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We live in a world inhabited by strange and unusual fonts; Cartoon serifs for crazycool flyers, post-Helvetica concoctions that strike the eye immediately and that one brush-script font you can't live without. Everyone knows the Mac handles fonts better than a PC, and we live to prove that by amassing thousands of these serif and sans serif wonders. It seems at times that some of us may be single-handedly keeping Adobe and Linotype in business. But when your Mac starts to inevitably sag under the weight of several hundred fonts, it's time to start packing with Extensis Suitcase Fusion.
That's right, Extensis has pulled out all the stops for this one. They combined their famous Suitcase font-management product with the criminally powerful Font Reserve. Suitcase is the highly useable front-end, where you can browse and search through fonts. It's essentially a font activator, so you can keep OS X running smoothly by enabling only the fonts you really need. The program is a whiz at grouping fonts, so when you start a new graphics design project you can quickly make several Copperplate families available with just a few clicks. Extensis added the ability to view PostScript font names and uses Font Sense technology to make sure that when you enable a font it works correctly in your application, such as QuarkXPress (version 6, $750; www. quark.com) or InDesign CS2 ($700; www.adobe.com).
Font Reserve keeps OS X from getting overwhelmed with fonts by performing quick substitutions, repairs and optimizations. For example, we opened ten documents from various sources—one was even an old EPS file from a seriously outdated Adobe Illustrator version—and Suitcase Fusion found several problems and made substitutions accordingly. We never had one document open with that ugly Courier font that says "you don't own that font, you negligent amateur." Where Suitcase X1 let you activate font families, it wasn't as useful for examining and fixing complex font problems. Now, for $100, you get usability and power.
The only question you may ask is: do I need all this power? Well, that really depends on how many fonts you own and how you use them. For the average Mac user who occasionally makes a garage sale sign, Suitcase Fusion is overkill. The product is intended for more serious designers who constantly switch fonts for every new ad campaign and buy fonts like sugar plums in Candyland. Still, even for the typical Mac user, it's much easier to find fonts—you can search by keywords, font foundry or even the font version number. And nothing beats having a program that organizes fonts in a clear interface instead of forcing you to manage everything from the Finder. Suitcase Fusion is useful in the same way that Quickeys X ($80; www.quickeys.com) expands on the built-in Automator (OS 10.4 and higher only) functions and makes them easier to use.
One new addition for both the Suitcase and Font Reserve packages is Font Doctor 7, a diagnostic and repair utility. While Suitcase Fusion itself helps fix mismatched fonts, and Font Reserve automatically repairs OS X problems, Font Doctor gives you specific control over fonts. You can load a font and perform functions such as cleaning up the font cache, repairing font ID conflicts and archiving outdated fonts (such as those pesky Type 3 variants). The program also lets you convert Windows fonts to Mac format and vice versa, which is a huge plus for designers who require industrial strength control over their font libraries and service bureau dealings.
However, we do have to quibble with the Suitcase Fusion price. Most utilities—even those that combine a couple of previous products—generally cost somewhere between $40 and $80. Priced a bit lower, and perhaps with installers for either beginner or advanced users, Suitcase Fusion would have been a stellar product for every Mac user. As it is, this font manager is almost too advanced and will aid only the more advanced graphic designers and page layout experts. That's unfortunate, considering that we're all living with far too many fonts.
–JOHN BRANDON
Suitcase Fusion: 
Extensis | www.extensis.com | 800-796-9798 | $100
Pros: Incredibly powerful font manager.
Cons: Too expensive for most Mac users.
Requires: 10.3.9 or higher, G4 at 1GHz or faster, 256MB RAM
macHOME recommends: 512MB RAM
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