Compressing files for transporting via e-mail and/or ftp is not only a good idea (and the polite thing to do), it can also assist one in managing programs on their hard drive and decrease clutter. Aladdin's new Stuffit is part repair and part new features but still needs some clean-up.

For those of you who've moved to X.2, you have probably noticed that Stuffit Deluxe's 6.5 Magic Menu has broken. The repair is out, but you have to purchase it. Fortunately, compliance with Jaguar is not the only new feature with the new Stuffit Deluxe as there is now the ability to go beyond the old 31 character limitation for names and a new compression algorithm called Stuffit X (with a new suffix called ".sitx").

Easily the most important part of the update is the ability to maintain long file names. Prior to version 7, you might compress a folder with Stuffit, and contained therein might be files with extended file names. But in the bowels of Stuffit, the file names would become truncated without your knowledge or consent. While this might not be traumatic for Word files or the like, it could be devastating to a file in a FileMaker relational database, or a sub-file in a package-file of an OS X program.

Stuffit 7's new compression format, Stuffit X, does not have backwards compatibility and Stuffit X-compressed files cannot be expanded by older versions of Stuffit. The good news is that Aladdin learned from the errors of their last big change when Stuffit 5 was released that also had no backwards compatibility. Stuffit 5 could only compress in the new format and provided no way for the user to compress a file that was compatible with earlier versions. Yes, it can be argued that Aladdin has always provided the free Stuffit Expander, but it was a rather arrogant manner for Aladdin to create such a brutal forcing of everyone to upgrade.

This time, Aladdin provides a mechanism for the user to compress in either the old or newer format, but they miss the home run and only get a triple by making access to the two formats somewhat hard to get to.

In an otherwise well executed program, the only way one can select between the ".sit" and the new ".sitx" format is via the program's Preferences. That is, if one wishes to send an archive file to someone with the older format (to insure compatibility), and then moments later wants to compress some files in the new format, one must swing by the Preferences, lock in the format change (see image below), and then compress the file(s).

So, we have this new (somewhat obscure to access) compression format; what can it do?

Aside from improved compression (more on that later), Stuffit X now provides a "Redundancy" feature so that if a file is corrupted during transport, Stuffit has a better chance to recover the document. I once went to perform a software class with my lecture compressed to fit on a floppy, and found the compression was corrupted so my demonstration didn't go quite as planned, Therefore, when I heard about this feature, it sounded fantastic. That was until I tested it. This feature tends to add from 100- 200 KB to each file which ended up making the file bigger than the compressed version of the file. For example, a Word file was 120 KB. Compressed with Stuffit X, the file size was 24 KB. But with Redundancy turned on, the file ballooned up to 260 KB. In every one of my tests, I found the size of the redundant file larger than the size of the original file without compression.

Aladdin promises improved compression of up to 20-30% over past versions of Stuffit and up to 40% over Zip files. Of course this is dependent upon the types of files as text files compress very well and compression format files, like jpeg, will compress least of all. I tested this with a variety of files on my hard drive.

All tests above were done with the maximum compression setting and the Zip archives were created with Stuffit, not a separate Zip compression program. (Improved Zip compression is one of the new features with Stuffit 7.) While I am not going to dispute Aladdin's findings, in the samples I tested on my hard drive, I cannot provide a tremendous endorsement for Stuffit X in regards to significant improvements in compression. While it generally did better compression than the .sit format, it was never substantially better. Interestingly, it occasionally matched the compression provided by the .zip format.

Stuffit X also provides 512 bit compression. That's 2⁵¹². That's a big number. That's a number that if you forget your password, you throw away the file.

A new option provided by the DropStuff Utility is the "Optimal" option. This feature lets the program analyze the item you are compressing and determine the best compression algorithm. With files that were typically 400-600 KB after compression, it managed to save an extra 4 KB.

Expanding on the Archive Search program (bundled with Stuffit Deluxe) is the ability to search through Stuffit, Stuffit X, and Zip archives. So, as long as you remember the names of your files, you are safe from not remembering which archive you left them in.

There is some extra special good news for all you Unix freaks out there. Aladdin provides Terminal - Command line access to Stuffit X. Since Aladdin provides Stuffit capabilities to Linux and other Unix OSs out there, it's good to see that they ported this over to the Mac Unix system.

Overall, I was underwhelmed by Stuffit 7. Mostly I was underwhelmed by Stuffit X. The big important feature here was compatibility with long file names, but that should have been there in 6.5. Also, Magic Menu should have been fixed for X.2 as a repair, not as a paid update. Unless you need the Magic Menu and unless you are willing to risk the possible destruction of application package names being truncated, there is little need to upgrade. As it currently stands, Stuffit X is much ado about slightly less. Perhaps there is more to this new feature for the future that hasn't been implemented yet; time will tell.

I truly feel that this is a program that should be on every computer, and it pains me to not give it a stronger review. This is not a very strong upgrade for a(n otherwise) very strong product.

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