I was getting really fed up with constant problems with Suitcase crashing when previewing fonts (even with good fonts directly from Adobe), and autoactivation barely working. I heard about the beta for FontExplorer, and decided to try it out. Even in beta, this application has been the best font manager I have used in OS X.

If this software wasn't free, I would gladly pay for it what I paid for Suitcase, because it actually works.

Totally agree. Great font management program. Its like iTunes for fonts. Love the "format" colums. Its no guess work or painstaking exercise anymore when checking for PS or TT fonts. And as said already before, the fonts that make suitcase "crash" work like a charm. All that with 5000 fonts and counting.

Bye-Bye Suitcase. May FontExplorer always stay FREE. And if not, who cares. Paying for something that works is always a pleasure.

I love this software. Works great and you can't beat the price.

I spent about 4 hours over this past weekend trying to get a handle on my fonts. I had reinstalled Tiger but forgot to customize the install to not add all of the wacky and useless fonts. Thus, the exercize to speed up my G5 only ended up making it run slowing, since there were over 300 unwanted fonts.

While using FontBook is a step up from my personal experiences with Suitcase (haven't used since OS 9), it is slow and inefficient. Based on these reviews, FontExplorer X looks to be the solution I need.

I'm hoping this management utility will

In large graphic departments, it is important to lock down your font sets, and provide access to only company owned, and purchased fonts. It is also important to make sure you don't have 27 different versions of Helvetica Neu Bold Oblique running around, because it means as files transition from person to person (going from concept, to art direction, to mechanicals) it can cause havoc.

So if LinoType would sell a back end to this, to allow centralized font management, they would have a big seller on their hands.