Michael Kay is a user experience specialist for Phoenix Pop Productions in San Francisco. If you're satisfied with the handful of fonts that come with your computer, you needn't read any further. If, however, your font tastes lean toward the eclectic, you probably could use a font manager.
Font managers do a number of good things.
They improve the performance of your operating system by letting you easily activate fonts whenever you want them and then deactivate them when you don't. Font managers also let you organize your font library. Another way that font managers are being used these days is as diagnostic tools, taking care of corrupt, duplicate, and incomplete fonts, which can prevent system crashes and resolve font conflicts. But since the advent of Web publishing, more and more Windows users are getting in on the design game. But before deciding on a font manager, you should first figure out what you need and want it to do.