PC-Kwik Power Pak -- The Demanding User's Performance Toolkit Today's PC users demand a lot from their computers. Their applications are more complex, data files are larger than ever, many of their programs need a special system configuration to run, and everything needs more memory. Even though today's microprocessors are also faster, even the fastest system's responsiveness is limited by how long it takes to get the instructions and data it needs to perform. If you are one of these demanding users, Power Pak is the solution for you. Its performance utilities work together to speed up all aspects of your system, including: Disks Screen Cursor movement Command Entry Printing System configuration and the boot process Disk Testing and Optimization Besides the memory resident system accelerators that Power Pak is famous for, the new version 3.0 now includes Power Disk, our award-winning disk optimizer, and KwikBoot, a boot-time system configuration menu that helps you take control of your system startup files. Power Pak Makes the Best Use of Your Memory One of the strongest features of Power Pak is the tight integration of Super PC-Kwik with the other memory resident Power Pak utilities, such as the RAM disk, Print Spooler, Screen Accelerator, and Keyboard Accelerator. Cache memory is also shared dynamically between these utilities and other application programs, including Windows 3.0 and 3.1. For example, all of your available memory is used to speed up disk accesses, until an application needs memory, then it is loaned memory from the cache buffers. When a job is sent to the printer, the Print Spooler uses additional memory from the cache buffers to spool the print job so it can be completed in the background. When these applications finish, the memory is returned to the cache buffers and put back to work improving disk performance. This means you no longer have to set aside memory for particular tasks - Power Pak automatically uses your memory where it is most effective. The Super PC-Kwik Disk Cache At the center of Power Pak is the most sophisticated disk cache available for PCs - Super PC-Kwik version 5.1. Benchmark tests show that Super PC-Kwik typically speeds up disk access times by 300% to 1700%! It supports diskettes, hard disks, and CD-ROMs. The cache works by copying frequently used disk data to RAM. It continuously evaluates the disk to decide which data is most likely to be needed next, and moves that information into RAM. Then, when the processor requests data that is available in the cache, it is retrieved at the electronic speed of RAM, not the slow, mechanical speed of the disk. When the cache buffer fills up, Super PC-Kwik reuses the space by overwriting unneeded data. In addition, whenever data stored in the cache changes, it is immediately written out to the disk (unless you specify otherwise), so your important data is not subjected to loss from power outages or other mishaps. For many applications, the performance of writing to disk is just as important as reading from the disk. Super PC-Kwik gives you more options for dealing with disk writes than any other disk cache, so you can choose the type of write caching you are comfortable with. The Advanced Support (background writing), PowerWrite, and WriteDelay features all dramatically speed up the process of executing disk write requests. If you do not wish to delay sending write requests to the disk, you can still use PowerWrite to efficiently process writes in the background. Up to 16 Mb of RAM can be used by Super PC-Kwik for cache storage. You can specify the size of the cache buffer during setup, or let Super PC-Kwik automatically size itself to use all the available RAM on your system. Most types of mass storage devices are supported, including removable disk drives, as long as they conform to the DOS sector size of a multiple of 512 bytes. Accelerators for Your Keyboard, Screen, and Printer Each of the Power Pak Accelerators work to eliminate a performance bottleneck so you can get maximum benefit from today's fast processors. The Screen Accelerator speeds up the display and scrolling of text-mode screens by 300%. The Keyboard Accelerator provides hot key control so you can increase the keyboard repeat rate from the normal 9 characters per second (cps) up to 126 cps while in your DOS applications. The faster cursor repeat rate and acceleration lets you fly through even the longest documents and listings. The Screen and Keyboard Accelerators also include features to help the you work faster and improve your computing productivity. The Keyboard Accelerator includes ReDOS, a powerful command line editor, and keyboard aliases for creating short cut commands. New in Power Pak version 3.0 is KeySave, an expanded keyboard buffer that lets you type ahead up to 512 keystrokes when DOS is busy with other tasks. The Screen Accelerator features the ReView scroll back buffer, so you can display information that has scrolled off the screen. This screen data can also be saved to an ASCII disk file for later printing or editing. Printing is one of the biggest performance bottlenecks, but with the PC-Kwik Print Spooler, printing is completed in the background while you get back to work on other tasks. The Print Spooler intercepts jobs on the way to the printer and stores the data in RAM. Since this takes only a fraction of the time that would be needed to actually send the job to the printer, you regain control of the system much sooner than would happen normally. The Print Spooler then finishes sending the data to the printer in the background. Power Disk, the Fastest Disk Optimizer Power Disk version 1.5, our award winning disk optimizer, has been fully integrated into Power Pak. It was recently rated as the fastest disk optimizer available, while also being extremely reliable and compatible (PC World, July 1992). Power Disk is the best way to eliminate fragmented and poorly placed files, which are known to drastically decrease disk drive performance. Power Disk features an easy to use scheduling program so you can schedule automatic disk testing, reorganization, and directory sorts, according to the criteria you choose. You can schedule Power Disk to run any day of the week, when a particular level of fragmentation is present, selecting from four different reorganization strategies. With Power Disk, you can maintain reliability and keep your disks performing at their best, without ever having to remember to run a special program - Power Disk does it all for you. PowerScope, Power Disk's disk map, gives you detailed, graphic information about file placement, organization, and level of fragmentation. This tool lets you monitor the exact state of your disk and provides important troubleshooting information. KwikBoot For Faster Starts Demanding PC users tend to really over work their systems by using different environments, networks, memory managers, TSRs, FAX boards, sound boards, and more. It is next to impossible to find one combination of config.sys and autoexec.bat files that are optimized for every task. KwikBoot eliminates this common problem, by giving you an easy way to set up 100 different boot configurations and choose between them from a menu that appears when you boot. You can even include other files in your configurations to help you maintain .ini or other initialization files. Now your system can always be running in an optimum configuration. KwikBoot features a special setup program with a graphical user interface that makes it easy to create your multiple configuration boot menu. The KwikBoot setup program helps you build and update the config.sys and autoexec.bat files you need and adds the special syntax required by KwikBoot. You don't have to understand programming to create your configurations. A common problem with utilities that create different boot configurations is that other programs do not recognize the special commands they put in your config.sys and autoexec.bat files. For example, if you run a program like QEMM's Optimize it will not be able to correctly incorporate changes into startup files that use this special syntax. So, KwikBoot lets you select a single configuration to use when you run QEMM's Optimize, 386MAX's Maximize, or other programs that change your system files. When you are finished, just run KwikBoot's Setup program again and all the changes are automatically reincorporated into your configurations. PC-Kwik Corporation 15100 SW Koll Parkway Beaverton, OR 97006-6026 Sales Phone: (800) 274-5945 or (503) 644-5644 FAX: (503) 646-8267 See the file ORDER.TXT for ordering information. This material is Copyright 1993, PC-Kwik Corporation, All Rights Reserved. Permission to republish is hereby granted but changes may not be made nor may this material be published for profit without writ- ten permission from the copyright holder.