Santa Monica, California-based Peter Norton Computing has launched Version 5.0 of that perennial favourite, Norton Utilities, and Ron Posner, president and chief executive, says that it is targeted at a less technically literate audience than has been the case with former editions. Version 5 provides facilities to recover and protect data and is said to increase disk reliability. The Disk Doctor II automatically diagnoses disk-related problems, and test routines include checks of the boot record, file allocation tables, directory and file structures, and checks for lost records. The Calibrate feature tests and adjusts the interleave of a hard disk to help ensure that data is read and written as quickly as possible. File Fix repairs damaged files in Lotus 1-2-3 or dBase format by going into the internal file structure of a database or spreadsheet, and the Norton Cache keeps most frequently used disk data in memory to provide faster access. File Save protects user-specified files from being over-writ-ten by MS-DOS for a period of time, and when it is used with Norton UnErase facility on Novell NetWare, it enables file to be recovered from anywhere on the network. Disk Monitor records all attempts to read and write to disk drives, including network drives. The various facilities now have a mouse-driven graphical user interface, and other features that have been enhanced include disk optimisation utility, UnErase, File Find, and system information. Disk optimisation now analyses the disk and suggests which method is most appropriate. UnErase has three different methods of recovering files, and the file find may operate by text, size, name, or attributes. Desk editor now has split-screen, cut-and-paste editing, data links, and expanded editing in networked environments. Norton Utilities Version 5.0 is UKP140, and the upgrade is UKP40.
