From: leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl (Leo Breebaart)
Subject: SpeedyFinder7 vs. CopyDoubler
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.system
Reply-To: leo@ph.tn.tudelft.nl
Organization: Delft University of Technology
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 22:49:24 GMT

Two utilities are currently available that both promise to speed up copying
in the Finder. First came the shareware SpeedyFinder7 (AU$ 20,-) by Victor
Tan; last week we saw the release of CopyDoubler ($60,-) by Fifth
Generation Systems. Both utilities do a host of other Finder enhancement
stuff as well, but I decided to put their copying speedups to the test. All
tests were performed on an 8 Mb SE/30 with a 19 ms hard disk and a
superdrive, running System 7.0.1 and one of the two utilities at a time,
without any other inits. I decided not to tempt fate by trying to see what
would happen if I ran both of them together :-)

Without much further ado, here are my figures (in minutes:seconds and 
'percentage of normal Finder time'):

[1] Test 1: One 26.6 Mb folder containing 5 TIFF files: duplicate on harddisk 
[2] Test 2: One 5.7 Mb folder containing 399 Word files: duplicate on harddisk 
[3] Test 3: One full 800 Kb DD floppy, floppy-to-harddisk 
[4] Test 4: 800 Kb of data resulting from [3], harddisk-to-floppy 
[5] Test 5: One full 1.3 Mb HD floppy, floppy-to-harddisk 
[6] Test 6: 1.3 Mb of data resulting from [5], harddisk-to-floppy

Test	Finder 7.0.1	SpeedyFinder7 1.2.4	CopyDoubler 1.0d
----------------------------------------------------------------
[1]	2:37		0:54 (34%)	    	0:57 (36 %)
[2]	1:33	    	1:20 (86%)		0:37 (39 %)
----------------------------------------------------------------
[3]	0:36		0:30 (83%)		0:28 (78 %)
[4]	1:37		1:21 (83%)		1:11 (73 %)
----------------------------------------------------------------
[5]	0:48		0:38 (79%)		0:38 (79 %)
[6]	1:57		1:21 (69%)		1:16 (65 %)
----------------------------------------------------------------

I ran all the tests twice to make sure the results remained consistent
(they did). I used SpeedyFinder's 'Optimal Guess' setting, but the results
were identical when compared to the 'use all available memory' option.
Some remarks about these test results:

1) I honestly cannot imagine that *any* user who tries either utility will
not immediately be hooked for life -- how did we ever manage to do without
something like this! The speedups gained for even modest data transfers are
incredible: these utilities *deliver*.

2) SpeedyFinder and CopyDoubler handle large bulk transfers equally well.
The same goes for reading from any type of floppy.

3) CopyDoubler blasts SpeedyFinder away when it comes to copying *many*
files, and CopyDoubler is moderately, but significantly faster when it
comes to writing to floppies.

4) SpeedyFinder shows a strange anomaly in that it takes just as long to
fill a 1.3 Mb floppy as it does to fill a 800 Kb floppy! I tried this
*four* times to be sure, and each time the same thing happened...

5) I also did some quick informal testing with reading and writing to
File-Shared volumes over AppleTalk, and the results are again amazing. When
you have to copy data to or from a slooooow target you will really
appreciate the difference these utilities make...

Advantages of SpeedyFinder: the usual shareware advantages (cheap, author
reachable through e-mail, quick distribution of new versions), lots of
other neat options, retains Finder-like appearances completely so you never
notice it's there.  

Disadvantages of SpeedyFinder: the usual shareware disadvantages (no
guaranteed support, guaranteed bugfixes or guaranteed future development),
reported to be unstable to various degrees: some folks had no choice but to
trash it. Personally, I have more than 3 rows of inits and yet I have no
fatal problems with SpeedyFinder, but your mileage will very likely vary.
And it's slower then CopyDoubler...

Advantages of CopyDoubler: the usual commercial advantages (phone-support;
guaranteed (more or less) bugfixes and future development). Faster then
SpeedyFinder. Does some other very neat things. Works well with AutoDoubler
which is from the same folks.

Disadvantages of CopyDoubler: the usual commercial disadvantages
(expensive; slow upgrades, money-grubbing capitalistic imperialist company,
salesdroids, authors less responsive to your feedback).  Replaces Finder
copy window with a butt-ugly atrocity that has COPYDOUBLER and FIFTH
GENERATION SYSTEMS in huge letters all over it and does not look even
remotely like a real Finder window. Ugh, aaargh, barf. A little less ego
would have been nice. I have not used CopyDoubler extensively, so its
stability and robustness is unknown to me.

My recommendation: I'll stick with SpeedyFinder for now, because I like its
advantages better then CopyDoubler's (and because CopyDoubler's intrusive
copy window is just too much for me!). From my e-mail conversations with
Victor I understand that there will be many changes, bugfixes and
improvements in future SpeedyFinder versions.  But I fully realize that
CopyDoubler's speed is the best for now, and that its other options are
mondo cool as well.  

So you know what?  Don't listen to *me*, go check it out for it yourself.
Both utilities are available from sumex and umich. Go have a look and see
if you don't agree with me: every Mac user will want to have one of these
two installed in his system. Mark my words.

-- 
Leo Breebaart  (leo @ ph.tn.tudelft.nl)