techtool
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TechTool Protogo
Micromat wants to put that spare iPod of yours to work. TechTool Protogo turns any portable media device (iPod, FireWire drive, USB key) into an industrial strength Mac troubleshooter. TechTool Protogo will format the device and enable it to boot Classic Macs (running OS 9 or earlier), PPC OS X Macs, and Intel Macs. You can then run a variety of utilities on your ailing Mac, or just run some maintenance routine's to keep your Mac in tip top shape.TechTool Protogo ships on January 9th for $148.
TechTool Pro 4.5 Announced
Micromat today announced an update to their top-of-the-line system diagnostic and repair software TechTool Pro, bringing the utility to Universal Binary status. As a repair technician, I use TechTool daily to repair corrupted drive volumes, detect failing disks, and stress-test hardware. Although version 4.5 of the program sports no new features aside from Intel support, Micromat is not releasing an updater for previous versions of TechTool. According to the company a large number of under-the-hood changes and tweaks to the program prevents such an update from being practical. Current owners of the software can download a public beta of the new version, and order a DVD update for $25 which will ship in July. Subscribers to Mircomat's TechTool Quarterly subscription program will automatically receive the update in the mail at no charge.
Micromat TechTool Protege
I service a lot of Macintosh computers. For years, I've been carrying around a portable firewire hard drive (most recent is the small 80GB Lacie one) with a firewire cable. I can easily boot off the "Tools" partition I've created on the FWHD with all my disk tools installed on it: DiskWarrior, TechTool, ProSoft Data Rescue, Etherpeek, Norton (as a last resort), and other tools. It's made my troubleshooting routines very easy.My holy grail was to be able to create a tiny pocket-friendly bootable volume with all my tools. I've had lots of experience creating small bootable OS's to put on DVD's, so paring down the size of Mac OS X isn't too difficult. About a year ago, I discovered Kanguru's firewire-based flash HD's and asked my school to order one to play with. I wanted to try to create a bootable tools disk that uses the Kanguru firewire flash drive instead of having to carry around a larger-than-desirable firewire hard disk based volume like my current Lacie, or a SmartDisk. Unfortunately, my purchase request was turned down.The good news is that the smart folks at Micromat had the same idea and are releasing a firewire flash disk that does exactly what I want and need. They are calling it the TechTool Protege, and it looks like they are using the Kanguru flash firewire drive just as I was going to do.I'm filling out the purchase order form as we speak.What's interesting is that Kanguru doesn't even list their 1GB flash drive anymore. I'm guessing Micromat bought their entire stock. Heh.
