Menu Utilities Collection 1.26

Reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad

Developer: Ari Feldman Support: eMAIL through the website http://www.flyingyogi.com/fun/ Make a donation, developer have to live too. System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3 or later, Not universal binary. Released: 16 January, 2007 Audience: All user levels Strengths: If one of these menu function add-ons works for you use them — there’s something in this collection for everyone. Weaknesses: Now wouldn’t it be a grand thing if I could just ask Ari to create one or three other items for me. The software was tested on a 1 GHz dual processor PowerPC G4 Macintosh with 2 GB DDR SDRAM running under OS X 10.4.8. Product and company names and logos in this review may be registered trademarks of their respective companies. Disclaimer: When briefly reviewing share-freeware I will often use the developer’s product, functions and features descriptions. All other comments are strictly my own and based on testing.

Introduction

The Menu Utilities collection is a free compilation of various small utilities that run within your Mac's menu bar. Included in the latest (version 1.25) compilation are 12 mini-applications that serve to provide information about your computer, as well as giving you quick access to a number of OS features. Since my 22” monitor has more menu bar space than doe my dock, I decided to check them out.

Working With

Installing these applications is simple. Open the folder containing the individual applications, after unzipping the download file, and drag it you’re your applications folder. To install, simply drag the application(s) of interest into your Mac's /Applications/ folder (or any folder you wish). To launch, simply double-click on an application's icon. To quit, simply select the application's Quit option, which appears in its menu

I tried most of the package and then promptly deinstalled many of them. Although they could be valued tools, I simply did not or would not use those items.

For the items I liked, I followed the developer’s suggestion. “If you like any of these programs and want to have them start up automatically at login, simply enable them via the 'Accounts' applet in the 'System Preferences' application.” Such an atypical route is necessary because opening one of the collection’s applications does not place it in the dock. I had previous downloaded, individual tools, such as PrefsMenu 1.2.4, which has for months allowed equivalent access to my preference pane. Why, accessing my preferences panel from the menu bar freed up dock space.

Which route you chose, individual downloaded applications for the MacUpdate or Version Tracker sites, or from this set. It’s a mater of pure choice or even pure chance. What you’ve got is what you’ll use.

I’ve highlighted the tools I like, but that doesn’t mean your choices would be mine. I did however come to one conclusion about the applications that provided identical functionality either a pulldown menu items or as space hogs in the menubar. I’ll let you guess which I chose. Note I did pick MenuPrefs over PrefsMenu 1.2.4 because the later had become flakey when I upgraded to Tiger 10.4.8. But after a test or three I kept the preferences pane in the dock. Read on!

The Following Items are Included in this Compilation

HD Free: displays the free and used space, displayed as a %, on your boot drive in the menu bar.

HD Free +: displays the free and used space on all of your mounted drives in a drop down menu. This includes any iPods configured as drives and plugged-in flash drives. Note that according to Chares Moore (see below) Drives will also be listed in the order that they were mounted.

mCal: displays a small calendar of the current month inside a drop down menu.

MenuIP: displays your Mac's external IP address in the menu bar.

MenuIP +: displays your Mac's external IP address inside a drop down menu and lets you copy it to the Clipboard. According to Charles Moore, “this tool also checks an external URL to get your IP rather than relying on the value of network interface en0, which should allow it to report your IP correctly whether you're using an Ethernet, WiFi or even dial-up connection or behind a corporate firewall, etc.”

MenuPrefs: displays your Mac's standard System Preference panes inside a drop down menu for quick access. One limitation is that MenuPrefs only display the standard System Preference panes at this time so I don’t regain that dock slot since half the items in my preferences pane don’t show up.

MenuRAM: displays your Mac's used and free RAM in the menu bar.

MenuRAM +: displays your Mac's used and free RAM in a drop down menu.

Process Tamer: displays a list of all active application and system processes in a drop down menu. You can then individually kill them with one click. Mr. Moore notes “in many cases, Process Tamer will be more convenient that manually typing in individual process ID (PIDs) in the Terminal to accomplish the same thing.” For more details on this feature check his review.

SysLoad: displays the current system "load" of your Mac, which can help you gauge just how busy your Mac is.

SysUtils: displays a list of all of the click-able applications in your Mac's /Applications/Utilities/ folder inside a drop down menu, which you can then launch. I did find, as Charles Moore noted that This can be handy as it allows you to free up precious Dock space when it comes to accessing important but sporadically used system utilities such as Grab, X11, Disk Utility, etc. Moreover, you can place other utility applications in your /Applications/Utilities/ folder and they will show up in the menu the next time it's activated.”

yCal: displays a calendar of the current year inside a drop down menu.

Other Features

Easy Removal — You should also note that when you first boot each application, some of these create a preference file (.plist} in your Library > Preferences folder. After experimenting with these applications, you should delete the preferences file when removing any unneeded application from your hard drive. It’s just a drag and drop to the trash.

Developers Note: HD Free, MenuIP, MenuRAM and SysLoad can be used alone or in conjunction with one another.

Discomforts

None, what’s to dislike, you either find an item useful or not. It’s free so you have nothing to complain about.

In a review of this product, posted by Charles W. Moore on Applelinks, he noted that “The only problem with this is that if you want to use several of them at a time, they eat up menubar space pretty quickly, even on a widescreen machine like my 17" PowerBook.”

http://www.applelinks.com/index.php/more/menu_utilities_collection_125_mini_review_os_x_odyssey_843/

Conclusions

This simple and useful collection of applications provides various handy and timesaving features to make using your Mac faster and/or easier. The applications are very small and consume very little RAM or system resources.

For those of you who are interested in some of the applications that Charles Moore found helpful, check his review of version 1.25 for more details on how they function.

I initially placed an alias of the folder of applications in my dock, at least for a day or two. I moved the ones I like to my applications folder. Having narrowed down the ones I’d use I just arranged to have some of them boot on startup.