Stuffit Deluxe 2010

Stuffit Deluxe 2010 is the latest iteration of Stuffit, which is the dominant file compression protocol in the Macintosh world.

Stuffit Deluxe 2010 handles all the common, and many uncommon, Windows protocols as well - zip, rar, tar, gzip, and more - but then so do WinZip, PKZip, and the like. Given that general compression performance is very similar across the board, what does Stuffit 2010 offer in terms of bells and whistles? There's one major new feature added, but as of this writing it's a mixed bag.

The main new feature of Stuffit Deluxe 2010 is Stuffit SmartSend, a feature which helps get around the fact that as file sizes bloat, adding attachments to email becomes more complex.

We are sure everyone has experienced the pain and heartbreak of getting a "bounce" on a 10 meg file, or having mail vanish because it contains a file type which the local network admin has decided is a risk. (For example, it's very hard to email .exe or .bat files to someone behind a decent corporate firewall - not without reason.)

SmartSend can be set to filter by both file save (for example, over 5 megabytes) and file type, and then, instead of emailing the file, it will email a link to the file, either to an FTP site you have specified or to Stuffit Connect, a separate online file service with up to 2 gig of storage which you get access to as part of your purchase (but Stuffit Connect isn't accessible with the trial version). It's a great idea, but how well does it work?

Well, it's a great idea.

We were unable to send a moderately large file - about 150MB - to the service. It simply hung during upload, constantly resetting the progress bar. This bug has been confirmed by the company and is in the process of being remedied as of this writing.

We were able to send a smaller (about 7MB) file without much trouble. Even if our first upload issue was related to our system or connection, the entire process is not as convenient as it should be. Stuffit SmartSend doesn't integrate with your mailer of choice; you need to use it as a standalone function, either via the Stuffit program or by selecting from a right-click menu in Explorer.

Second, the process is unintuitive; you create an archive, you "SmartSend" it, then you decide whom you wish to inform about the presence of the file. Given the hoops you must jump through, it's not significantly easier than just uploading the file to an FTP server and then emailing the people you want to access it.