Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 31, 1993 TAG: 9310290075
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY MARK POTTS THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Today, software is a big business, and commercial software packages can cost from $50 to hundreds of dollars. But the old hacker ethic of sharing good work lives on in the thousands of pieces of public-domain "shareware" that circulate among computer users.
Available through user groups, bulletin boards, disk collections - or simply passed hand to hand - shareware offers benefits that match and even occasionally surpass what's available commercially.
And best of all, shareware typically is free, or available for a small fee. Payment for shareware generally is handled on the honor system, and in some cases programmers will send updates or expanded versions in exchange for payment of a few dollars in shareware fees. A few shareware authors ask only for a picture postcard from each user.
A good piece of shareware can be just as essential to your enjoyment of your computer as any piece of commercial software. Some pieces of shareware add utility; others entertain; others provide low-cost substitutes for expensive commercial packages.
All, however, harken back to the original hacker ethic, when programming was done for the joy and challenge of it, and a snappy program could make a programmer a legend. Listing all of the shareware available for a major computer platform like the Macintosh could take reams of paper; indeed, one such list, the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group's Shareware Catalog, is about the size of a large city's phone book.
But here's a highly arbitrary guide to some of the best Mac software out there these days. (Users of IBM-compatible computers also can find stacks of good shareware.)
\ Utilities: SuperClock has become a Mac staple. It does one simple thing extremely well: It puts a digital clock in the computer's menu bar. Configurable in a variety of ways, it also can show the date or becomes a stopwatch at the click of the mouse.
Then there's MacEnvy, which gives you an instant look "under the hood" of your Mac, listing specifications about the machine's memory capacity, its processor, monitors and even providing a cute version of the venerable computer game Life - itself one of the very earliest pieces of shareware.
\ Extensions: These small programs modify the operation of your Mac in a fundamental way, allowing the machine to be customized at the system level.
TearOffs, for instance, lets you separate any pull-down menu from the menu bar and park it somewhere on the screen for future use. Window Shade sort of does the opposite - it closes application windows without shutting down the application, leaving behind a small bar on the screen that pops back open at a click (not unlike Windows' "Minimize" command).
Speaking of Windows, Kolor lets you mimic the IBM-compatible trick of changing the colors of various elements of your desktop: scroll bars, title bars and the like. And the delightful Before Dark allows you to change the pattern on your desktop to any number of wild designs - hundreds of new designs are available as shareware themselves.
\ Cheap imitators: Don't want to spring for a few hundred bucks for Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet program? Try BiPlane, a fairly powerful shareware spreadsheet. And MattPaint is a very spiffy little color painting program that will fill many users' simple graphic needs.
\ Games: Simple outer space games were among the earliest pieces of shareware, and games of all types still are a vital part of the shareware scene.
Some are very sophisticated: Maelstrom, a recent entry, is a space shoot-'em-up that's full of color, action and sounds that rival many commercial games. There are excellent versions of board games such as Risk and Monopoly. Several of the shareware variants on the popular Tetris are just as addictive as the real thing. Three good ones are Columns, Hextris and 3Tris. And there are all sorts of imitations of popular arcade games, such as PacMan and Breakout.
If you want to add shareware to your computer - and who isn't interested in a bargain or a freebie - there are a couple of important caveats to keep in mind. One is compatibility. Shareware authors don't have the same kind of resources as the big software houses to keep up with the constant changes in hardware and system software.
As a result, some shareware hangs or crashes on newer machines (the advent of System 7 and 32-bit addressing were particularly bad news for Mac shareware fans, though most popular shareware programs have been updated for System 7). You also have to be a little more careful about computer viruses when handling shareware. Although most commercial on-line services and companies that package shareware on disks check it for viruses before it gets to users, you can't be so sure when you receive a piece of shareware from a friend or from a private bulletin board.
Anti-virus software, then, is essential (you should have it anyway), and guess what: One of the best pieces of virus protection, Disinfectant, is itself a piece of shareware, regularly updated by its author and circulated around the various big bulletin boards.
That's the kind of generosity that's at the very heart of shareware.
by CNB