Startup Doubler 2.6, a utility designed to speed up your Mac at startup, is now available to download.
According to documentation, version 2.6 adds support for Mac OS 9.1 and fixes a bug in the installer that would sometimes prevent installation. What’s interesting is that Apple hasn’t officially released Mac OS 9.1 yet, though such a critter could appear at next week’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco.
Startup Doubler’s software acceleration compensates for sub-optimal disk performance to make extensions, control panel, the Finder, and startup applications load faster.
With the utility, older Macs to startup 20 to 50 percent faster, according to MacTech Magazine. The latest G3 and G4 Macs get less dramatic improvements as they’re already pretty fast, but if you have lots of extensions, control panels, and startup items you can usually save 10 to 20 seconds at each startup, according to MacTech.
Startup Doubler runs on Mac OS 9.1 and previous versions going back to System 7.0. It supports multiple extension sets. The utility is US $20 shareware.