Shareware Super Platinum 8/Shareware Super Platinum 8.iso/mac/DIAGTOOL/JPRDY101.ZIP;1/POWERPAK.TXT

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 8.9 KB | 201 lines

PC-Kwik Power Pak -- The Demanding User's Performance Toolkit

Today's PC users demand a lot from their computers. Their
applications are more complex, data files are larger than
ever, many of their programs need a special system
configuration to run, and everything needs more memory. Even
though today's microprocessors are also faster, even the
fastest system's responsiveness is limited by how long it
takes to get the instructions and data it needs to perform.

If you are one of these demanding users, Power Pak is the
solution for you. Its performance utilities work together to
speed up all aspects of your system, including:

     Disks
     Screen
     Cursor movement
     Command Entry
     Printing
     System configuration and the boot process
     Disk Testing and Optimization

Besides the memory resident system accelerators that Power
Pak is famous for, the new version 3.0 now includes Power
Disk, our award-winning disk optimizer, and KwikBoot, a
boot-time system configuration menu that helps you take
control of your system startup files.

Power Pak Makes the Best Use of Your Memory

One of the strongest features of Power Pak is the tight
integration of Super PC-Kwik with the other memory resident
Power Pak utilities, such as the RAM disk, Print Spooler,
Screen Accelerator, and Keyboard Accelerator. Cache memory
is also shared dynamically between these utilities and other
application programs, including Windows 3.0 and 3.1. For
example, all of your available memory is used to speed up
disk accesses, until an application needs memory, then it is
loaned memory from the cache buffers. When a job is sent to
the printer, the Print Spooler uses additional memory from
the cache buffers to spool the print job so it can be
completed in the background. When these applications finish,
the memory is returned to the cache buffers and put back to
work improving disk performance. This means you no longer
have to set aside memory for particular tasks - Power Pak
automatically uses your memory where it is most effective.

The Super PC-Kwik Disk Cache

At the center of Power Pak is the most sophisticated disk
cache available for PCs - Super PC-Kwik version 5.1.
Benchmark tests show that Super PC-Kwik typically speeds up
disk access times by 300% to 1700%!  It supports diskettes,
hard disks, and CD-ROMs.

The cache works by copying frequently used disk data to RAM.
It continuously evaluates the disk to decide which data is
most likely to be needed next, and moves that information
into RAM. Then, when the processor requests data that is
available in the cache, it is retrieved at the electronic
speed of RAM, not the slow, mechanical speed of the disk.
When the cache buffer fills up, Super PC-Kwik reuses the
space by overwriting unneeded data. In addition, whenever
data stored in the cache changes, it is immediately written
out to the disk (unless you specify otherwise), so your
important data is not subjected to loss from power outages
or other mishaps.

For many applications, the performance of writing to disk is
just as important as reading from the disk. Super PC-Kwik
gives you more options for dealing with disk writes than any
other disk cache, so you can choose the type of write
caching you are comfortable with. The Advanced Support
(background writing), PowerWrite, and WriteDelay features
all dramatically speed up the process of executing disk
write requests. If you do not wish to delay sending write
requests to the disk, you can still use PowerWrite to
efficiently process writes in the background.

Up to 16 Mb of RAM can be used by Super PC-Kwik for cache
storage. You can specify the size of the cache buffer during
setup, or let Super PC-Kwik automatically size itself to use
all the available RAM on your system. Most types of mass
storage devices are supported, including removable disk
drives, as long as they conform to the DOS sector size of a
multiple of 512 bytes.

Accelerators for Your Keyboard, Screen, and Printer

Each of the Power Pak Accelerators work to eliminate a
performance bottleneck so you can get maximum benefit from
today's fast processors. The Screen Accelerator speeds up
the display and scrolling of text-mode screens by 300%. The
Keyboard Accelerator provides hot key control so you can
increase the keyboard repeat rate from the normal 9
characters per second (cps) up to 126 cps while in your DOS
applications. The faster cursor repeat rate and acceleration
lets you fly through even the longest documents and
listings.

The Screen and Keyboard Accelerators also include features
to help the you work faster and improve your computing
productivity. The Keyboard Accelerator includes ReDOS, a
powerful command line editor, and keyboard aliases for
creating short cut commands. New in Power Pak version 3.0 is
KeySave, an expanded keyboard buffer that lets you type
ahead up to 512 keystrokes when DOS is busy with other
tasks. The Screen Accelerator features the ReView scroll
back buffer, so you can display information that has
scrolled off the screen. This screen data can also be saved
to an ASCII disk file for later printing or editing.

Printing is one of the biggest performance bottlenecks, but
with the PC-Kwik Print Spooler, printing is completed in the
background while you get back to work on other tasks. The
Print Spooler intercepts jobs on the way to the printer and
stores the data in RAM. Since this takes only a fraction of
the time that would be needed to actually send the job to
the printer, you regain control of the system much sooner
than would happen normally. The Print Spooler then finishes
sending the data to the printer in the background.

Power Disk, the Fastest Disk Optimizer

Power Disk version 1.5, our award winning disk optimizer,
has been fully integrated into Power Pak. It was recently
rated as the fastest disk optimizer available, while also
being extremely reliable and compatible (PC World, July
1992). Power Disk is the best way to eliminate fragmented
and poorly placed files, which are known to drastically
decrease disk drive performance.

Power Disk features an easy to use scheduling program so you
can schedule automatic disk testing, reorganization, and
directory sorts, according to the criteria you choose. You
can schedule Power Disk to run any day of the week, when a
particular level of fragmentation is present, selecting from
four different reorganization strategies. With Power Disk,
you can maintain reliability and keep your disks performing
at their best, without ever having to remember to run a
special program - Power Disk does it all for you.

PowerScope, Power Disk's disk map, gives you detailed,
graphic information about file placement, organization, and
level of fragmentation. This tool lets you monitor the exact
state of your disk and provides important troubleshooting
information.

KwikBoot For Faster Starts

Demanding PC users tend to really over work their systems by
using different environments, networks, memory managers,
TSRs, FAX boards, sound boards, and more. It is next to
impossible to find one combination of config.sys and
autoexec.bat files that are optimized for every task.
KwikBoot eliminates this common problem, by giving you an
easy way to set up 100 different boot configurations and
choose between them from a menu that appears when you boot.
You can even include other files in your configurations to
help you maintain .ini or other initialization files. Now
your system can always be running in an optimum
configuration.

KwikBoot features a special setup program with a graphical
user interface that makes it easy to create your multiple
configuration boot menu. The KwikBoot setup program helps
you build and update the config.sys and autoexec.bat files
you need and adds the special syntax required by KwikBoot.
You don't have to understand programming to create your
configurations.

A common problem with utilities that create different boot
configurations is that other programs do not recognize the
special commands they put in your config.sys and
autoexec.bat files. For example, if you run a program like
QEMM's Optimize it will not be able to correctly incorporate
changes into startup files that use this special syntax. So,
KwikBoot lets you select a single configuration to use when
you run QEMM's Optimize, 386MAX's Maximize, or other
programs that change your system files. When you are
finished, just run KwikBoot's Setup program again and all
the changes are automatically reincorporated into your
configurations.

PC-Kwik Corporation
15100 SW Koll Parkway
Beaverton, OR  97006-6026
Sales Phone: [phone] or [phone]
FAX: [phone]

See the file ORDER.TXT for ordering information.

This material is Copyright 1993, PC-Kwik Corporation, All Rights
Reserved.

Permission to republish is hereby granted but changes may not be
made nor may this material be published for profit without writ-
ten permission from the copyright holder.