If you are a graphic designer, you probably have a large number of fonts. Sure, Apple has a built-in font manager, but for more than a 100 fonts, you need something more powerful. There are several options, and all cost about $100. I went with FontAgent Pro because I owned v3 years ago, and I was able to upgrade for about half price. If I had to start all over, I would certainly give all of these a free 30-day trial, Let me know what your experiences are with these, or let me know if there are any other font managers.

FontAgent Pro 4

FontAgent Pro is my current font manager of choice. It was the first to come out with plug-ins for Adobe Creative Suite CS5. They bill it as "The World's Smartest Font Manager". Maybe so. I haven't had any problems with it. By Insider Software. $99.95. For Mac and Windows

Extensis Suitcase Fusion 3

Suitcase might be the grandaddy of font managers. Suitcase Fusion is merger of SuitCase and another program I used to have, I think it was called Font Fusion. Creative Pro has a review up here. Maybe v3 is better, but I didn't care for v2. By Extensis. $99.95, For Mac and Windows.

FontExplorer X

For a while, FontExplorer was a free product, and it was great. They eventually came out with a paid version, which I haven't tried. Macworld has a full review here. By Linotype. $79. Mac only.

FontCase

FontCase is the new kid on the block. It looks pretty sweet, and the price is almost half of other font managers. By Bohemian Coding. $53. Mac only.

A brief review of Mailplane from a longtime user.

I think Gmail is the best email service there is. Tons of features, a generous storage amount, it works with desktop clients like Apple Mail or Thunderbird, and it's free.

I've been using Gmail for what seems like ages. (Does anyone remember that you used to need an "invitation" from a Gmail user just to get your own account?) These days I have several Gmail accounts (actually, some of them are Google Apps accounts—Gmail but with your own domain), some for business, some for personal, and some for junk mail. And even though Gmail works well with desktop clients, it's just not the same experience as the web-based version.

But a few years ago I came across a shareware program called Mailplane that changed everything for me. Mailplane is a small shareware application that gives you all the features of Gmail's web interface via a desktop application. And if you have multiple Gmail accounts, you can manage them all in the same application, without having to sign in and out of your different accounts.

Mailplane looks just like Gmail, but you will notice a tool bar at the top of the screen. It also has it's own icon in the Dock that shows you how many unread messages you have. It also has a notification setting in the Menu bar, and it works with Growl.

Mailplane gives you access to everything Gmail does, but with some additional features compared to using it with a web browser. Some of them include the ability to set Mailplane as your default email client, automatically compressing folders and file bundles, a "new mail" sound when new mail arrives, access to your Mac OS X address book for TO, CC and BCC address, and more. The Mailplaneapp.com website has a complete comparison chart.

I like Mailplane so much that I abandoned Mail.app as my default email client on my desktop computer a couple of years ago. I still use Mail.app on my laptop because it is not always connected to the internet.

Unlike Gmail, Mailplane isn't free. At $24.95 for a single user license, it's a reasonably priced shareware application that I definitely recommend for any Gmail or Google Apps user. (A family license up to 5 users, and volume licensing for companies or institutions is also available.)

I suggest you give it a try. Visit the Mailplaneapp.com website and download the free 30-day trial. Take it for a spin and let me know what you think.

UPDATE: Coincidentally, Mailplane 2.2 was just released. Even better!