Frank Petrie phranky@mamugs.com

Recosoft Corporation http://www.recosoft.com Requirements: 7.6.1 or higher/ 10.1 or higher Price: US $49.00

Every Mac user has come face-to-face with the irritation of converting a PC file into a Mac file. Maybe some day that'll change but for now it's a reality that requires a conversion utility. This is the niche that Recosoft's Vinc hopes to fill. Vinc converts both Word Processing Formats and Image formats.

I tested Vinc on my eMac 700 with 768MB of ram, using OS 10.2.4. The layout of Vinc is straightforward. Its panes are arranged just like iTunes, iPhoto, Outlook Express, etc. There are four main panes - the Folder Tree, Folder Contents, Conversion Pane and Preview Pane. There is also a Tool Bar and an Information Bar.

The Tree and Contents panes are one of several ways of getting your targeted document into Vinc. Once there you can Preview and/or convert it to one of a dozen or so formats. You can preset your Source and Destination folders to save a step or two.

I can honestly say that although Vinc does everything that it claims to do, for US $49.00 dollars you would be better off figuring out which type of conversions you do most frequently and buy something along those lines instead. As an example, if you mainly do graphic conversions, I would highly recommend that you purchase Lemke Software's 'Graphic Converter' for US $39.00. Not only can you open and convert graphic files with ease, you also get a palette of tools to create your own , as well.

And if you have a need to convert any manner of Office (Word, Excel, etc.) document, there's always MacLink Plus, which will also convert Palm files, too. There's also a lite version that is built into AppleWorks 6. Just double click on your .doc and it translates it and saves the layout (tabs, indents, etc.). And if you have AppleWorks, which you most likely do, it's already in there for free!

Should you have a specific kind of conversion that you need to accomplish, just type 'convert' into VersionTracker's search field and you will be presented with ten pages of all manner of converters, two-fifths of which are free!

To be blunt, even though US $49.00 dollars is not a lot of change, it is too much for an .app that is a Jack of Few Trades and Master of None.

Frank Petrie
Technologies and Products Specialist for User Groups
Mid-Atlantic Macintosh User Groups Team
(MaMUGs)