Dataviz Conversion Plus 3.0

Richard Price

This is a useful piece of software and a cheap way of accessing and formatting Mac disks on a PC. Suggested retail price is AU$240.00 and users of previous versions can upgrade for AU$99.00.

This new version includes a file preview feature, enhanced graphics capabilities and new translators for TIFF, JPEG, GIF, BMP, PCX and EPS files.

Requiring Windows 3.1 or greater and a minimum of 4 Mb of ram it is easy to install. I had it up and running on a 386 with 4Mb of memory without any trouble. A full installation only takes up about 6.5 Mb of disk space.

The program is easy to understand and the manual is thankfully small. On line help is available with lots of helpful tips. Dataviz provides free technical support to all registered users. Though it is unlikely you will need it. The box describes it as "the complete file and disk compatibility utility" and basically that is what it is. Install it on your PC, put in a Mac disk and you can read it.

You can also convert the files to run on your PC. Some formats, like PageMaker, Quark or PowerPoint files are merely converted to their Windows equivalent. Word processor files can be converted to a variety of formats. Converted documents retain all formatting, styles, headers, footers and embedded graphics The file viewer is a new feature and allows you to view the contents of the file before converting it. This didn't show the formatting of a Quark file though.

The strength of the program lies in its ability to read Mac disks on a PC, and to convert between Mac and PC formats. The box claims you can read any file on any disk and use it in your software. However, when I tried to do something I thought was quite a simple task I ran into a problem.

I had a Mac disk with a QuarkXpress file on it which I could convert into a QuarkXpress for Windows easily enough while retaining all the formatting. However, all I wanted was the text so I could place it into a Word for Windows document and reformat it. Using Conversion Plus 3.0, I could see the text on the preview screen, but there was a lot of garbage about too. Obviously the file viewer had a problem displaying the formatting. Although, once converted all the text was in the right place.

The help screen had advice for converting the text into a word processor format. This involved converting the document to a Quark for Windows format, then using Quark for Windows to save the text blocks in the format I wanted. This was what I usually did. I would have been more impressed if I could have used Conversion Plus to neatly strip the text from the file viewer and save it in the format I wanted. Or just copy it to the clipboard and paste it into another program.

Major Mac and PC programs already recognise each other, so you would expect a specialised converting program to be more intelligent. Still it is useful for converting files from one format to another, if that is what you need to do. I will be using this program often, as well as looking out for the next version.

By Richard Price, Editor, EnergyME.com

For information on getting a product reviewed email richard@energyme.com