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MacDrive 2000
Mediafour Corporation
No brains needed - it just works!
reviewed by Roberta Mikkelsen

I was given a Zip and was told the images were created on a Mac. No problem I said. I have a conversion program! I went home, popped in the Zip and read "This disk cannot be read. Do you want to format the disk?" Murphy's law at work. Why can't I read the Mac disk? Because there are difference in the
file architecture of PC and Mac systems.

I had MacDrive 2000 for a review, so...I knew it was time. I was glad to find a thin twenty-eight page user guide which stated: "This User Guide is intentionally brief. MacDrive does what it does without requiring much attention from you. For many users, this Guide will be entirely unnecessary." COOL!

Installation was a breeze. When I restarted my computer the only change I saw was a MacDrive 2000 icon on my desktop.

Mac Drive 2000 enables a PC running Windows to read Mac floppies, CDs, Zip disks, external drives and just about any removable media device as if it were Windows media.

I put in the Zip and I was able to read it! It was that easy. The claims that MacDrive 2000 uses a new innovative and revolutionary way of integration with Windows that allows you to setup and forget it are true. Mac Drive integrates itself into Windows Explorer; you can then navigate into a Mac disk as if it were a PC disk. It also adds the correct icon to the transferred file. Another nice feature is that you can access in the file properties box of a Mac file and get useful information on the file such as the original Mac format, its size and the creator's name. (It is not, however, a file translator or an emulator. You must have the
software on your Windows system that is capable of understanding the Mac files that you open.)

I tested MacDrive with various Mac media such as Zip, CD-ROM and Jaz, and they all opened flawlessly. I was able to make corrections and save the files back
to disk. When I transferred the data back to the Mac platform, I found the corrections there just as I made them.

I'm glad to see this type of software is available for the PC; the Mac has had these cross-platform capabilities for years. This is truly a no-brainer. If you need a great file sharing program to use between the testy PC and a Mac then MacDrive 2000 is the way to go.

MacDrive 2000
by MediaFour
www.mediafour.com
If purchased after Oct 1 for $49.95 you'll get a free downloadable upgrade of MacDrive 5 for Win XP, release date sometime in November.

System requirements:
Windows 95/98/NT 4/2000
2MB free hard disk space
3MB additional hard disk space
(if MS Windows Installer not already installed)
CD-ROM Drive


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