ExposureBlog

As someone who has both a PC and a Mac, I’ve used Stuffit for years.  Stuffit is a little utility that does two things very well: it compresses files and it decompresses folders and files.  Stuffit is great if you have to send a big group of files to a client—put em all in a folder, compress it with Stuffit and then email.  Very easy.  For years Stuffit was made by a company named Alladin Software.  So I was a little surprised when I received a Stuffit upgrade offer from a company named Allume.  Well, generally, upgrades are a good thing, so I sprung for the $19.95, downloaded the zip file and installed it.  Except. . .I had to first UNinstall my trusted earlier edition. 

So I did.  Then I discovered that the new Stuffit (version 9), um. . .didn’t really work on my machine.  Given a file to decompress, Stuffit would churn for minutes and minutes and the result was an empty folder.  I tried using it on earlier stuffed files and the same thing happened.  Now, as someone who archives a lot of documents, this was not good. 

I went to the Allume site and discovered that they are actually a company called Smith Micro.  That was both news and a weird coincidence.  Back in the mid-90s there was a great program called Hotline. All it did was catalog phone numbers.  Click on the number and the phone would dial (via the modem.) Very cool and essential to anyone who uses the phone a lot.  When Windows 3.1 showed up, Hotline came out with a Windows version.   Then, for reasons unknown, they vanished off the planet.  The company that made Hotline was named Smith Micro. 

So, did my old friend Smith Micro sell me a copy of Stuffit that didn’t well, unstuff?  Maybe, but not likely.  Regardless, I unloaded the new, helpless version of Stuffit and reinstalled my old version 8–which I had bought at Microcenter a few years ago.

Now, Stuffit 9 might work on some computers, but it didn’t on mine.  And if I hadn’t kept the old CD of version 8. . .well, I guess I would be trolling the “Stuffit 9 help forums” looking for answers.  Not a good way to spend company time.

Couple of morals here: 

1. Just because it’s an upgrade doesn’t mean it’s better,
2. Beware when a software company changes names
3. Beware when there’s no phone number for tech support–only support forums.
4. Always keep an installable copy of your software on a CD.