Using AppleTalk as a network in a busy production environment quickly illustrates its limitations. Transferring large files can be painfully slow, there’s no built-in message or mail capabilities, and although you can see and retrieve files from a remote computer on the network, there’s not much you can do with them if the application is not on the computer you’re using.
Timbuktu Pro 4.0, however, gives a network serious horsepower, and a slick interface, to boot. Remote connection, password protection, and messaging all receive a boost. Should a transfer be interrupted,
Timbuktu Pro will pick up at the point where it left off. Best of all, it has the ability to completely control another computer — that is, to launch and use applications on a remote computer from your own. On the road when a client wants to change a brochure? With Timbuktu, you can connect to the office with a PowerBook — through the Internet — open QuarkXPress on your desktop computer, change the pages, and email them to the service bureau.
The 88-page manual is clear and easy to read, making installation a snap (although the onscreen guide differs a little from the manual) . A Timbuktu menu appears at the top right of the screen, creating a shortcut to launching the program or to connecting with other computers on the network. Be aware of one thing before installing, however: Active transport software of some kind is required — preferably Open Transport — and you must enable AppleScript. This isn’t mentioned in the manual.
Timbuktu consists of several parts: Send transfers files and folders, along with a FlashNote to notify the recipient (the transferred files go to a FlashNotes Received folder). Exchange is more robust, allowing you to quickly copy files or folders in either direction, provided you have password access. Observe opens the remote computer’s screen on your own, allowing you to watch it in action. Control, well... controls the remote computer. Chat creates a keyboard conversation with any other Chat-enabled Timbuktu user. And Intercom allows the user to speak to other Timbuktu 4.0 users via built-in or external microphone and speakers.
New to version 4.0, Drop Sender creates icons for quick transfer. Simply drag and drop files to send onto the icon for a quick, easy transfer to a specific location — whether on a LAN, via direct dial-up, or over the Internet. Exchange also has several features: Go To provides a shortcut to any higher folder along the current file path, and Get Info is just like the Finder version of the same command but can also find the original file of any alias and search for files on any connected computer.
The best features, however, are the Observe and Control functions. A slower computer can control a newer and more powerful one with a larger monitor. The view on the local computer scrolls automatically — it’s really something to see. And a Mac can control even a Wintel box. Want to create a logical loop and crash the system? Go into Control mode, open the remote computer’s Timbuktu Pro menu bar, and select Control.
Of course, sharing an entire system with everyone on the network may be a terrifying proposition. Luckily, setting which users can access which Timbuktu Pro utilities is very simple. Likewise, you may assign to undefined guests as much or as little access as desired. Any privileges you grant to guests are automatically granted to all registered users.
The only real downside of Timbuktu is the intercom fiinction. The sound quality is so poor that it creates more confusion than it solves — endi of longe wor get cut of, and there’s an annoying delay caused, presumably, by the translation of sound into digital form and back again (it reminds us of listening to yourself during a radio phone-in). Not a great feature when a telephone is almost always right there.
For creating a network to manage connections and send files, Timbuktu Pro 4.0 has it all, plus several intuitive tools you won’t even fully realize until going back to a network without them.
Bury, Scott. (December 1997). Timbuktu Pro 4.0. MacAddict. (pg. 70).
Netopia, Inc.
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
36 / 
2014-05-16 / 
f198efe18c7f4f81a2f0b46dbf5cde4fc6aa30ee / 
/ 
Timbuktu_4.0.6_Update.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
SheepShaver
