easily find and add fonts to my library. Everything else I have tried has been crap.

[JScott]

I'm surprised by all the negative comments about Suitcase. I run a Suitcase Server/Client solution at work and the only problems I have is with the installation process on our Windows boxes. Other than that the thing has worked as advertised and removed a major bottleneck in our workflow.
I'm not saying your problems don't exist, I've just found it to be a good solution.
On another topic, they didn't mention anything about a server version for this.

[Splashman]

As I said, Adwiz, I'd pay $200 for FontExplorer, because it works and works well. Heck, if my only choice is Suitcase for ten cents or FontExplorer for $500, I'd probably still pick FontExplorer. Clear enough?
Hey, if Suitcase works for you, use it. However, since FontExplorer is a free download, you just might want to give it a whirl.

[dmjones]

I would love to give FontExplorer X a try, but there's a major problem with it: I still use Quark 4 constantly and FE-X doesn't activate fonts in the Classic environment. I also occasionally come across the odd PageMaker file that has to be opened in Classic.
As to why I still use some very old programs, I do a lot of design, typesetting and pre-press work and tend to get a wide variety of files from a lot of different people. I've got Quark 5 and 6.5, but haven't found either of them to be satisfacory (5 I never liked; 6.5 is used by too few people). I've also got the Adobe CS1 package including InDesign, but it doesn't do a great job at opening all PageMaker files, so I still keep PM 6, 6.5, & 7 around to open those when the need arises.
Anyway, I have some high hopes for Suitcase Fusion. I've been using X1 for the past 2 years and it has some interesting and annoying bugs that I would like to lose, but for the most part it does the job I bought it for. With the choices out there being somewhat limited (Font Book is a joke, FE-X doesn't support Classic, Font Agent Pro doesn't have a lengthy history that would encourage me to try it), I will probably go ahead and buy the upgrade and cross my fingers...

[Nobody]

Fusion???? I agree with you Jeff, Font Reserve is the best. A true font database. I still rue the day extensis pulled a microsoft on diamonsoft (buy a better product and slowly or quickly (but surely) let it die so their inferior product can reign (sp?).
I was hoping for a real fusion of Suitcase and Font Reserve as Extensis has been touting for a couple of years. It took them a couple of years to change the name? It looks and works just like P.O.S. Suitcase. I wish they would just sell Font Reserve to someone like Macromedia--oops, Adobe, or some creative developer like Diamondsoft was.
Will Extensis continue to support Font Reserve? I wonder. I hope so (if they don't sell it or quash it).
YES!!! I just checked out Font Explorer X thanks to the posts here. A font database. Why would anyone pay for Suitcase--I agree with that statement now that I've seen FEX.
Kat